It as been quite some time since I last posted. I found myself with free time this weekend and decided to give the website some updates. Yes, I have San Juan transcribed church records for Puerto Rico. I thought it would a great share since reading images is not easy for everyone or you may…
An interesting title but something that people do not realize they go together. Unless researchers have dedicated many years and notice the same pattern many of us see. It is the reason I call this article San Juan & Rio Piedras church records has to do with location. As a result, those that live in…
Parroquia Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, which is the second oldest church in the Americas, constructed in 1521, it is not surprising that book numbers would not be sequential or in any real order.
While we are searching for ancestors, we never want to think the worst of them. We base our beliefs on how law are written today, but knowing in the back of our mind that they were different then. The way some of the laws were written in the 1800s, it makes you wonder who were…
One of the places that people do not realize exist in digital format is newspapers. Puerto Rico had more than just local newspapers, they also had the Gazette. The Gazette was known to have information involving government transactions. It is great that you can locate an ancestor in civil and church records, but it doesn’t…
Finding enslaved ancestors in some parts of the world is much easier than in the United States. The slaveholders of many Africans and African descents were usually counted as notches in the United States census and records. One pattern that I noticed with countries held by Spain is that that was not the case. While…
Most people do not realize that slavery still existed on the island of Puerto Rico well after the United States had freed those enslaved. In Puerto Rico, slavery ended in 1873 by the Spanish National Assembly. However, those enslaved were not exactly free, they had to work for an additional 3 years for those that…
While the US Civil War led to the freedom of many enslaved people, the same cannot be said for other regions of the Americas. Slavery was completely abolished in Haiti in 1803 and finally in 1822 in current day Dominican Republic thanks to the then Haitian President. However, Puerto Rico was still enslaving many. Many…
I have spent a lot of time pulling marriage records out of book 1 of marriages for Nuestra Señora de los Remedios. This is the cathedral in San Juan that was originally built in 1521, was destroyed by a hurricane in October 1526 by San Francisco and rebuilt in 1529. It is the 2nd oldest…
In a prior post about PARES,Spain’s online archives, I mentioned how I located Teresa Cueto in the records. However I don’t believe I explained how I knew who she was. I’ve also posted about her granddaughter, Maria Florentina Alvarez Castillo. So how did I make the connections? Very easily! You see wedding records are the…
Diego Fontanes Zamora lived on the island of Puerto Rico in the 1600’s and more than likely in the city of San Juan. While I have not been able to locate his birth record, I was able to locate his wedding record, estimated his age, and used this information to locate his parent’s marriage record. …
Juan Rodriguez de Fontanes Garcia is my 9th great grandfather. To many of you he may be your 8th great grandfather or even 10th great grandfather. It all depends which generation you connect with him. While I was able to find my Bayala 5th great grandfather arriving in Puerto Rico in 1803, he happened to…