Alicia and John,

I enjoyed reading your messages very much. They brought back those feelings
of elation when I have made a new discovery in my ongoing search for my
ancestors.

I wanted to share a search engine that I sometimes use: http://dogpile.com/
Dogpile uses several search engines to perform its searches (including
Google, Yahoo, MSN). I thought of it when I read about how John switched to
a different search engine and found the answer he had been searching for.

Alicia when I read your story about not finding the birth record for your
father-in-law I remembered having the same problem with my paternal
grandfather's baptismal record. Everyone I had talked to about where he was
born and baptized (including my father and several of my Tias) assured me my
grandfather had been baptized in Ixtlahuacan del Rio. I found his siblings
baptismal records on the microfilm, but not my grandfather's. I take prints
on direct line ancestors and write down the data on collateral lines and go
through every film slowly, so I knew I hadn't missed it. When I got through
the entire roll of film where he should've been found something clicked in
my mind and told me to order the film for Guadalajara. Since it's a big
city, there are several churches there, but my intuition told me to check a
specific parrish. With nothing more than a hunch, I went through the film
and found his baptismal record there! My father was incredulous when I told
him where I had found it, but seeing the record in print convinced him. To
this day, I don't know what made me so sure I would find my grandfather's
record on the Guadalajara film, but I was not the least bit surprised when I
found it on that film.

Maria

> Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 22:10:29 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Alicia Carrillo
> Subject: Re: [Nuestros Ranchos] A Geographical Breakthrough!
> To: general@nuestrosranchos.org
> Message-ID: <20060928051029.52834.qmail@web83012.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> John,
>
> Thank you for sharing that breakthrough!! I feel very happy for you and
> yes we have all been there. It begins with a small whisper somewhere in our
> subconcious and before we know it we start to put a voice to that small
> whisper that asks many questions and has few answers. We begin putting
> together the stories and legends we've heard from our relatives.
>
> Some of us feel it as a hunger to know where we came from and why are we
> here. In my case I was born in Mexico and was brought to the US at 2 years
> of age as an undocumented alien as some would now call us. As relatives
> would arrive my parents would say this is your tio or tia....Oooh so many
> tias and tios that I would ask why or how is it my aunt or uncle. Some were
> clearly aunts and uncles but most I could not see the connection and was
> told, "No seas tan preguntona" "Don't be so nosy" as if that would satisfy
> my curiosity.
>
> The years went by, I married a third cousin that I did not know was my
> cousin. We had our children, they married anglos and I felt a sense of loss
> and detachment from my culture. Something kept pulling me back to my
> ancestors and I answered the call. Mostly I wanted to know something about
> my father-in-law's family as my husband never knew anything about his
> paternal relations.
>
> In January of 2004 I announced to my family that I was gifting myself a
> trip to Salt Lake as a birthday gift, to begin my genealogical research in
> earnest. When In Salt Lake, I found the birth record of my father-in-law's
> brother, Julian Carrillo Jauregui. I know the earth stopped spinning for a
> fraction of a second in jubilation for this the first of many great finds.
> To date I still have not found a birth or baptism record for my
> father-in-law Antonio Carrillo Jauregui who was believed to have been born
> around 1901 in Nochistlan, Zacatecas. This has not dampened my spirit, on
> the contrary, it's what keeps me going. It's like a drug, each find compells
> you to keep digging and sends you off into new areas of research.
>
> John Robles, I wish you continued success in your research and know that
> this is just the first of many breakthroughs. Now you can do the happy dance
> as most of us have done.
>
> Alicia Avelar Olmos de Carrillo
> San Jose, Calif
>
>
>
> I had to post this and share it with you all because I am so thrilled! No
> one had been able to find any information on the Hacienda de Los Campos,
> Aguascalientes where my grandmother was born. I searched and searched under
> all configurations, and FINALLY when switching from Yahoo's engine to
> Google's, I found an oral history narrated by an elderly man from El Molino,
> municipality of Asientos, Aguascalientes. In his narrative he tells how his
> pueblo of El Molino was once part of La Hacienda De Los Campos! He said that
> the Hacienda once had huge holdings of land in a place in the northeast that
> was disputed by three states but which became part of Aguascalientes
> (Asientos). He said that in the middle of the century there was muich rain
> which eventually destroyed the hacienda (or the lands - my Spanish
> translation is so-so on this because he seems to ranmble a bit) and one of
> the vestiges that was left was the water powered mill with which the
> hacendados made wheat flour, so
> the pueblo became known as El Molino. The oterh payoff from this is that
> while looking at the names of haciendas in Asientos, I found Ojo de Agua de
> Rosales, my grandfather's birthplace! This makes Asientos my 'family home'
> so to speak. Another breakthrough...do you all feel as elated as I do when
> you make an exciting find like this??
> John