Monday, September 29, 2014

A Family Found

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]  


 As I nervously clicked to find the appropriate page I wondered, “could I actually be this lucky?”.  And then, there it was…in front of me…at the bottom of the page, Ines and Elena’s names in the margin.

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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