Finding out what it means to be Boricua through a genetic & genealogical journey through my family history
From November 1-2, a popular holiday from Mexico also known in the USA due to its closeness in date to Halloween was celebrated- Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). And even though it’s been a week since the holiday, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we remember our ancestors and the importance …
This week something awesome happened- Ancestry.com updated their DNA part of the website and added more ethnicity groups! More importantly, they now break down Africa into various sections which is amazing since this is the first time (to my knowledge) that a company has broken down the Autosomal DNA by African countries. Part of the …
A Puerto Rican look at: AncestryDNA 2.0 (African Portion) Read More »
Walking in Old San Juan This past summer, I knew that there was one new place in San Juan that I wanted to visit and that was the Archivo Diocesano. I had read a bunch about the place and wanted to visit to see if I could find anything related to my family. The Archivo …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …