Finding out what it means to be Boricua through a genetic & genealogical journey through my family history
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 …
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 …
While visiting Mallorca this past year, I decided to learn more about Damián Magraner’s children from his one and only marriage. According to my research, Damián Magraner is my 3rd-great grandfather on my dad’s side of the family. It has been a long road learning about him and every chance I get I try and …
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 »
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 …
In the 20 years I have been doing genealogy, I had yet to find an ancestor from the Canary Islands. Which I found extremely strange given that Canarian ancestors are a dime a dozen in Puerto Rico. It seems however that many of the Canarians came to the island in the initial migration periods; which …
My First Canarian Ancestor: Josefa Francisca del Rosario Read More »
This spring has been quite busy (busier than I expected) and so quickly I fell behind on two posts. Coincidentally enough, today when I begin writing this post is May 27 (Memorial Day) in the United States. Why a coincidence? Well, I had chosen this month to write a post about my 5th great-grandfather who …