http://www.nuestrosranchos.org/node/15147

The above is the link for my spreadsheets as promised on the families that I have extracted, but not linked to my research. These families include Alviso, Ledesma and Jauregui. Although these spreadsheets are not referenced, I do have dates and places noted and other information and will be happy and able to give anyone interested the number of the film that they may be found or in many cases, an actual scan of the document. Just contact me, however, I will be unavailable and offline for the month of February and will be back March 4th. The next two weeks are pretty free as we are having a blizzard and we are basically snowed in!!!! It will take Manny and I at least a day of digging to get us out and that is with a plow.

Please be advised that I use patron interchangeably with sponsor in baptisms or confirmations. The parents are listed in column "a" in bold and underlined. The children are listed underneath the parents, but not in bold. Across from the children are spouses and marriage dates if known. Underneath the spouse, in columns, b, c and d etc. are listed the children of those unions and in some cases the spouses and children of those children.

Please use the Excel "find" (those binoculars) option and put in a partial of the name you are looking for, then just hit next to scroll down through the names. It works really nice as I have tried to put the names in as the are in the documents, but sometimes the document is so hard to read I had to guess at the spelling. For example if you are looking for a Perez married to an Alviso, but "Per" in the find function as Perez may be spelled Peres or Perez. You may get other things not related, but it assures you get all the Perez's. It works if you just want to put some letters in from the middle of the name also, such as "qui" for Pioquinto. And if you are really wanting to look at all those people, you can still just scroll down the sheet.

I know this spreadsheet seems a bit obsessive, but what is really neat about it, is when I go back a generation. I link up one of these orphan families and it really expands my family tree quickly and easily. I look through my records and make sure the data is correct and then just copy and paste the people in. At first I thought oh my goodness, I must be crazy to do this, but when I started hitting pay dirt, this method really paid out.

Now this is months and months of work I am sharing and it was many late nights, so I am not infallible and there may be errors, so please forgive me. My fingers or eyes do not work so good when I am sleepy! I will correct them if the spreadsheet is found to be different from the document. On the birth date, I had to subtract the amount of days from the baptism date and so, I could be a little off. However, so could the priests as my mom-in-law celebrates her birthday on a different day than that which is on her baptismal document. I have not searched for her civil document, but would be curious to know if she has been celebrating on the wrong day for some 86 years!

Now I am still working on the De La Torre's and the Gonzales spreadsheets. I may take me a while as I have been dedicating some time to my own roots.

Good Luck and Happy Hunting

Maureen Bejar