Online Status
Hello everyone,
My name is Arthur and I am looking forward to being part of the online community. I was born in California, but I now live in Texas, where most of my family first lived when coming from Mexico. My mother's family came from Parral, Chihuahua and my father's family (Great grandfather and most of his children) came from Fresnillo, ZAC via the Durango, Durango area. All of them came up to the US between 1915-1930, during and immediately after the Revolution. My mother and father were both US born.
I have always been interested in my family history, but had limited contact with extended family, as my maternal grandparents died when my mother was a child and my paternal grandfather died when I was 6 years old. My remaining grandmother, lived with my uncle in Colorado and I had limited contact with her. As for extended cousins, for the most part, I have had no contact with them until more recently, when I came across a 2nd cousin who has also been doing family research. I picked up my research about a year ago and I have more or less been able to track all four of my grandparent lines to or through Fresnillo, ZAC/Durango or Parral, Chihuahua.
Regarding my research, I have started to hit a wall with the online resources I am currently using. Primarily I use is the myfamilysearch (LDS) website and I have become pretty good at understanding how the data is indexed and commonly perform search across the film or index number rather than a name/description search functions.
Where I have challenges now is understanding where the 'gaps' exist in the LDS information database. I have been told by my stepmother (who retired to the Jerez, ZAC area with my father), that there were entire sections of govt and church records destroyed during the Revolution. I know from looking at the Parral, Chi online records, there are 'chunks' of birth/baptism and wedding information missing from certain periods in the late 1800s.
Has anyone else figured out a workaround for this missing/destroyed information? I am thinking I need just one lucky break to get rolling again.
Also, how does one determine when a family ancestor came from Spain/France to Mexico? My initial online searches show there is limited online resource for some Euro countries. I have one grandparent line which I think has "jumped" to Europe because the track just stops...unless the records have been destroyed, which is another possibility.
If anyone is interested, you can see my initial submission background info here:
http://www.nuestrosranchos.org/ajmedrano
The primary names I am looking for are Martiniano Medrano and Juliana Valdez in about the 1850-1860 timeframe for Fresnillo, Zac. Both may have had connections to the Hacienda Santa Cruz or the Hacienda Trujillo. If anyone has information about those haciendas, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thank you!!!!!
Fresnillo records
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Welcome to the wonderful and frustrating world of genealogy. I'm researching in Jerez where there are a lot of people from Fresnillo but not the names you mentioned in my research. There are holes and gaps in the records for Jerez and Tepetongo too. I do believe the revolution had a lot to do with missing records and we just have to work around them. Sometimes we get lucky and find a marriage dispensation that takes the line further back. As for me I take everyone from that surname in that town and put it in a file until I can hopefully connect them in some way. I do have lines that go nowhere and lines that show them coming from Spain as late as mid 1700's in Jerez.
good luck in your search,
Linda Castanon-Long
Fresnillo record.
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film # 439648 Fresnillo baptism
page 535 Familysearch online
gives the grandparents for Simona Medrano
Do you have this film?
Linda Castanon-Long
in Olympia, Wa
Fresnillo
this record takes it back another generation
. baptism 13 Sept 1869 in capilla de hacienda de Santa Cruz, Fresnillo, Zac
Jacinta
parents: Crisanto Medrano and Faustina Ruiz
pat grn:Julio Medrano and Apolinar Zaldivar
mat grn:Julian Ruiz and Juana Avina
source: 439821 Fresnillo baptism
page 228 Familysearch online
.
Fresnillo
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I should have looked at your genealogy sheet before sharing what I did since you already have that information..
I'm wondering if they came from some place other than Zacatecas? I have a relative searching for Apolonio Nicolas Avina and Valentina Nunez who's daughter Antonia Avina said she was from Fresnillo and married to Doroteo Montanez with their children being born in Fresnillo from 1865 to 1875. The rest of their 7 children were born in Jerez and one says he was born in Valparaiso.
Linda
Fresnillo
Longsjourney.....yes, I do have this information about Jacinta..she was the sister of my great grandfather, Martiniano. This connection was actually captured by my cousin doing research in the 1990s. I have all of my cousin's Family Group report printouts, which were done with the LDS software program. I have started transferring (via manual data entry) my cousin's information to the software I am using (GRAMPS) and had not entered Jacinta's information into it yet, so that is why it was not on my tree report.
As for Julian Ruiz and Juana Avina (I have it documented as AVINO), it appears my cousin focused on them was was able document limited information on the RUIZ/AVINO family. She does not have any descendant information for Juana AVINO. However, she did note that in addition to Faustina Ruiz (wife of Cristiano Medrano) being their child, they also had a son, Rafael Ruiz. (Rafael married Francisca Pino and they had a child named Severa Ruiz in Fresnillo on 1/31/1878 with a baptism of 02/08/1878.) While I have not yet looked for Rafael Ruiz's baptismal document, it may list grandparent information for AVINO/AVINA if found....this might connect with the Avinas you are speaking about.
Fresnillo records
Linda, thank you for the suggestion about putting the names in a file...kinda like a puzzle...seeing where they do/don't fit. I will work something like that.
For me, I figured out pretty fast that by the 4th generation back from me, the family tree shoots in all kinds of directions. While I am trying to work each branch of ancestors, it can be pretty involved working them. For the most part, I try to put most of my energy into my paternal (Medrano) and my mother's maiden surname (Sanchez) and keep following the males 'down the rabbit hole'. So far, these two lines have given me an adventure with the Medrano line leading me to the city of Durango and then to Fresnillo. My mother's side leads me to San Jose, Hidalgo de Parral, Chihuahua and then also to the city of Durango. While my parents met in El Paso, Tx in the late 1940s, their respective paternal bloodlines had 'crossed paths' in Durango in the mid-late 1800s. To me, this is very intersting.
For the Jerez municipal records, I was reading a narrative at some point stating 'historical records' of the municipality were destroy during an skirmish early in the Revolution. It does not state what record types were destroyed. If you look at the Wikipedia entry for JEREZ, it has this information plus the reference, which is a Zacatecas Government Reference guide to the state's history or something along those lines, so it seems legit.
In reading the letters my father's cousin sent him, regarding her family reseach in the 1990s, she noted she had trouble accessing Durango documents via the LDS research library because of a Durango '100 year rule' which did not allow the LDS researchers to microfilm or document baptism/marriage documents which were less than 100 years old. I have no way to verify or confirm this, but she did ask my father (who lived/lives in Jerez) to drive out to Durango to personally do some research and request access as a family decendant.