Finding out what it means to be Boricua through a genetic & genealogical journey through my family history
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 …
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 …
Originally this post was going to be a “how-to” guide on navigating the ANOM website. But after seeing that Google Translate works directly on the website, I figured it was better to demonstrate how one could go from having an ancestor in Puerto Rico to finding out more information about them in the French Caribbean. …
A Puerto Rican Look at: ANOM (Archives Nationales D’Outre-Mer) Read More »
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 …
Continuing on the topic of surnames, I want to focus today on the surname “Rivera”, my direct paternal line stretching back into Toa Alta’s history for at least 300 years. Continuing this line further back in time has been a tough cookie to crack and so I want to focus on a potential clue that …
Today I want to focus on something I have not seen quite often in Puerto Rican genealogy (at least on my end while researching), which are adoption and or orphaned children. Interestingly enough, my own great-grandfather was orphaned by the age of 13, having lost his father at 9 years old and his mother at …
I can not believe that this is already my second to last post for 2023! The year has sped by again (… when doesn’t it?) and I soon wrap my genealogical year with a review of my goals and a genealogical look into 2024. However, to end 2023 I want to focus on one of …
Recently, in the United States Veterans’ Day, was observed on the 11th of November 2023. For most of my life, I thought I had only one recent ancestor who had served in any modern war, my maternal grandfather having served in the army in the 1960s. However, a document with what seemed like a random …
The last month has been quite exciting for me in regards to genealogy! The first exciting news is that I was fortunate to have been chosen for a genealogical scholarship via the APG (Association of Professional Genealogists) and the second exciting news is that I will publish my first genealogical piece with the SPG (Sociedad …
Many of the sources we use for research in Puerto Rico are vital records – we use birth, marriage, and death records to learn new names of our ancestors as we climb up genealogical trees. Sometimes we get lucky and find confirmation records (the Catholic sacrament) or church dispensations for marriages of consanguineous relations between …