Piero

The civil records, in principle, start in 1857; however, for many towns the first records start a little later. For the small towns, the starting dates are often later. Initially not all births, marriages, and deaths were recorded, so there will be gaps. You will have some people for which all the church records exist, and some not. Same with the civil records.

For example, your ancestor Ricardo Ornelas has a baptismal record, but he was born too soon for a civil birth record. He may have siblings in the civil birth records. You can search for them by searching with just the parents names. The baptismal record names parents, of course, and both the paternal and maternal grandparents.

The baptismal record will sometimes give the parents ages. Ages aren't always correct, but you can still estimate their year of birth.

I estimate Ricardo's father, Eulogio, was born about 1830, plus or minus a couple of years. From this estimate you can get an estimate for the marriage of Eulogio's parents, Cipriano Ornelas and Petra Macias, which may have been in the 1820s or before.

Family Search lists a number of baptisms for children of Eulogio and Cresencia. There is value in looking at all of the records, not just the indexes. This will tell you the community (rancho or hacienda) where the were born.

I did not see a marriage record for Eulogio and Cresencia. That doesn't mean there isn't one. It may be worthwhile looking at the matrimonial investigations. Sometimes there will be a matrimonial investigate and no marriage. At what date do you start looking. You might think 9 months before the first child, but couples sometimes had children "soon" after marriage, some were married after the first or second child was born. The baptismal records can give a clue. "Hijo legitimate" implies they were married first. The matrimonial investigation was usually done a few weeks prior to the wedding. In the absence of a marriage date I would look a couple of years prior to the first known child.

I did not see baptismal records for children of Cipriano and Petra. Perhaps they were not from San Juan de los Lagos. If an 1830 birthdate for Eulogio is a good estimate, then his parents should have been married after abt 1800. If this is a poor estimate, and he was born earlier, his parents could have been married in the 1790s, and these records have not been indexed, which means looking through the film page by page. I would start with the end of the last unindexed and work toward the beginning.

In an earlier post you have Florencio Ornelas from Chihuahua. I could not place him anywhere. Do you have evidence thT places him in the family?

Ancestry has an option to search family trees. You get to this from the first search screen, and there are some check boxes for the type of records to search. Uncheck all except family trees. Unfortunately posted family trees are notorious for not providing sources, or giving sources that cannot be verified. Use these with care.

Good luck,

George Fulton