Finding out what it means to be Boricua through a genetic & genealogical journey through my family history
I know today is no longer Tuesday but I wanted to write this post and heck why not still post it even though it’s Wednesday! But I wanted to talk about my trip to Andalusia in the south of the Spain and the wonderful opportunity I got to visit a town in which I have …
Travel Tuesday – El Puerto de Santa María, Spain Read More »
Almost caught up, almost caught up!! Here is another post of a pretty old ancestor, this time my 12th great grandfather Alonso Maldonado. [Note: because these ancestors are so far back there is always room for error, for example: paper records were wrong due to a NPE (non-paternity event) that occurred somewhere in the family …
It feels awesome to be back writing about my ancestors! I was a bit nervous at first that I would just get lazy and never get around to it, but I’m almost at the half way mark of the 52 Ancestor Challenge. This is definitely hard to keep up with, with the rest of live …
Happy 10 Year Anniversary! Who would have thought that 10 years would have flown by this fast!? It feels like just yesterday I began talking to my relatives, asking them about my ancestors, and typing names into Ancestry.com to begin my search. I have definitely come a long way since then! Equally, this also marks the …
Post #10 already!! Today’s ancestor I want to focus on I’ve talked a little bit about but in a different aspect. I’ve talked about his origins in my post “Travel Tuesday: Oh The Place I’ll Go“. This post will discuss more about my 11th great grandfather Hernán Pérez. I would have NEVER imagined that by …
I’m really loving these geneablogger prompts and one of today’s prompts fits perfectly well with a post I wanted to write! Inspired by Dr. Seuss’ book title “Oh the Places You’ll Go”, I decided to talk about some traveling I actually want to get done! I’ll be spending the next year studying in Spain to …
My 2nd great grandfather, José Avilés Magraner, has been to me the quintessential Puerto Rican ancestor. Growing up I had always heard José Avilés was tall, white and had blue eyes. Stories were passed down to me about him that turned out to be typical myths heard in stories passed throughout the generations in Puerto …
52 Ancestors – #6 José Avilés Magraner (1891-1981) Read More »
A couple of months ago, I read this very interesting article written in the New York Times by Doreen Carvajal. In the article, she explores the idea of epigenetics, which she states: “is the notion that genes have memory and that the lives of our grandparents — what they breathed, saw and ate — can directly …
In my last post I mentioned that with the new Ancestry Composition you can interactively highlight certain populations in your chromosome by clicking on the group. I provided one with an Ashkenazi separation for myself and a Sub-Sarahan African separation for my grandfather. I want to chat a bit more about the Ashkenazi group and …
So this post was inspired by my grandfather’s results from 23andme and my conversation with him while I had him taking the test. During Spring Break, I visited my grandfather in Puerto Rico who I rarely see and built up the courage to ask him to take the DNA test. I had to semi-explain (and I …