Puerto Rican Civil Registry

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Veterans’ Day: Remembering José Avilés

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 …

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From Valeriana to Aurelia: A Name Change

It is very rare for me to see official name changes while doing Puerto Rican genealogical research. Sometimes, I will see that a person goes by their middle name in other records later in life, for example, someone born as María Dolores might just use Dolores or a Juan de la Cruz might just use …

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An Italian in Puerto Rico – Tomás Anzalota

Recently on Ancestry I was asked what I knew about Tomás Anzalota, an Italian immigrant to Puerto Rico who appears in my tree. Though Tomás is not a part of my main line of ancestors, whenever I find crossovers of people who married cousins or members of my family that are fairly interesting or a …

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Race among the “Ortiz Rivera” siblings of Corozal

I was driven to do some investigative research on my 3rd great-grandfather and his siblings after a discussion on a Facebook post about the term “raza india” appearing as a racial category on Puerto Rican records. I had discovered my 3rd great-grandfather’s race labeled as “india” on his death record some time ago, but besides …

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A Triple-Barrelled Surnamed Family? The García-Rodríguez-Bonilla

I’m not gonna lie — I have hesitated so many times in writing this post. First, I created the post itself and saved it under drafts for two years (enter the pandemic and other life events), after I began doing some research on the family and then stopped. Lastly, I created a file for them …

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Finding my 4th great-grandmother

Sometimes in genealogy, the most important step is taking none at all – take a break from your tree! Though it might seem counter-productive, spending too much time on a specific branch can cause burnout, in my opinion. There are many times you might find yourself coming across dead-ends and brick walls with what seems …

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52 Ancestors – #29 Valentin González Quiñones (1828-1907)

With this post of my 29th ancestor I’ll have concluded the posts from July!! I’m definitely very excited to get into my posts for August and then line up my next ancestors for the next months to come. So without further ado, here is my 29th post about my 3rd great grandfather Valentin González Quiñones. …

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Ancestry.com Introduces the Puerto Rican Civil Registry

Puerto Rican Civil Registry [Ancestry] Recently, Ancestry released the Puerto Rico Civil Registry within their records. Even though I have been using these records for five years now, the Ancestry version of these records allowed me to something I was previously unable to do: Search records by a inputting names, places, and dates option like …

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