Recently, I’ve been going back into my family tree and trying to attach FamilySearch links to all of the documents that I have previously found in the past for my family through the church records of Puerto Rico. Though at first it had been sporadic, adding documents here and there whenever I remembered, this past week I dedicated myself to fixing up a mistake I caught on my tree and have seen MANY, MANY times on other trees as well. So here I’ll set straight the mystery around the couples of: Gerónimo Vélez Rodríguez & María de los Reyes Pérez Sánchez
AND Germán Vélez Rodríguez & María de la Paz Pérez Sánchez.
Background
I don’t remember exactly how I came to confuse the two branches and believe they were all one but I feel like the similarity in names and seeing other public trees led me to believe that they were both one and the same. Plus without access to the Adjuntas church records from home, I didn’t really have time to confirm or refute these lines easily. Most of the trees online list the couple with the names all as if variants of the same name and ultimately I did too.
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| Ancestry Public Trees |
How’d I get to these lines in the first place? Well, my great grandfather Félix Vélez Mercado was a descendant of Gerónimo Vélez Rodríguez via his son José María Vélez Pérez. I’ve been able to confirm these lines with the help of baptism, marriage, and death records available through the Civil Registry and Church Records of Puerto Rico.
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| Gerónimo Vélez Rodríguez, my 5th great grandfather |
As I happily updated and added new lines to my tree, I got caught up in assuming Gerónimo and Germán were the same man and that María de los Reyes and María de la Paz were the same woman. But then taking a dive into the Adjuntas church death records began to raise some doubts.
Searching for Records: María de los Reyes & María de la Paz
I had María de la Paz Pérez (originally Pérez de la Cruz) Sánchez’s death record, I knew she passed away in June 1890 in Adjuntas Puerto Rico, the daughter of Francisco Pérez and Narcisa Sánchez, the widow of Manuel Germán Vélez. Everything seems to check off correctly, the 6th great grandparents were right, the town the same, and I assumed like others that she was María de los Reyes Pérez.
But then as I searched I came across another record, except this one from 1838 listing the death of an actual María de los Reyes Pérez — so it couldn’t be that the “same woman” lived one life with two deaths. I started digging further. María de los Reyes actually had a testament done when she passed and part of that information is available on her death record (I imagine there was some small wealth in the family as “testamentos” weren’t too common amongst working class/farming families). In her death record she states that she is the daughter of Francisco Pérez and Narcisa Sánchez (check!) and the wife of Gerónimo Vélez (check!) and lists off her children, José María being one of them (check!).
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| María de los Reyes Pérez Sánchez, Año 1838, Nº 500, Folio 93vt [FamilySearch] |
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| María de los Reyes Pérez Sánchez, Año 1838, Nº 500, Folio 94 [FamilySearch] |
As I went down the line confirming all the of the children between María de los Reyes and Gerónimo, at no point do their names cross over into Germán or María de la Paz on their children’s baptism or marriage records and I even found one very promising baptism record to also help set the record straight. Germán and Gerónimo couldn’t be the same man if Germán appears as a godfather to one of Gerónimo’s children!
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| Juan Manuel Vélez Pérez, Año 1847, Nº42, Folio 11 [FamilySearch] |
Caveat: It seems that at some point after María de los Reyes’ death in 1838, Gernónimo took a second wife, Baltazara Pérez Alancastro, daughter of Bernardino Pérez Sánchez (brother of María de los Reyes). Confusing right? I have yet to attempt to find a matrimony record between them two but other records help to prove so far that these two Gerónimo men are the same.
So I was still curious, what about Gerónimo? Was there still another way to prove that he was not the same “Germán”. Could I find both of their death records?
Searching for Records: Gerónimo Vélez & Germán Vélez
Equally, like María de la Paz, I had had Gernónimo’s death record already in my possession. In his death record he mentions his wife as “Bartazara Pérez” and as the son of Diego Vélez and Juana Rodríguez. By the time he dies in March 1855, there is nothing to declare on his part so “no ortogó” or he didn’t leave a testament. This could in part be because María de los Reyes had already left to her children the wealth of the family which easily could have been inherited from her side.
So my hunt was for a death record for a Manuel Vélez married to María de la Paz, who could prove that their relationship was not of one and the same, if not of potential brothers. Lo and behold, I was able to find a death record for a Manuel Vélez Rodríguez on February 1854 a full year before Gerónimo Vélez.
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| Germán Vélez Rodríguez, Año 1854, Nº 1356, Folio 263 [FamilySearch] |
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| Germán Vélez Rodríguez, Año 1854, Nº 1356, Folio 263vt [FamilySearch] |
Highlighted above, though hard to pick out for the untrained eye, are some of the key details of Germán Vélez. It mentions his name in green “Germán Vélez”, in yellow we see his wife’s name “María de la Paz Pérez” and in blue on the next page you can find his parents’ names “Diego Vélez & Juana Rodríguez”.
Conclusions
Quite honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone has already come to this conclusion before me and found these records as well, but the reason I write this post is to hopefully clear up and air out the confusion of these two sets of siblings that married each other. All of the public trees I come across on Ancestry, like me, had the names of each of the couples intertwined to one another. And for amateur genealogists who are unaware of the errors of said trees, they’ll happily add these names together. Though they ultimately lead back to the same set of ancestors, Diego Vélez and Juana Rodriguez as well as Francisco Pérez and Narcisa Sánchez, it’s important to acknowledge which branch is yours as for example the siblings to my 4th great grandfather are not the same children from Germán and María de la Paz.
Also, I don’t mean this post to chastise anyone as I am guilty myself of quickly and excitedly adding names as we can see from this post, yet it’s definitely important to also corroborate your findings with direct paperwork from church records or civil registries and not from other trees. So hopefully this has helped others fix and untangle their Gerónimo Vélez/ Germán Vélez and María de los Reyes/ María de la Paz lines that have been intertwined together for some time now!
Stay tune for another post, solely about Francisco Pérez father of María de la Paz and María de los Reyes who has also been intertwined it seems as well!
