Makam Dato’ Jenaton: A Penang Story That Led Back to Singapore

A story at Kak Oja’s home sent us looking for an old makam near USM — and led back, several generations later, to Singapore’s first President.

It started with a conversation at my cousin’s home.

Kak Oja and the family were telling us about places around Penang when they mentioned Makam Dato’ Jenaton, near USM. What immediately caught my attention was the family connection they told us about: that Dato’ Jenaton’s line eventually leads to Yusof Ishak, Singapore’s first President.

Being Singaporean, that was enough to make me curious.

So after leaving their home that same night, we went looking for the makam.

Unfortunately, it was already dark when we arrived. The burial ground was not really accessible to outsiders, and there was not much we could see from where we were.

It ended up being a very short visit.

But the story stayed with me.

So who was Dato’ Jenaton?

His name appears in several forms — Dato’ Jenaton, Datok Janatun and Datuk Jannaton among them. The spellings vary, and so do some of the early dates attached to his story.

What is clearer is that he belongs to Penang’s history before 1786. Recent USM scholarship places Dato’ Jenaton among the early Malay leaders associated with the island before Francis Light arrived. Accounts connect him to the Minangkabau world of Sumatra and to Batu Uban, one of Penang’s earliest Malay settlements.

Some accounts say he received land from the Sultan of Kedah in return for help against Siamese forces. The exact year and parts of that story differ across published and family accounts, so I would rather not turn one version into unquestioned fact.

The larger point is enough for this story: Dato’ Jenaton and his descendants were part of an established Malay presence in Penang before the familiar British chapter began.

The connection to Yusof Ishak

This was the part Kak Oja’s family had told us about.

The connection is preserved in Jenaton family genealogy, including the genealogical work of Abdul Aziz Ishak. Aziz was the younger brother of Yusof Ishak, and both were sons of Ishak Ahmad. That family record places them among Dato’ Jenaton’s descendants.

I have not found enough primary documentation to prove every link in the chain independently, so I do not want to manufacture a complete family tree. The careful way to show the recorded connection is:

Dato’ Jenaton
↓
successive generations of the Jenaton family
↓
Ishak Ahmad
↓
Yusof Ishak and Aziz Ishak

Yusof Ishak served as Singapore’s Yang di-Pertuan Negara from 1959 and became the Republic’s first President in 1965.

For Singaporeans, his face is probably even more familiar for another reason.

It is on our money.

That was what made this little detour in Penang so interesting to me.

We had gone from sitting in my cousin’s home listening to a family story, to standing outside an old burial ground in the darkness, thinking about a connection stretching across generations — from Penang to Singapore.

A family still tracing its story

The Jenaton genealogy is not merely something found in an old history book. Descendants have continued tracing the family and gathering across Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.

That matters because much of this early history survives through genealogy and oral memory as well as written records. These sources deserve attention, but also care: family tradition can preserve what official histories overlook, while dates, spellings and individual links may still need checking.

So I came away with both an answer and a qualification.

Yes, the published family genealogy connects Yusof Ishak’s family to Dato’ Jenaton. No, I would not present every intermediate generation as independently settled historical fact without the underlying records in front of me.

For me, that does not make the story less interesting.

It makes it human.

Someone tells you a story.

You become curious.

You go looking for an old grave.

And suddenly a small corner of Penang is connected to a man whose portrait I have carried around in my wallet for most of my life.

Our visit to Makam Dato’ Jenaton may have lasted only a few minutes that night.

The story turned out to be much longer.

Sources & further reading

1. Syed Ahmad Fathi, “Anti-Colonial History: Pulau Pinang from the Point of View of Local Historian and Writer”, MINDEN Journal of History and Archaeology, 2024.
2. Ahmad Murad Merican, The Avatar of 1786: Decolonizing the Penang Story, Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia, 2024.
3. Abdul Aziz Ishak, Mencari Bako, 1983 — a family genealogical account discussed in later Penang scholarship.
4. National Library Board newspaper archive, “President Yusof visits his father in hospital”, The Straits Budget, 4 December 1968.