Luis Rivera

Losing a Loved One

A little over a month ago, I received a call from my mom who told me that my great grandfather had passed away. That quickly I had lost the oldest family member from my line, my maternal great grandfather Narciso Meléndez. I was fortunate to have met my great grandfather and visit him in Puerto …

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Hints to the Past?

Things have been pretty slow on my end here! I’ve been searching through church records in different towns in Puerto Rico trying to locate more ancestors and documentation. Just two days ago I found two sets of maternal 5th great grandparents which is awesome to add to the tree. But more interestingly, the 23andme feature …

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1935 Social & Population Census of Puerto Rico

Recently (as in just yesterday), ancestry.com uploaded the 1935-1936 Census for Puerto Rico. I have been waiting for this census for a while and I’m glad it’s been released! It adds another set of records available on ancestry for Puerto Ricans to use for researching their ancestors. Here is some background information given by ancestry: This …

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Cultural Exchange: A Piece of Germany in Puerto Rico

I’m always interested and amazed by the diversity our small island of Puerto Rico has! Every time I’m doing genealogy and I come across a person from Corsica, France, Italy, Spain, Guinea, or whatever other country they were from, I just go “wow, where are my cool Puerto Rican ancestors?”- which I have found through …

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Small World, Smaller Island!

It’s always crazy when something finds you serendipitously, especially in genealogy! So far throughout my searches I’ve come across some interesting things that have made me say “WOW! What a small world!”. I’ll talk about 3 different events that have happened to me that showed me that not only is this a small world but …

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Exploring Maternal Haplogroups

In honor of International Women’s day and because I was itching to write about a certain haplogroup, I decided that this was the opportune time for me to write! So far with 23andme, I have been able to test 7 people in my family including myself and have been able to discover 4 different maternal …

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My Gustave-Lautin Family

This genealogical year has been off to a good start! The mystery of my Martinican ancestors is almost coming to a close (though there is still much to sort out!) Last week the Vieques church records I ordered to the LDS center arrived and I was pumped to search through them. I knew that my …

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The Ending to a Search?

Sometime late last month, I decided to fully explore the possibility of Juliana Balbina Lotten’s death in Ponce, Puerto Rico. I had checked before but to no avail, nothing came up. I checked for the surnames Charles, Gustavo, Pedro, Pérez, Lotin, Sotin, and pretty much every other possibility that I knew was out there. I …

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Making Ends Meet!

Last week I was pretty fortunate to be able to search through the Adjuntas church records which were microfilmed by the LDS. I knew that some ancestors in my family through my paternal side lived in Adjuntas for a while thanks to the Census records. Adjuntas, Puerto Rico- a town nestled in the Central Mountain …

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