Puerto Rico Civil Registry

A Puerto Rican Look at: Applications for Seaman’s Protection Certificates

Puerto Rican genealogy typically entails the use of two main resources when it comes to Puerto Rican-produced vital records: (1) the Puerto Rican Civil Registry, and (2) Parish records from the Catholic church. However, as mentioned in various other posts in the past – there are definitely other records out there! I have written about […]

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A Quick Visit to the Archivo General de Puerto Rico

Two weeks ago I headed to Puerto Rico for a quick long weekend visit for my grandmother’s birthday. So I decided to quickly stop by the Archivo General de Puerto Rico (AGPR). I hadn’t been here since 2019 (pre-pandemic) when I was on spring break and decided to search for my 5th great-grandmother’s last will

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Preserving Your New York Story: Tracing Your Puerto Rican Roots.

Last month, I had a great opportunity where I was able to speak about Puerto Rican genealogy (in both English and Spanish!) to the New York City area. The session was presented online and so I was able to pre-record my presentations in both languages, create the handouts, and share them with the community from

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A Puerto Rican Look at: ANOM (Archives Nationales D’Outre-Mer)

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.

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Chéverez in Toa Alta, Puerto Rico

In this post I want to focus on a rather interesting surname in my family that I have never seen out of the island: Chéverez (we will talk about its variations in a bit). This is a surname that almost exclusively belongs to Puerto Rico; similarly the surname Lamboy/Laboy does not seem to be very common

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Coartación & Slavery in Lares

While researching my Magraner family in Lares via various online databases, I came across an interesting record that allowed me to learn more about my ancestor (in this case my ancestor’s brother) and the act of coartación in regards to slavery on the island of Puerto Rico.  So in this case I will talk about Gabriel Magraner

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An Orphaned Child: Zoilo Dávila Santiago

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

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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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Hispanic Heritage Month: Pura Belpré

With a recent move (I am currently living in Spain) and getting used to the rhythm here, genealogy has taken the back burner for a few weeks. Now that I am more settled in, I am hoping that I can fall back in line with my posts (currently I am two behind – this post

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A Coincidental Find: My “De los Santos” Branch from Fajardo

Recently, another genealogist had asked me to check out a document from Puerto Rico and, if possible, provide a transcription for the text. I gladly decided to help, providing both a transcription and translation for the needed document. In helping her out, I decided to try and find some more information about the couple in

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