Finding out what it means to be Boricua through a genetic & genealogical journey through my family history
In this post I want to share some resources for finding Portuguese ancestors. Over the summer while doing in research in Spain, I potentially identified a Portuguese ancestor on my tree but veryyyyy far back in time (future post to come!). While digging around in my tree in the 16th century I was able to …
A Puerto Rican Look At: Researching Your Portuguese Ancestors Read More »
On Monday, November 11, Veterans Day was celebrated in the United States. This day focuses on honoring military veterans that were/are a part of the United States Armed Forces. One of the important differences between Veterans Day and Memorial Day is that Memorial Day (observed in May) focuses on veterans who died during military service. …
Sometimes I come across documents in my research that I find interesting and so I decide to snap a photo of them to look at or analyze later. Yet, since they do not have to do with my family most of them end up in folders on my computer never to see the light of …
There has been a lot of buzz this week around AncestryDNA’s recent update with their DNA percentages. A lot of people have logged in and either been pleasantly surprised, utterly shocked, and somewhere in between. I wanted to share how my percentages have changed and my take on it. Caveat: I am no DNA expert …
Two weekends ago, I was able to attend the APG PMC (Association of Professional Genealogists Professional Management Conference) which was virtually held from the 19-21 September. This was the first time I was able to attned a conference synchronously, in the past I have watched RootsTech webinars but after the fact. I wanted to share my …
While visiting Mallorca this past year, I decided to learn more about Damián Magraner’s children from his one and only marriage. According to my research, Damián Magraner is my 3rd-great grandfather on my dad’s side of the family. It has been a long road learning about him and every chance I get I try and …
During the month of June (my last month of living abroad), I was able to visit Andalucía in southern Spain to continue researching my Dávila family that came from San Juan del Puerto. During my time there, I came across a marriage record between my 8th great-grandparents that showed them entering into a consanguineous marriage. …
Recently while working on another genealogical case, I realized that I had gone all these years without ordering a crucial record for my ancestor José Avilés – his SS-5 file. Like many novice genealogists, I probably overlooked this resource when I first started my genealogical journey and then as time went on, I forgot that …
In the 20 years I have been doing genealogy, I had yet to find an ancestor from the Canary Islands. Which I found extremely strange given that Canarian ancestors are a dime a dozen in Puerto Rico. It seems however that many of the Canarians came to the island in the initial migration periods; which …
My First Canarian Ancestor: Josefa Francisca del Rosario Read More »
I wanted to post today about the use of ‘malnoms’ in Mallorca and their benefits. Sometime last year, I posted about first learning of these names when I found an ancestor written as “als. burot”, which the archivist went on to say was not a nice nickname. He then introduced me to the practice of malnoms. …