Nestor Gonzalez, my 2nd great grandfather was from
Santander Jimenez, a small town south of Matamoros. He was born somewhere around 1841. I have yet to find any definitive record of
his birth or baptism. And believe me, I
have looked! The good news is that his
parents are named on many documents; both in the birth of his children and
subsequent marriages of same children.
But that is all. There are no
records of his parent’s marriage or where he may have been born, if not
Santander Jimenez. I have found no
records of siblings from the same parents.
My thoughts of who may be his parents belong to another blog post some day.
Nestor and his wife, Salome, had several children. Two of them were my great grandfather Ines,
and another his sister Martina, whom I wrote about in my previous blog.
Ines, at some point in his life, moved to the Matamoros area
and got married[1]. He lived on El Rancho de la Rusias where he
and his wife had several children. When
I could not find record of Nestor’s death in S. Jimenez, I decided to start
looking in Matamoros. The wedding of one
of Nestor’s other daughters in 1907 helped narrow the search. He was
listed as deceased in the record.
It didn’t take long to find the name Nestor Gonzalez in the
index for deaths in Matamoros’ civil registration for 1903. As I nervously flipped though the pages, I
wondered again if I had gotten lucky.
Nestor Gonzalez passed away in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico on 21
July 1903[2]. He died of liver cancer. The record stated that he was originally
from Jimenez and that he was a laborer.
The given age was in the correct ballpark. I even have the exact section and plot
number of his grave.
I still had questions…. Was it correct to assume this was my
Nestor Gonzalez? Why was he now in
Matamoros? Was he there because he was
ill? Was he there to be closer to his
son? Was the whole family now in
Matamoros?
I wanted to say yes to all that in my head, but I just
couldn’t be certain I had the right Nestor.
The one fact that bothered me the most; who was Porfirio de la Fuente, (a
name I would soon forget) and why was Porfirio the informant and not some other
known member of the family?
It would be months before I figured it out.
[1] Blog post “A Family Found” 29 Sept 2014 http://agonzaleswithans.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-family-found.html
[2] "México, Tamaulipas, Registro Civil,
1800-2002," images, FamilySearch
(https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1942-23456-14464-82?cc=1916237&wc=MD5V-J2S:203415001,203434101
: accessed 22 Oct 2014), Matamoros > Defunciones 1902-1907 > image 114 of
511; citing Archivo General del Registro Civil del Estado de Tamaulipas.
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