Hello to all.

I haven't properly introduced myself to the community since I became a member a couple of months ago when I first started to build my family's tree. I guess I always prefer to get a good grasp of my ignorance on a subject before I start bombarding people with questions that could potentially be easily be answered with a simple search and/or a bit of elbow grease.

Up to a few months back, all I knew was the names of my grandparents and some of my great grandparents, but as it often happens when there's a death in the family, I suddenly got bitten by the genealogical bug and started poring through digital archives.

I ended up here at Nuestros Ranchos because my maternal grandfather who was born in Juanchorrey, Zacatecas in 1913 to Leonides Sanchez Nava and Francisca Fernandez Correa.

His paternal grandparents were Octaviano Sanchez Acevedo and Lorenza de Nava Sandoval.

Octaviano was son of Pablo Antonio Sanchez Carlos and Maria Nestora Acevedo Enriquez.Lorenza was daughter of Jose Manuel de Nava y Correa and Manuela Gregorio Sandoval Renteria.

Up to here (and way beyond on many of his lines) all good.

Problem is I have hit a wall on the side of Pablo Antonio's father: Blas Sanchez. I can't seem to find anything solid about his parents while there's plenty of information about the side of his wife Desideria Carlos, the daughter of Justo Antonio Carlos (de Godoy?) and Rita Laurena de Llanos y Valdez. I found two baptism records of two different Blas Sanchez. The race of one of them is listed as "coyote", which I doubt he was, and the other doesn't quite match the location even though is also in Zacatecas.

Does anybody have any information about Blas' parents?

Alternatively, how about any descendants of him and Desideria? And more specifically, any direct male descendants who inherited the last name Sanchez? I am particularly curious about my grandfather's paternal haplogroup. Unfortunately, my uncle, his only son, passed away last year and he had no male descendants.

I got tested recently on Ancestry, btw, so I have identified some distant cousins on my grandfather's side. Problem is, not many people build trees so it's hard to be sure exactly how we are related. Adding to the difficulty is that these tests are not yet available in Mexico, where most of my family still lives, and so I have no close relatives in my matches which would help me do some basic triangulation. That's why I uploaded my raw data file to GEDmatch and FamilyTree, but as you know, that takes a lot of labor and good luck.

My tree on Ancestry is public. I've managed to climb high on some of those Zacatecan branches (while resisting the urge to get carried away by the ancestry leaves/suggestions) and would be thrilled to collaborate on common ones. Drop me a message if you would like a link to my tree and/or compare kits on GEDmatch.

Cheers!