GETTING STARTED
This advice is mainly for Puerto Ricans, especially to those living on the mainland (the United States) wanting to look up their family history. Of course, most of this advice also applies to anyone starting out investigating their family history and conducting ancestry searches. Here are some tips, steps and general advice! For Puerto Ricans living in the United States, it might seem difficult or daunting trying to research and find your family that was born on the island when you’re not actually in Puerto Rico. However, there are ways to research from the United States and get what you need, I’ve been able to do it myself so I’m positive that you can too!!
10 Tips to Begin your genealogical Journey
1. Gather information
Begin by asking your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and pretty much anyone older than you for information. Of course the oldest person with a good memory might be a good start but sometimes others have already asked your same questions and so they hold the answers. Write down EVERYTHING you are told, stress on everything!! From names, nicknames, dates, towns, professions, all years (births, baptisms, marriages, divorce), brothers/sisters, parents, step-parents, godparents, cousins, phenotype (hair color, eye color, skin color), etc. All of these things can be keys to helping you unlock family branches on your tree. Sometimes an ancestor might be written down by their nickname and so having the names of the siblings allows you to confirm and/or use those names as well for searching. [It happened to me, my great grandfather in the census was written down by his nickname and thankfully by knowing his brothers’ and sisters’ names I was able to find him.] Also looking in family bibles and even on the back of pictures for hints about your ancestors is helpful. Town names can become important especially when people in your family start moving, a lot of families may have come from more rural parts of Puerto Rico and later moved into the urbanized parts to seek better jobs and opportunities. Not all families come from San Juan you know! 🙂
***Side note: In Puerto Rico, many if not everyone goes by both paternal and maternal surnames, so make sure to jot down both of these names. It’ll be very helpful when you need to look through tons and tons of people with common names like Rivera, Torres, Sánchez, González, etc. or María, José, Juan, etc. EX: Alejandro Rivera González (my great grandfather- received Rivera from his father and González from mother). Also, sometimes ancestors might have switched around surnames, EX: mother’s first, father’s last, or take on different surnames. The Census records are documents filled by what the people going around have been told, so not all the information is 100% accurate just because it’s on an ‘official’ document.***
2. conduct some research
After you have gathered all the information you can or enough to begin research, start by looking for ancestors on census records. The 1910, 1920, 1930, 1935, and 1940 will be the only current available records for Puerto Rican families seeing as how Puerto Rico only became a commonwealth only after 1898. Start by typing in names and towns (if you are unaware of where they were from, leave that part empty) and begin your search. Check to see if your public library offers free service to Ancestry or HeritageQuest. For ancestry use, you will have to use the library’s computers for searching and with HeritageQuest you can use it at home only if your library has a compatible library card to use. In some format, save these records for future reference!
3. keep faith!
Keep faith and keep searching!! You don’t know how many times I’ve searched and searched to find nothing and later to come back and to find exactly what I was looking for! [Perfect example: I’ve been searching and searching for my 2nd great-grandmother in the 1920 Census records and I wasn’t able to find her. I typed in just María, expecting either her surname as “Charles” or “Gustavo” and expecting to find her in Caguas, Puerto Rico. I found her as María “Chales”, the ‘r’ missing in her surname.]
That’s another thing, expect “mistakes”. Sometimes people spelled the names based on sounds as spelling was less formal back in the days. So “Orozco” can also appear as “Orosco”, “Álvarez “as “Álbarez” or “Rivera” as “Ribera”. Spanish tends to allow that possibility. 🙂
4. track your ancestors
Keep tabs on your ancestors, I have a family tree on Ancestry with attached pictures and documents (you can make it either public or private, personally mine is private). I prefer Ancestry because if there is a hint for that ancestor you can see what type of hint it is and see whether is it accurate or not; sometimes it helps to figure out a rough estimate for when ancestors lived/died. Keep some sort of tree with all the branches you have and make it as accurate as possible. If you are unsure of a surname, place of origin, etc. make sure to jot that down as well.
For example: Soler(?), the question mark will tell you you are unsure of the name; Rivera/Rodríguez, the (/) tells you you don’t know which of the two it might be, but you know it’s one of them; Mojica (Múxica), providing an alternate spelling lets you know that an ancestor might have spelled their name differently or appear with one or the other or both depending on time frames of the documents.
[These are my methods for keeping tabs on information, it might work for some but not for others, so if you need to create your own system by all means!]
5. wwi/WWII Registration cards
6. Puerto rican civil registry
After you’ve searched all the Census Records and Registration Cards, you will get to a point where you won’t be able to find all your ancestors on these documents. Now that you’re a seasoned genealogist, it’s time to move on to bigger and badder documents (I say bigger and badder because they’re really cool and sometimes difficult to use, haha!) Try your luck at FamilySearch. Go to the “Caribbean, Central and South America” section, and then click on “Puerto Rico”. Various options will come out, but there are two important ones: The Registro Civil (Civil Registry) and Church Records. I personally would say go for the Civil Registry first seeing as how they have birth, marriage, and death all there starting in 1885. The church records are complimentary to the Registry records and can be helpful as well. Also, before 1885 people were registered in the church records, so eventually you will need to use them but start in the Civil Registry that covers the mid-early 1900s back to its founding in 1885. FamilySearch also has a Foreign Registry but not all foreign ancestors will appear there, these are for immigrants coming to the island via the Cédula de Gracias, and even then not everyone appears registered in FamilySearch – but it’s worth taking a look at if you have a foreign ancestor that arrived around 1815-16 from another country.
Two important things:
1) You will need to have a basic level of reading Spanish for this, seeing as how all the documents are in Spanish. If you can not read Spanish grab a loving friend to help you figure out what it means. (All the documents follow a similar layout so once you have that figured out the names and dates will be the most important things)
2) Some records do not have indexes to them. This means you will have to search records one by one. This is a hassle only if you see it as one, remember, you are searching old documents so be prepared to put your mind frame in those years when the documents were made that there was no “Google” search bar. Every document you find from then on will be rewarding to you.
7. Saving/Cataloging information
Save these documents in an appropriate manner that will allow you to find them easily when you go back for them. For example: keep a folder titled ‘Ancestry’ and within that one, one labeled “Maternal Files” and the other “Paternal Files” (This way you won’t have to search through ALL the records when you want to go back to one.) Equally you can organize by towns but this might get tricky if your family constantly moved across towns.
Save files for example like this: Pedro Sánchez Torres- Matrimonio- Imagen 178.jpeg
This allows you to easily see:
a) the name of the ancestor,
b) what sort of document it is,
c) on what image it is on. You can also save the Folio number which is the actual sheet number of the book, I don’t tend to since it’s on the actual document itself.
Also, by saving it as .jpeg it allows it to open it as an actual picture you can zoom in on and everything. I tend to attach these to my ancestors on Ancestry for easier access later on.
8. Social security information
Some ancestors, the more recent ones at least, who have worked and applied for them might have SSN Social Security Numbers. Sometimes if you search websites such as: Social Security Death Index or Tributes you’ll be able to find some of your more recent ancestors. If you can’t find them on documents and you have their SSN, try using this website to order their Social Security Application; the person of course will have to be deceased. Going prices at the time were $27 to order if you have the SSN and $29 if you did not. I have done it twice and have gotten back results, it takes about average 3-4 weeks to receive the copy. It helped me crack a brick wall for an ancestor I wasn’t sure about. (Read my post about my great-grandfather Manuel Correa Rivera to see what I mean.)
9. church records
At this point, a lot of the church records for Puerto Rico have been added online under the “church records” link under ‘Puerto Rico’. To check to see if your town has church records online, check FamilySearch Catalog and type in the name of the town (currently the diócesis of Mayagüez and Arecibo are not available on FamilySearch since they were not microfilmed by the LDS church). There, you will see what is available and what specific books/records are available for viewing. This is a major update from what in years past meant ordering a microfiche to a nearby FamilySearch center and then going in person to search. Similar to point 6, not all records are indexed (many in fact aren’t), which means this will take a lot of legwork. Pay attention to race (blanco, pardo, negro/moreno) which might dictate what book your ancestor was baptized or married in if the church divided its books by race.
10. Enjoy what you do!
Last but not definitely not least, have fun with it! Remember you have to do this for the love of it, it will become hard at times and you will want to forget ever starting your tree, but without a challenge, how will you be rewarded? If you are unsure try, try again and even ask someone for help or reassurance if you need it. There are many people willing to lend a hand and there are even Facebook groups as well (Genealogía de Puerto Rico is a great Facebook group resource!). Be open to new information and maybe even shocking information if you find something no one has talked about in your family. (Hey, it can happen, for example an adoption or NPE- Non-Paternity Event). It happened to my family, you can read about it here and here!
Continue to learn the story of your ancestors, their past and never lose faith!
***Final Side Note
Do not believe everything you read online. Unless it has a proper source cited which you can trace and see for yourself, don’t be too sure it is the right information. Sometimes people have public trees up but which contain wrong information (or at least to you) and a simple slip up can lead you down branches that do not really belong on your tree [It happened with one of my ancestors while searching in the Census records, I had the wrong woman on my tree with the exact same name, town, and time frame].
Also, make sure to double check everything you have and create your own citing system. That way if you ever have to prove you have the right information, you will have it all ready and presentable!
So those are my 10 research tips for how to start up a family tree! Good luck and God speed!