Finding out what it means to be Boricua through a genetic & genealogical journey through my family history
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 …
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 …
With Fathers’ Day being this weekend, I decided to recreate a post from last year where I traced a haplogroup back as far as I can go through paper trail. The post I hyperlinked in the previous sentence focused on my father’s maternal haplogroup L2a1, which took me back to the 1600-1700s in Yauco, Puerto Rico …
One of the biggest difficulties with Puerto Rican families when it comes to genealogy is the idea of consanguinity – when you share the same ancestors across a few of your branches. This is a common occurence on the island since many lines have been present in Puerto Rico for various generations and many date …
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 …
Race among the “Ortiz Rivera” siblings of Corozal Read More »
Back in 2019, I had learned rather be chance that my Rivera family had spent some time in Guaynabo. Whether to only marry or not, José de Rivera and his wife Gertrudis Román married in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico the 2nd of March 1802. Discovering their marriage record allowed me to learn the name of their …
I wanted to share this record I found while searching the Toa Alta baptism records again. In all my years of researching, I have rarely come across an entry this detailed for a slave’s baptism. Four years ago, I posted “Whispers of the Past” where certain entries for slaves in the Registry of 1872 contained …
With Mother’s day being this Sunday here in the United States, I decided to take a different and closer look at my DNA – I wanted to see how my X-Chromosome and those of my grandmother, grandfather, and great-grandfather were passed down; all exclusively inherited from my maternal side of the family. Since I am …
Recently, I was taking a look again at my “Rivera” line. This is my direct line going back to the early 1700s in Toa Alta. Besides my father and my grandfather, every male ancestor (4 in total so far) have been born in Toa Alta. Though 4 may seem insignificant, that’s a total of close …
I’ve been seeing these style of pedigrees online for a while now and decided I should give it a go! Thanks to Zalewski Family Genealogy blog I was able to use the template and create my very own pedigree. Because my family has been on the island of Puerto Rico for over 200+ years, I …