Dear Kassandra,

The Martin del Campo does not have anything to do with the Jewish lines that I have studied. They can be traced to a certain French town through DNA which confirms the paper trail record that I have. They do have a German ancestor.

Yes, more research has been done to go further than Lazaro Martin del Campo. I have that information in my book. In support of that research is physical evidence. Last year I was at a family gathering after a funeral of a fourth cousin when the topic came up as to how I was related to everyone there. My fourth cousins mother's surname is Martin del Campo. I explained that we were fourth cousins through the Martin del Campo. I also stated that I had been a close friend of the family before I found out that we were related. They asked me to explain how I came to find out how we were related so I told them how I have spent most of my life researching the genealogy of Los Altos de Jalisco. I explained where the Martin de Campo had come from before coming to Mexico.

I was pleasantly surprised with the response, that I had confirmed what one of them had already known through a doctor who had analyzed the results of some physical tests she had taken. It seems that she had been to a doctor who stated that they were dumbfounded by her results of their testing of a physical condition as the results were similar to those found only with a connection to a certain town in France, since she was of Mexican descent. This person that received this report from the doctor is not an official member of nuestrosranchos but she told me that a friend of hers is, and that her friend helps her access the site and reads many of the posts to her. I hope she responds to this post through her friend to confirm this report.

The closest Muslim ancestor that I know of is Carlo Lomellini's mother, and it is yet to be confirmed that he is the same Carlo Lomelin of our ancestry. All of the other Muslim ancestry that I mentioned goes way back, before the 1500's. Now that you have me thinking about the French and Muslim ancestry, I recall that another ancestor of ours that is French was known to have Muslim ancestry. We descend from the sister of this great French knight who was very famous and most stories about him include that his father's side of the family had some Muslim ancestry. So we have six confirmed Muslim ancestries before the 1500's, with the seventh Muslim ancestry being the mother of Carlo Lomellini, who is the only one born after 1500. This French knight brother of our ancestor plays a big role in the family history of our de la Torre Ledesma family.

Wife and I have many Martin del Campo ancestors. Our closest blood relationship is through our Martin del Campo lines. My wife and I are fifth cousins many times over. As to your Campos line, my mother-in-law, who is also relative of yours, is also from San Miguel el Alto, and she has Campos in her family tree. I traced the Campos line and found where it had changed from Martin del Campo. So it has been confirmed by me that it is a branch of the same family,

I don't know when the book is being published because I have to put everything aside, and get back to teaching as the school year starts next week. I am changing grades, and schools, so I plan on being very busy the next few months. My daughter also has a tough year coming up as she is entering her junior year in high school and expects me to be by her side as she tackles AP Calculus. That is why i took precalculus this summer and put off finishing the book. I don't recommend taking precalculus in a condensed summer time period as there is a tremendous amount of material to be covered in too short of a time. It probably didn't help that I still continued a little genealogy research as I dug deep down into the Herrera family history when I should have only been focused on precalculus and trigonometry, but genealogy research is a tough habit to break. I will keep you up to date as to when it will be published. A couple of days ago I sent my latest research findings on the Herrera's family to our mutual friend and cousin, Mary Lou. I will soon post those results on the Herrera's here on nuestrosranchos.

Thanks,
Rick

P.S. I descend from the sister of the greatest French knight, the sister of the greatest Spanish knight, from el Cid who is the most famous knight, and a possible descent from he greatest knight that ever lived, William Marshall, through my de la Torre Ledesma line. I hope to have a section in my book on these knights describing their feats, and how they, or their sisters, left descendants in Los altos de Jalisco.

Kassandra,

You are correct as to there being a descent from Austria that is connected to southern France and northern Spain. This is the Ashkenazi line connected to what I believe is the ancestry of Toribio Hernandez Arellano. I have been studying different Jewish lines in the Iberian peninsula. The Padilla ancestry does include Sephardic ancestry just as you suspected. The de la Torre Ledesma line is related to this Sephardic ancestry.

The German line that I wrote about had to do with Jews leaving Spain and going to Germany. These Jews took their family records with them and stayed Jewish. so we had very distant cousins that we could connect to through family records that suffered through the holocaust. The records survived although many of our distant cousins did not.

I started over forty years ago so I too did much of my research "old school", and although much of my research has been advanced through technology, I am glad that I went through the Old school way of researching as it provided Much practice in looking for "threads", and following up on these clues.

Mary Lou has also helped me with my research. Just recently, she provided valuable papers for my research on Lope Ruiz de Esparza.

Hasta pronto,
Rick