My Research on the Ancestry of Narciso Rodríguez for PBS' Finding Your Roots: plus a tip for beginners

I was thrilled to see the Fashion's Roots episode of Finding Your Roots finally broadcast this week. Profesionally 2020 has not been a year of memorable achievements so it was nice to revisit more favourable times!

I spent four exciting days last year in one of the most beautiful places in Spain, the island of Gran Canaria, researching the Canarian portion of Narciso Rodríguez' ancestry. The tools at my disposal across three different archives varied greatly, from digitised images of sacramental records and obscure books dealing with early history of the Canary Islands, to original C19th notarial records and C18th marriage cousinship dispensations.

I won't get into the details of eventual discoveries here (watch the episode, it's exciting!) but I want to use a single aspect of this research to illustrate a useful tip for beginning genealogists. After the first several hours I had developed the tree into three different towns - Arucas, Gáldar and Guía. The largest number of ancestors lived in Arucas, but work in its records was hampered by the fact that none of registers have indexes; some of the books are very long, and spending hours scrolling through pages is a genuine logistical issue when an archive is only open four hours a day. Added to that, if your interest is not merely in assembling names and dates, but developing some back story for these ancestors, a sameness of names can be daunting: too many Juan Rodríguez's, and records suggested there were as many as ten men named José Pérez in Arucas at the same time, which makes it very risky to try and match such common names with any 'interesting' stories in litigation or published works.

By contrast, when I spotted an ancestor surnamed Saavedra in Gáldar, she sort of stuck out. Amid a crowd of repetitive surnames - Suarez, several Morenos and a distressing profusion of lines of Rodriguez - she was the odd woman out, and it was by focusing on her that I was able to trace into ancestors with less frequent names, then some from a higher socio-economic status and finally back to the earliest ancestors discussed in this segment of the show.

Naturally, every researcher has different priorities, and one's goals may not be susceptible to prioritising based on logistics. But if, rather than tracing a specific line, your goal is to connect through any line with some sort of background story pertaining to remote ancestors, something memorable beyond simple dates, places and names, you could do worse than to remember: follow the 'weird' surname!

(Above: A panoramic shot of the Vegueta area of Las Palmas I took from atop the Cathedral one afternoon after completing research. Two of the archives where I worked are located in the square at bottom left of the photo.)

My Work on Senator Marco Rubio's Ancestry for 'Finding Your Roots'

I'm thrilled that my work on Senator Marco Rubio's ancestor José de Reina y Tosta, and the stories associated with that lineage, can now be enjoyed by TV viewers everywhere. As a genealogist, when working on the Reina line and associated families in the Senator's ancestry, I was at times spoiled for choice - there were several families connected with interesting stories, or that showed potential for entertaining development. Ultimately centre stage was taken by José de Reina y Tosta, a diligent public servant who worked hard in many different posts throughout his career in the South of Spain. José never quite rose as high as he would have liked (and it was clear, from the many petitions for advancement that he filed, that for most of his career he felt qualified to take on more demanding posts than those he was usually given by the bureaucrats in Madrid) but ultimately, when faced with a huge public health crisis while he was on duty, he was at last able to prove his worth. José not only held himself to a high standard but, I suspect, was also a no-nonsense parent; though it was mentioned in the broadcast that his son Rafael, from whom Senator Rubio descends, served in the Spanish army, one minor yet significant detail was omitted. Rafael was only thirteen years old when his service began, in the first year of the Peninsular War against Napoleon. Clearly the Reina men were made of stern stuff!

Rescuing stories like these from oblivion and making them known to people living today who value that knowledge is a hugely satisfying aspect of my work as a genealogist.

(R) My photo of the church in Paradas (Seville) where José de Reina y Tosta was baptised. His father was a native of that town, while his mother was the daughter of an official posted there by a large Andalusian landowner, the Duke of Arcos.

 

My Research on Linda Chavez' ancestry for 'Finding Your Roots'

The research that I provided for Sunday's season finale of 'Finding your Roots' serves as an excellent object lesson in the value of notarial records for Spanish genealogy. 16th-century Spanish emigrants Francisco de Armijo and Guiomar de Orozco were long ago identified as the root of an Armijo heritage shared by Linda Chavez and many, many people today in Mexico, New Mexico and no doubt elsewhere. But it was the records kept by a Seville notary in the 1570s that allowed Francisco and Guiomar to be 'reunited' with the family they left behind: it was the wills, estate sales and other legal records identifying parents, in-laws and deceased first spouses that permitted certain placement of Guiomar de Orozco within the family of that surname singled out as conversos by Dr Juan Gil in his monumental work on Seville families of Jewish origin. Sadly, funds for the preservation and indexing of notarial records were not exactly abundant in Spain before the economic downturn and are likely to be even less so for the foreseeable future. But the tale they disclosed in this instance, of the wealthy though 'suspect' Orozcos seeking a cloak of safety through repeated marriages with the humble but 'safe' Armijos illustrates why notarial records are crucial to taking any research into Spanish families beyond mere the assembly of names and dates.