Humacao Church Records Available Online – Digitized

There is an updated post to this post found here.

Well, it looks like we are ending 2016 on a good note when it comes to genealogy for those of us researching our ancestors in the Caribbean islands. While I would have loved to learn that all the records had been digitized and released like they had advised me would occur in October of 2016 for Puerto Rico, something is always better than nothing.  It is also not an easy task of taking microfilms and converting them to digitized images that are easy to read and getting permission from the owners of the images.  A lot of the work is also done voluntarily so I fully understand from a project management perspective how enormous this project is. So please assist with the many projects underway that they currently have for indexing.

Last night I discovered that they have started to digitize Humacao, Puerto Rico records. The majority of the images are indexed (a huge plus for researchers) and may turn out to be church books for people who were separated as brown people (pardos), enslaved people (esclavos), and freed blacks (morenos libre).  Pardos means that you are mixed with multiple races such as Native American, African, and European and that based on your complexion you’ve been labeled by the priest as such.  Just note that even if you believe you’re 100% European (which I doubt based on DNA results for the islands), I recommend that you do not skip these books while researching your ancestors.

So far only one film has been digitized out of the many films available for Humacao.  That film number is 1389065.

FamilySearch has loaded this film (no separation), which means you’ll have to manually go through the film until they are able to break it down. Also, you will not find them under the Puerto Rico church images under search. There are 2,777 total images on the one film.  The items on the film are as follows and you can click on the Image Number which will lead you directly to the beginning of that item. Please note that the links will work only until FamilySearch adds them to the Puerto Rico Church search database and breaks out the film to make navigation easier.

Click on the Image Number below to access the records (3, 207, 550, 900, 966, etc…)

Item #	Years	Description	Image Number
1	1858 – 1864	Defunciones (Deaths)	3
2	1893 – 1898	Defunciones	207
3 – 4	1784 – 1898	Indice de defunciones (Index of deaths)	550 & 900
5 – 8	1793 – 1904	Indice de bautismos (Index of baptisms)	966, 1069, 1255, & 1640
9 – 11	1812 – 1821	Bautismos (Baptisms)	1898, 2023, & 2233
12	1806 – 1816	Matrimonios (Marriages – marked as baptisms in error)	2375
13	1810 – 1812	Bautismos (Baptisms)	2500
14	1821 – 1825	Bautismos (Baptisms)	2593

You can view the entire catalog for Humacao at the following link: