Will the real Juan de Dios please stand up!
It is one of my biggest brick walls, and I thought I had it
all figured out. Given the limited
amount of Mexican genealogical records you can research from the US online, I thought
I had enough to make the case who exactly is my Gonzales 3rd
great grandfather.
His name is well documented; Juan de Dios Gonzales. That is the name given as the father of my 2nd
great grandfather Nestor. This name has
shown up in so many records, I have no doubt, as it is the name given
repeatedly by the family over a couple of generations.
Nestor starts showing up in records around the 1870’s in Santander Jimenez, Tamaulipas. He names his parent’s as Juan de Dios Gonzales and Petra
Botello. He gives his parents names in multiple birth
records of his children.[1] His children name their grandparents as the
same in their marriage records.[2] But…..
There is no marriage record for Nestor. The online marriage records for the years
Nestor would have gotten married are missing in FamilySearch.org. So, it appears a missed opportunity to
further strengthen a case for his lineage.
I can’t even safely assume Nestor is from Santander Jimenez (SJ) originally.
Here is what I do know;
Nestor was born around 1841;
Up until now, I have found no marriage record for Juan de
Dios and Petra
There are no other children by this couple whose birth or baptism
was recorded in SJ;
There was a Juan de Dios Gonzales of the right age to be
Nestor’s father born in SJ around 1806 and married a woman name Lucia Rodriguez
in 1831.
There was a Petra Botello in Santander Jimenez. She was married to a man named Salome
Equia. There is no record of their
marriage in SJ. They had two children.
Petra’s husband, Salome, died in 1838.
I found that a Petra Botello baptized a son
without a father named in 1841; the year all of Nestor’s records point to his
birth.[3] The child was named as Jesus de San Jose. He is listed as a H.N. (hijo natural). (The fact it wasn't Nestor does concern me but not enough to completely discount the record. )
I first thought, if I could prove the death of both Juan di Dios and Petra's spouses, then I would have a good case that they had a relationship and Nestor
was the result.
A few other things continued to draw me in this direction though. I have had my yDna tested, and it matches
with many other Gonzalez’. Also, it was family
lore, my great grandfather’s second wife was his second cousin, Paula Gonzalez,
and I could easily tie Paula’s line to Juan de Dios. So feel confident that Nestor’s father was a
Gonzales.
Given the
lack of other records, I fully accepted the Nestor was probably illegitimate.
But, I have always assumed this meant illegitimate in the
fullest sense of the word. I have since
seen two references that in old Spanish records, “hijo natural” doesn’t
actually mean a illegitimate. One reference
states it means, “Natural Child, a child born of unwed parents who could have
been legally married”.[4] There is another term for what we think of as
illegitimate; “Hijo/ja bastardo/da”.
Familysearch.org’s course on transcribing Spanish records suggests the
same thing. I would highly recommend this for help deciphering these old
Spanish language records.[5]
What I found was Juan de Dios continued to have children with Lucia until 1844. He died in 1847. [6]
If the father of this
1841 baptism were this Juan de Dios, then the baby would have been considered
illegitimate, as Juan would not have been ineligible to marry Petra.
Full disclosure, by this point, I had thoroughly researched this Gonzalez
line in Santander Jimenez. I traced it back to the 1740's in Montemorelos. I am cautiously confident I am related to this line via (a) Juan.
So, short of an actual document, I had linked Nestor to both of these people
and then decided to make my online tree private. I didn’t want anyone copying something I was
assuming.
Enter the 2nd Juan de Dios…..
The good news, he is the Uncle of the first Juan. Att least means I haven’t researched this
line for naught.
I knew of this Juan, but I never included him in the
possibilities. He is a little
older. A couple of years ago, I was
combing through SJ records page by page.
I had jumped around, but kept track of where I had been. In his early records, he is only referred to
as Juan. Just this weekend, I started
looking at a block of baptism records I had not looked through yet. First, Juan showed up in a record with his
known wife as a Godparent. He was
referred to as Juan de Dios. Then, I
found a baptism record of their own son. I knew about the record but had never looked
at it myself. Again, he was referred to
as Juan de Dios.
Hmmmm…….
I did the math. If
Juan’s wife were to have died, this new Juan would have been about 54 when
Nestor was born. Completely doable.
Now I am on the search for other evidence. I need to go back and review a few
things. Who was the Godparents of
Petra’s son born in 1841? What is the
location of his birth, if listed? Is
it a ranch this new Juan is recorded as being associated with? The ever-famous FAN acronym; Family,
Associates, Neighbors will hopefully provide me clues.
I think I will never know for sure until I find a will, or a
document stating exactly the identity of Nestor’s parents. The civil registry records online are just copies of the original book. Perhaps the original is still SJ.
Santander Jimenez is supposed to have an archive of many
records from this era. Oh, what I would
give for the opportunity to pay a visit down there and comb through the
archive.
Until then, I will start trying to make a case for the other Juan. Last night I used my “Delete
Relationship” button on my genealogy program. It took a whole researched line with it. It was a hard to do, but I know it was the right decision…..for
now.
