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.