In Puerto Rican genealogy the year 1885 can be a fairly crucial year. This is because before this date, vital events such as birth, marriage, and death were recorded by the churches… and with that came a lot of variation! For example, some church records are available online while others were not digitized and remain inaccessible to this day (yes…in 2025!!). Other churches say they do not have any record, for example, of deaths occurring (looking at you Maunabo!). So for many Puerto Rican genealogists, this year can almost act like a brick wall when it comes to learning more about our families – especially if they fall outside the range of towns whose records have been digitized and made public by FamilySearch. Therefore, when a new record set becomes available, it is a potential goldmine of information if you can find your family. I got quite lucky with the Lares Municipal Census of 1878 that was recently uploaded to FamilySearch. Though I was able to find various family members I want to focus on a specific one – my 4th great-grandfather Juan Francisco González and what I was able to learn about him.
Background Information
Before finding the census, here is some information I knew about my 4th great-grandfather.
4th great-grandfather: Juan Francisco González Rivera
Parents: Martín González and Luciana Rivera
Birth: about 1830s?, likely in Yauco, Puerto Rico
Married: Ceferina Padilla Santana, likely before1862-1864 when their first children were born.
Children: Isabel, Juana Ramona, Isidoro, Rosalía, Juan Lorenzo, Ramón, and María Antonio González Padilla
My 4th great-grandmother, Ceferina (sometimes spelled Severina) Padilla Santana, was born in Yauco, Puerto Rico and so the belief was that Juan Francisco was also from this town as well. Similarly, their daughter Juana Ramona was born in Yauco and so it was very probable that Juan himself was from there… or so I thought!
Exploring the Lares census of 1878 opened my eyes to new information about him.
Lares census - 1878
For starters, I had no idea that this branch of my family lived in Lares this early on. I knew that María Antonia González Padilla lived in Lares in 1910 when the U.S. census was taken, but I had no real idea that her family was present in Lares this early on.
The family appeared as follows:
- Juan Francisco González Rivera, white, 59 years old, married, did not know how to read or write, Catholic, native of Aguadilla, living in Lares as of six years, married a second time
- Severina Padilla Santana, parda (mixed race), 38 years old, married, wife, did not know how to read or write, Catholic, native of Yauco, living in Lares as of six years.
- Isabel González Padilla, parda, 16 years old, single, daughter, native of Ayuntas [Adjuntas?]
- Isidoro González Padilla, pardo, 12 years old, single, son, native of Yauco
- Rosa González Padilla, parda, 8 years old, daughter, native of Yauco
- Ramón, pardo, 6 years old, son, native of Yauco
New Information
I was able to learn three new things from the 1878 census about Juan Francisco:
1. That he was from Aguadilla and not from Yauco
2. That he was born about 1819 making him older than Severina
3. That he was married to someone else before marrying Severina
Similarly, the census shows that Isabel was born in Ayuntas [sic], which I imagine should be Adjuntas. This might help explain why I have not been able to find a marriage record for Juan Francisco and Severina in Yauco because it is possible that they did not marry there.
Looking in the Adjuntas baptismal books I was able to find María Isabel’s baptism in 1859. As you can see below, the image is fairly dark and so I had to play a bit with the contrast to see it better. María Isabel was baptized around September 1859, the information regarding her parents and her grandparents matches other baptismal records for her siblings confirming that the right child was found.
Just this little bit of information in the 1878 Census opens up many doors for me in research. Now I know that Juan Francisco González Rivera was from Aguadilla, they spent some time in Adjuntas before returning to Severina’s native Yauco where more children were born, before ultimately arriving in Lares. Without this census record much of this information would have likely been lost to me. Similarly, even though María Isabel’s baptism record is “indexed” online, there were enough mistakes on it that I was unable to find it through an index search – which I understand seeing the quality of it. But this hammers down why it is important to always take a look yourself in the books because there is always the chance of human error.
I am excited to explore more of these new records online and to see if I can find anything else about this line now that know they were from Aguadilla!