Ok, not fun being behind but hopefully I’ll be able to catch up and get these posts down before the year is over and my holidays start! Here is my 46th post about my 2nd great grandmother Francisca Orozco Santiago. When I first had started my research on my maternal side of the family, I had heard about her from my own grandmother but being that she passed away before my grandmother got a chance to meet her, I didn’t have too much information on her. Luckily, with census records and the Civil Registry of Puerto Rico I was able to learn some more information on her and her life in Yabucoa.
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| Yabucoa, Puerto Rico [Wikipedia] |
My 2nd great grandmother was born in the barrio and town of Calabazas, Yabucoa, Puerto Rico on the 17th of October 1885. On her birth record she was registered with the surnames “Orozco Santiago” while some of her siblings were registered with a slight variation of the surname. Seems there was a bit of confusion with the order of the surnames as well as which ones to use. Francisca’s parents were Benito Orozco and Dolores Santiago Burgos, and occasionally her father would appear as Benito Santana. My theory is that since Benito appears with only one surname, “Orozco”, then Santana is probably his father’s surname. However, records don’t show any father for Benito and we can’t know for such until we have some more proof and information about either his father or mother.
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| Yabucoa’s Flag [CRWFlags] |
Later Francisca would appear in 1909 marrying her husband Pedro Dávila Ruiz in Maunabo, Puerto Rico; his family’s town of origin. One year later in 1910, she would appear living with her own parents back in Yabucoa along with her husband. This document would later help a cousin and I prove our relationship through the Orozco line in our families. It is also interesting to note that most of the time her and her family would appear as mulato or trigueño to describe their race.
From some reason, I can’t seem to find the family in 1920 but in 1930, 1935 and 1940 the family still lives in Calabazas, Yabucoa, Puerto Rico. Pedro and Francisco would have seven children in total: Modesto, Epifania, Josefina, Juan, Dominga, Juan, and Eulalia. It was this generation that would start to move out of Yabucoa and even Puerto Rico to find a better life for their families.
Francisca would also pass away in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico in the year 1945. Unfortunately from my knowledge there aren’t any pictures of Francisca being that in that year cameras still weren’t that popular, especially in the rural areas of Puerto Rico. Being that I have pictures for some of her children I can imagine that Francisca was a mulata colored woman probably leaning more towards Taíno looks. Francisca is my maternal ancestress that carries the C1b4 native line so she comes from a long line of native woman (either Taíno, Arawak, or other).
The library of congress has a series of photos mostly taken by Jack Delano and most of them were taken around 1942 during a sugar mill strike happening in Yabucoa. It’s so interesting to see the pictures and imagine my family’s life then and potentially knowing some of these people in the picture. Here are some of the pictures from Yabucoa. My great grandmother Francisca would have been in her late 50s and the children in their 20s-30s around this time.
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| Houses in Yabucoa, PR [LOC] |
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| Family from Yabucoa, PR [LOC] |
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| Homes in Yabucoa, PR [LOC] |
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| Men from Yabucoa, PR [LOC] |
