Comments on: Those Places Thursday: Herencia, Ciudad Real, Spain

By: Jen

Jen — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 21:11:16 +0000

Thanks!

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:24:09 +0000

Nice blog post, Jen! I’ve mentioned it in my own post today (http://wing-ops.blogspot.com/2011/01/challenge-for-you.html )

By: Jen

Jen — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 05:03:48 +0000

Heather,
Thank you so much for your comment.
How exciting that you got to do research in Spain! I have to admit that I’m jealous.

I was lucky in that another distantly related cousin handed me a research report (done years ago by a professional) with all of the births and baptisms back to the early 1600′s on most of my Spanish lines. I did notice that the records are now available on the Familysearch.org site, but I haven’t attempted tackling that project yet. I know that if I did this, I could probably fill in a lot of my blanks on deaths and such!

Thanks for the website for the Spanish Archives. I think that I will give that a try tonight and see if anything comes up.

That is so amazing that you were able to find relatives still there! Did you get to meet them?

By: Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Heather Wilkinson Rojo — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 15:24:08 +0000

Dear Jen, I have been to Herencia, and seen the windmills! My husband’s family is from just north of Madrid and we have done some research in his village, and also some research here before we went. Here are some useful things you can do on the internet:
1. Try the new Familysearch.org for records in Herencia and the villages your ancestors came from. We were able to find lots on line, scanned images. It will be in Spanish, but if you can pick out the baptism, deaths, marriages they are all formulaic and are easy to transcribe. All parishes followed the same “formula” for listing these. They name parents and grandparents, too!
2. Try http://pares.mcu.es/ which is the National Archives of Spain. Under the advanced search “busqueda avandaza” you can enter the surname and the name of the village, and see what comes up. Not too usefull for common names, like Garcia, but you never know.
3. Write to the parish priest (even if you have to write in English). He might know a descendant of a common ancestor still living in the village. This worked for us.

Your worries about the Napoleonic Wars are valid concerns. In my husband’s paternal village of Sinovas, in the province of Burgos, there are no surviving records from earlier than about 1810 or so. But the records after that date name parents, grandparents, so you can get back to the early 1700s this way.

Good luck, Buenas Suerte, contact me if you need help