Here is a message I sent along to be posted either entirely or partially on the NGGS facebook page (you all might want to start talking about the last two sentences):

One day in 2002 while recovering from a terrible car crash that my wife and I were in (we both fully recovered), I was fooling around on the internet, bored, and just decided to google “Puentes”. Well lo and behold there was a hit on “someone” looking for information about my father, his brothers and my grandfather Julio Puentes from San Jose, CA. That day changed my life. I contacted the person who posted the question and it turned out to be my cousin Marty Puentes. I just want to acknowledge publicly that Marty is the main reason I started doing genealogy which led me to starting the http://nuestrosranchos.org group in 2003 which gathered people together researching Jalisco, Zacatecas, and Aguascalientes that eventually led to the fabulous group: Nueva Galicia Genealogical Society (http://www.nuevagalicia.org/). Thank you Marty, you have advanced our family’s history in your search for answers to our past.

Marty Puentes is the grandson of my Uncle Martin (dob 1912) brother to my father, Antonio Puentes (1914) two of 8 children of Julio Puentes (1886) and Virginia Diaz (1886). Virginia Diaz is in picture one and six of the slide show (http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/history/article71081497.html). In the first picture she is sitting next to her mother Antonia Santa Maria (1862) with my father Antonio on her lap and my uncle Martin to the far left along with various other Tio’s and Tia’s. In the pistolero picture you see my grandmother Virginia sitting with a sibling on her lap but the man holding the pistola is my Great Grandfather Francisco Diaz (1862) with his mother, my GG Grandmother, Andrea Torres (1833) to his left. Notice that Antonia Santa Maria is also holding a pistola (on Francisco’s right).

Hello NGGS you all are doing great things in advancing your own genealogical family history and sparking wide spread interest in OUR rich history via outlets like: Facebook, http://www.nuevagalicia.org/, http://www.pbs.org/weta/finding-your-roots/, http://www.guadalajaradispensas.com, and just via word of mouth from one interested person to another interested person. Thank you for all your hard work and all you have done. In the near future I’m going to be retiring from the helm of the http://nuestrosranchos.org group. So don’t be surprised if soon you are asked to do MORE if that group is to be continued. . .

Sincerely,

Joseph

Joseph Puentes
Clean@h2opodcast.com
http://h2opodcast.com/vsse.html