After finding Elena Longoria’s baptism records, I set out to
prove whether she was in fact the mother of my grandfather. For this I needed to find a marriage record
for her and my great grandfather Ines Gonzalez.
I began by searching in Familysearch.org’s civil
registration records. Based on the fact
that my grandfather was born around 1901 and wasn’t the oldest child, I started
looking in 1900 records in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico and went back from
there. At first it is a crapshoot trying
to figure out where records stop and start, but after a while you get the hang
of it. I kept thinking I wish someone
had an index of these records. I
quickly found at the beginning of every year, there is usually an index
of the marriages that took place that year.
If viewing the actual record, the index would be at the end of each year
of records. But, the lovely people that
were tasked with filming all these records flipped to the back of the book and
filmed the index, then returned to the front of the book and continued filming….most of the time.
I didn’t have to go far when I got a very encouraging
hit. In the index for 1900 was the
name Ines Gonzalez.[1]
On this page, within the record, Ines was named as well as his parents
and grandparents. [2] Whoa! Two more generations. Oh please, let him
have married the Elena Longoria from the baptism record.
As I “flipped to the next page” there were Elena’s parents
and grandparents names. And they were
the same as listed in the baptism certificate!
I had, without a doubt in my mind, completed my grandfather’s family
unit with parents and grandparents (sans, later to be found, all his brothers and sisters). A
family unit I never knew; had never heard of before. I now knew, who and where I come from.
[1] "México, Tamaulipas, Registro Civil,
1800-2002," images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1942-23439-14782-34?cc=1916237&wc=MD55-KTL:203415001,203613901:
accessed 30 Sep 2014), Matamoros > Matrimonios 1899-1904 > image 111 of
527; citing Archivo General del Registro Civil del Estado de Tamaulipas.
[2] "México, Tamaulipas, Registro Civil,
1800-2002," images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1942-23439-14782-34?cc=1916237&wc=MD55-KTL:203415001,203613901:
accessed 30 Sep 2014), Matamoros > Matrimonios 1899-1904 > image 111 of
527; citing Archivo General del Registro Civil del Estado de Tamaulipas.
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