The Well-Behaved Side of the Family

I've been trading off families every month, working on my side of the family for a month, then Steve's side the next month. This month has been my side of the family and I headed off in a direction I had neglected for quite a while, my Dad's mother's side of the family and my Mother's father's line. Both of those lines turn out to very stable, geographically, one line staying in Chihuahua, Mexico and slowly moving north into Arizona, the other side in Nuevo Leon, Mexico and moving slowly north into Texas. I've got both sides going back to the 17th century and maybe even before.

But -- I don't know anything about the people. At this stage, they are all just names in registers, being born and baptized, getting married and having children, then dying. I also don't know much about the history of Mexico, other than the bare bones, so that's another subject I'll be looking into. What strikes me about this few weeks of research is that there are a lot of records, many of them are church records, but the civil records are also surprisingly helpful, if nowhere near complete. I might not have found this remarkable except that having done a little poking around looking for Irish ancestors, have found those records to be frustratingly scattered and often nonexistent. Also, some U.S. states are better than others when it comes to vital records. Arizona is stellar in the amount of records available and that so many of them are online and easy to find. On the other hand, Nebraska is right there with Ireland in the number of records available. Forget finding and birth and death records, not unless you want to go the old fashioned route and write to the county or even better, show up in person and just throw yourself on their mercy.

I'll confess though, it has been somewhat relaxing to just rack up names and dates for the past few weeks. The other side of the family may be harder to document, but they also have more colorful stories, what with criminal records and multiple identities and mysterious trips abroad. I'll be getting back to them soon enough, and who knows, I may yet find that this well-documented and churchy line has some scoundrels and secrets, too.

How It's Going

It's been a while since I've checked in, so I'll do a recap and see where that leads. I've fallen into a routine of working on my side of the family for a month, then on Steve's for a month. Each tree is so large that there is plenty of variety even within each family. February is my family's month, and I've been looking at my father's mother's ancestors this week -- she and most of her children were born in Arizona (my father was born in California and the family eventually settled in California), and her mother was born in Mexico as were the next several generations. I've found them mostly around Chihuahua, in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso. They are there pretty exclusively right back to the 1700s, at which point the record fades away, but in some cases extends back to Spain, and there's at least one ancestor from Portugal. 

Unfortunately, I have been unable to flesh out any of the stories, for insyance with newspaper articles, so at the moment it's a collection of dates and facts without much story. I'll have to work on that.

In a way though, it's kind of a way to take a break from some of the family branches that are crammed full of stories. I have to not spend too much time on Steve's grandfather's family since they seem to have been an unhappy bunch, lots of alcohol and violence and early deaths. Interesting, but tragic. His mother's family is less tragic, in fact they have a few stories that I almost can't believe are true, such as an aunt who appeared on Broadway at age 16 and was destined for a Hollywood career, but then disappeared. And his mother apparently got engaged to a soldier as World War II began -- but he was only a pen pal, and they had never met. Don't know what happened there, but she ended up going into the Air Force after the war and then marrying Steve's father, so that worked out okay. Wonder how the proxy engagement was broken...

But that's not the family I'm working on this month, so back to the colonists from Spain. I'm afraid there will be unpleasantness in the history -- the Spanish settlers aren't known for having been peaceful colonizers.