Finding out what it means to be Boricua through a genetic & genealogical journey through my family history
In all honesty, my maternal grandfather’s line has been one of the hardest to trace for what ever reason. Mostly because I have no communication with him, but I was fortunate enough that my grandmother was aware of some names in his family such as his mother’s name as well as her parents which was …
Joining 23&me at the age of 18 opened my mind to A LOT, not just about genealogy, ancestry, genes and everything in between but it allowed me to take part and become a member of a community with genealogy buffs like myself. Logging on and seeing how some people have reached ancestors born in the …
I started searching for records, stories, and information at about the age of 14/15; at this time I was working for the New York Public Library and thanks to a co-worker I found out that I was able to search for documents, luckily, for free on the ancestry.com website. During those years, though young and …
My great grandparents, my grandmother and her siblings This portrait of my great grandparents, Felix Vélez Mercado and Rosalia Avilés González along with my grandmother Carmen Avilés Vélez (seated close to her father) along with her brother Antonio (older boy) and a baby sibling I don’t know the name of, was the start of …