Tracing a Line to Spain – The Cantos Dávila Family

Recently, I’ve been out of the “blog game”. And to be honest, with school starting up again I always find it hard to balance personal time and work time, though I try to continue searching here and there when I can. I also want to continue cataloguing towns as I was doing this summer and I’m hoping to crank out some more when I can soon.

And so for my first post back (and a rather long one!), I want to talk about a line I’ve recently starting digging into again, and this is my maternal Dávila line. In the past I have blogged about this family various times, recently I talked about this family in the post “A Family’s Move Through Paper Trail” where I traced my 5th great grandparents from Maunabo back to the town of Coamo. 4 years ago (wow, time flies!) I posted about my 5th great grandfather Bartolomé Dávila Cantos (one of the ancestors I traced back to Coamo).

Back when I posted about Bartolomé I knew that he lived in Maunabo, probably died there as well and that was it. Fastforward 4 years later I found him in records, along with his wife Cándida Rodríguez in Coamo where their first four children were born. Because the surname Dávila was tied to “Cantos” I figured it would be easy to distinguish them from other Dávila families – though mine go back and forth dropping and adding the “Cantos” bit. So I started digging around Coamo to see what I could fine.

A Family Presence in Coamo

One of the most important things when researching your family is paying attention to who else the family was surrounded by in records. For example, who declared a birth or death? And especially important, who were the child’s godparents? While researching the children of Bartolomé Dávila and Cándida Rodríguez, I took note of who the godparents were. In chronological order, these where the godparents that were either “Dávila” or “Cantos”. These are godparents that both appeared in Coamo and Maunabo:

1808- Bernardino Ramos + Marcelina Cantos Dávila (Coamo)
1809- Hilario José + Josefa Gracia Cantos (Coamo)
1814- José Hilario Cantos + Inés García (Maunabo)
1820- Félix Rodríguez + Catalina Dávila (Maunabo)

Notice the usage of Cantos, Dávila, and Cantos Dávila – as you can see there was a lot of back and forth with the surname, which wasn’t too uncommon for double-barreled surnames of the time. From this you can see that there were other Cantos Dávila living in Coamo besides Bartolomé.

Equally, Marcelina was married in 1806 to Bernardino (Aponte de) Ramos, and it states her parents were José Cantos Dávila and Josefa García Rodríguez Bonilla, which is interesting to see all of these surnames together. When Marcelina marries, none of the parents are listed as deceased.

Marriage Record, 1806 [FamilySearch]

Equally, Hilario married in Maunabo in 1815 to a María del Rosario Ortiz. Again, the parents are listed as José and María Josefa García. Also underlined in red, notice that the parents are listed as “white” in this record.

Marriage Record, 1815 [FamilySearch]

Finally, there was one more record to help add to this clan. A marriage record between José Gabriel Sánchez and Catalina Cantos in 1796 in Coamo. This record is very hard to read so I won’t post it above but playing around with the image you can make out “José Cantos” and “Josefa García” as the parents as well.

So now we have new names to search – José Cantos Dávila and María Josefa García Rodríguez Bonilla.

Proving Relations – My 6th Great-Grandparents?

Finding Marcelina’s and Hilario’s marriage record opened up a new possibility, that these two new names of José and María Josefa could be my 6th great-grandparents. Seeing as how Marcelina and Hilario were godparents to Bartolomé’s children, it’s easy to see how these two were uncle and aunt to their brother’s children and were chosen as godparents for them.

I wanted to find out more about them. Thanks to some members of the genealogical community, a good number of the early records in Coamo have been indexed into charts which are easily searchable. By searching the surnames “Cantos” and “Dávila” I wanted to see what I could find. I was able to pick them out a few times through various years as godparents – the years being 1775, 1777, 1796, and 1799. There was a year they appeared as godparents in Cayey in 1787 but they mentioned they were residents of Coamo. We can see that José Cantos Dávila and María Josefa García were pretty well established into the life of Coamo having been there since the mid 1770s and probably still living there when their daughter Marcelina married in 1806.

Baptism Record, 1777 [FamilySearch]

Baptism Record, 1796 [FamilySearch]

As you can see above, they were serving as godparents for a span of 20 years. In the 1770s they were probably in their late 30- early 40s and in the 1790s around their late 50-early 60s. Notice in red in the second record that they are godparents for the son of a Esteban Rodríguez García Bonilla, I am imagining he is the brother of Josefa.

My last piece of evidence to seal the deal is a baptism record that I am pretty sure is for my 4th great grandfather. The year this child is born, in Coamo, and then to José Cantos Dávila and Josefa García in my mind helps to prove that Bartolomé was the son of José and Josefa, brother of Marcelina, Hilario, and Catalina which again helps to explain why he would choose them as godparents. The only caveat here is that the son is registered as Bartolo instead of Bartolomé, however in my paternal side of the family in the early 1800s I had a similar situation with an ancestor who was both Bartolomé and Bartolo. Here is the record!

Baptism Record, 1776 [FamilySearch]

The only extra piece I would need to help to back up this claim is finding the marriage record between Bartolomé Dávila and Cándida Rodríguez, I have searched in Coamo in the late 1790s and early 1800s around the time frame their first child was born in Coamo, but so far no luck!

This last piece of this puzzle is the most interesting, in Hilario’s baptism record in 1785 it mentions: “Joseph Cantos Dávila natural de los reynos de españa en Sn Juan de Puerto…” [sic]. I was pleasantly surprised to see this! We now had a town of origin for José Cantos Dávila, and it was in Spain! (Checking off New Years Resolution to find a direct Spanish ancestor!)

Baptism Record, 1785 [FamilySearch]

San Juan del Puerto, España

Of course at first after finding this I thought, “oh darn! This record must be wrong, I think the person is trying to say the city of San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico!” But a quick Google searched proved me wrong!

San Juan del Puerto, Spain [Google]

There actually is a town named San Juan del Puerto and it’s in southern Spain! Looking at the map, it seems to be a pretty small town near Huelva and Palos de la Frontera, other towns in southern Spain my ancestry is said to go back to. As you can see below, it’s a fairly small town!

San Juan del Puerto [Google Maps]

In 2016, the population was just near 9,000 people – funny enough that this town is named after Saint John the Baptist the same way Puerto Rico was in the beginning of its history. Reading its Wikipedia page in Spanish it mentions that the town’s founding dates back to 1468.

Conclusions

I wonder when José would have made his journey to the new world and under what circumstances. Also, something interesting to note is José’s last name “Dávila”. Most sources say that it is a combined surname for “de Ávila” meaning from the town of Ávila. Which makes me wonder if ultimately their family was from there. In my linguistics class we learned that some Spaniards moved to the south before venturing off to the New World, ultimately acquiring a southern Spanish accent that was brought to the New World. Which makes me wonder if José Cantos Dávila would be one of those men.

For now, with all of the research and different information collected, I am rooting for the fact that José Cantos Dávila and Josefa García are my 6th great-grandparents. I’ve mulled it over the past few weeks and writing it all out helps to clarify for me the strength between the documents. Ultimately the icing on the cake would be finding the marriage record of Bartolomé to see if his parents listed there are José Cantos Dávila and Josefa García. Onwards to searching more!