Finding out what it means to be Boricua through a genetic & genealogical journey through my family history
TW: Suicide, death. This blog entry contains an article which speaks about suicide. If you find this to be a sensitive topic, please feel free to skip this post. This week I came to learn that the Puerto Rican newspaper El Imparcial had been placed online. Last time this happened, it occurred with the newspaper El Mundo where I …
Recently, I decided to upgrade my 23andme test after having left it to the wayside for so many years (it was previously on the V2 chip). It is not that I did not care about my results, it just that for so long I focused on adding other family members to my list that I …
Last year for Veterans Day, I posted about my maternal grandfather and his time in Georgia during the Vietnam War. Though I explored a bit of my grandfather’s life during that time through some of the memorabilia, photos and records that I had inherited of his, there was much left to learn about his time …
Happy New Year! This was my first time being back home in New York City for New Year’s since I was away the last two years living abroad. We were surprised with a sudden downpour of rain and even lightning and thunder; however, we rang in the year cozily from our couch so we were …
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 …