Finding out what it means to be Boricua through a genetic & genealogical journey through my family history
It is very rare for me to see official name changes while doing Puerto Rican genealogical research. Sometimes, I will see that a person goes by their middle name in other records later in life, for example, someone born as María Dolores might just use Dolores or a Juan de la Cruz might just use …
Many of the sources we use for research in Puerto Rico are vital records – we use birth, marriage, and death records to learn new names of our ancestors as we climb up genealogical trees. Sometimes we get lucky and find confirmation records (the Catholic sacrament) or church dispensations for marriages of consanguineous relations between …
Some time ago last year I realized that the Familysearch collection for Puerto Rican church records included some indexed record entries for people in my family who were either still living or had recently passed away – basically from the recent generations which are harder to research. Except since they were indexed records only and …
If you grew up speaking Spanish or speak the language with elders, then you have likely heard the terms “Don” and “Doña” thrown around. Don Juan, Don Cheo (nickname for José), Doña Pancha (nickname for Francisca), or Doña María are some examples of this type of title being used. Generally, it is used nowadays to …
This week I will celebrate what will be the 12 year anniversary of my blog! Which is a bit insane to think of since it feels like just yesterday that I was writing my first post on blogspot. My first post was published on July 4, 2011 titled “What Started It All – Part I” …
With Fathers’ Day being this weekend, I decided to recreate a post from last year where I traced a haplogroup back as far as I can go through paper trail. The post I hyperlinked in the previous sentence focused on my father’s maternal haplogroup L2a1, which took me back to the 1600-1700s in Yauco, Puerto Rico …
While browsing my 23andme profiles recently with a new update*, I noticed that various of my profiles would not be receiving said update given how long ago many of my tests were taken. I decided to check out when exactly they were taken and I noticed that some were as far back as 2011! Since …
Last week on May 23rd, I was able to attend an event in Paris just two days shy before leaving France. I had been living abroad teaching English the last eight months and my last wish was to attend this event hosted by CM98 (Comité Marche du 23 Mai 1998), a genealogical group I am …
Recently on Ancestry I was asked what I knew about Tomás Anzalota, an Italian immigrant to Puerto Rico who appears in my tree. Though Tomás is not a part of my main line of ancestors, whenever I find crossovers of people who married cousins or members of my family that are fairly interesting or a …
One of the biggest difficulties with Puerto Rican families when it comes to genealogy is the idea of consanguinity – when you share the same ancestors across a few of your branches. This is a common occurence on the island since many lines have been present in Puerto Rico for various generations and many date …