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 …
With Halloween right around the corner I figured I would post something loosely related to the theme, so I decided to focus on superstitions. Superstitions are beliefs that can vary widely from culture to culture and what is bad luck in one culture can mean good luck in another. For example, the number 13 is …
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 »
This spring has been quite busy (busier than I expected) and so quickly I fell behind on two posts. Coincidentally enough, today when I begin writing this post is May 27 (Memorial Day) in the United States. Why a coincidence? Well, I had chosen this month to write a post about my 5th great-grandfather who …
In the past, I have written two posts about my family pedigree from different angles. The first was a look at colorized pedigree where I marked in various colors the towns of origins of my ancestors, clustering them by town and generation. My second post was about my family tree but from the perspective of …
Last month I had the pleasure of visiting Báguena, Spain for a day after spending some time in Zaragoza. Báguena, however, is a very small town and one that even Spaniards are bound to not know. How did I end up here and why did I visit this quaint town? Well, of course genealogy brought …