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Caution in Use of Resources

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  • Profile picture for user meef98367
    By meef98367 | Tue, 2006-03-07 15:30

    Below is an excerpt I took from the latest newsletter from Pat
    Gooldy, who runs Ye Old Genealogy Shoppe.  She is located in Indiana and
    has few books on Mexico, but I love reading her newsletters because she always
    has such good advice.  In the excerpt below, she is talking about
    researching her own and her husband's relatives in some of the Eastern
    states.  As we find in Mexico, she found that many people in
    a community had the same names due to the habit of naming sons after fathers,
    uncles, etc. Also, she found that men often married women with the same first
    name, as we have found in Mexico.  Do we really have the right Jose x,
    married to our Maria x, of approximately the same ages, who were from our
    locality and not another couple also from there or who moved there? Often after
    tedious transcribing and comparisons, I find that I was following the wrong
    thread.

    Emilie Garcia

    Port Orchard, WA
    ----

    *****************************************************************************

    In genealogy
    contemporary sources arent yours. They are the sources of your ancestors
    available contemporaneously to him.

    This is where you
    look for the pieces that tell you who he was not just that he
    was. Therein lay the stories of these men
    or women you call kin. Thank heavens for
    the modern resources and the databases that bring an ever clearer picture to you
    of your ancestors and therefore, of yourself.

     However, a word of caution! Not every John Smith in the records of Maine
    is YOUR John Smith. You are weaving a
    tapestry of a mans life. Make sure all
    your threads belong to the one that is your ancestor. Most towns, even back then, had more than one
    man with the same name. I once helped a
    lady research a county in Indiana that had four Percifield relatives,
    all brothers, who lived at Four Corners, so
    named because it was the place where the sections of land that the boys had
    purchased met. Each one of the four boys
    had at least four sons and all of them gave to the boys the names of himself and
    his three brothers. Cant you imagine what
    it was like when a lady stepped to the door of her cabin and yelled, Gilbert
    Percifield, you get over to this cabin right now! Most of the time she got at least four, and
    sometimes all five, of them at her doorstep in minutes. [Would be kind of nice, wouldnt it? Today you count the cars in the driveway
    before you yell for anyone! And even then
    you are lucky if anyone answers, never mind comes a-running!]

     The Percifield marriages proved to be
    daunting. Their county has had some
    record destruction so the marriages are thought not to be complete. Even at that all the first generation married
    and most of the second generation married.
    There were plenty of Gilbert Percifield marriage records in the
    courthouse records. The only trouble was
    six of them married ladies named Elizabeth!
    Think that was not a can of worms?
    Straightening out that mess was a big job. But how could we trace the brides family if we
    did not know which Elizabeth was ours? Turns out, we think he was one of the Gilbert
    Percifields that had been married in another county before they moved
    there. Finally found that record, but a
    lingering doubt will always be there as to whether we really did get the right
    Elizabeth!

     

    • Log in to post comments
    Profile picture for user meef98367

    meef98367

    19 years 5 months ago

    Permalink

    Caution in Use of Resources

    Below is an excerpt I took from the latest newsletter from Pat
    Gooldy, who runs Ye Old Genealogy Shoppe.  She is located in Indiana and
    has few books on Mexico, but I love reading her newsletters because she always
    has such good advice.  In the excerpt below, she is talking about
    researching her own and her husband's relatives in some of the Eastern
    states.  As we find in Mexico, she found that many people in
    a community had the same names due to the habit of naming sons after fathers,
    uncles, etc. Also, she found that men often married women with the same first
    name, as we have found in Mexico.  Do we really have the right Jose x,
    married to our Maria x, of approximately the same ages, who were from our
    locality and not another couple also from there or who moved there? Often after
    tedious transcribing and comparisons, I find that I was following the wrong
    thread.

    Emilie Garcia

    Port Orchard, WA
    ----

    *****************************************************************************

    In genealogy
    contemporary sources arent yours. They are the sources of your ancestors
    available contemporaneously to him.

    This is where you
    look for the pieces that tell you who he was not just that he
    was. Therein lay the stories of these men
    or women you call kin. Thank heavens for
    the modern resources and the databases that bring an ever clearer picture to you
    of your ancestors and therefore, of yourself.

     However, a word of caution! Not every John Smith in the records of Maine
    is YOUR John Smith. You are weaving a
    tapestry of a mans life. Make sure all
    your threads belong to the one that is your ancestor. Most towns, even back then, had more than one
    man with the same name. I once helped a
    lady research a county in Indiana that had four Percifield relatives,
    all brothers, who lived at Four Corners, so
    named because it was the place where the sections of land that the boys had
    purchased met. Each one of the four boys
    had at least four sons and all of them gave to the boys the names of himself and
    his three brothers. Cant you imagine what
    it was like when a lady stepped to the door of her cabin and yelled, Gilbert
    Percifield, you get over to this cabin right now! Most of the time she got at least four, and
    sometimes all five, of them at her doorstep in minutes. [Would be kind of nice, wouldnt it? Today you count the cars in the driveway
    before you yell for anyone! And even then
    you are lucky if anyone answers, never mind comes a-running!]

     The Percifield marriages proved to be
    daunting. Their county has had some
    record destruction so the marriages are thought not to be complete. Even at that all the first generation married
    and most of the second generation married.
    There were plenty of Gilbert Percifield marriage records in the
    courthouse records. The only trouble was
    six of them married ladies named Elizabeth!
    Think that was not a can of worms?
    Straightening out that mess was a big job. But how could we trace the brides family if we
    did not know which Elizabeth was ours? Turns out, we think he was one of the Gilbert
    Percifields that had been married in another county before they moved
    there. Finally found that record, but a
    lingering doubt will always be there as to whether we really did get the right
    Elizabeth!

     

    Profile picture for user arturoramos

    arturoramos

    19 years 5 months ago

    Permalink

    In reply to Caution in Use of Resources by meef98367

    People with the same name

    Emilie, that is a great article. I ran into a very similar situation recently. As I mentioned to you, Esteban Valdes, the local historian in Totatiche is writing a book on the Pinedos and Ortegas in the Totatiche/Colotlan region. I was very excited when he told me because my mother's name is Pinedo and I thought I had traced her lineage back to the mid-1600s in Jerez to a certain Diego Pinedo and Josepha Gamboa.

    Well, as it turns out there was a bad link in the chain. I had a Feliciano Pinedo Covarrubias whom I had down as a son of Manuel Pinedo and Gertrudis Covarrubias. He was born a couple of years before their marriage, but that didn't seem so strange. When I sent my Pinedo genealogy information to Esteban Valdes he immediately pointed out that I had the wrong parents for Feliciano. His parents were Manuel Pinedo and Gertrudis Covarrubias but a completely different set of people by the same name.

    I didn't believe him until I started looking at films and lo and behold there were children born to Manuel and Gertrudis fifteen years before the marriage of the couple I had in my records. I looked up in the film the marriage date for the couple he claimed to be my ancestors and there they were... (almost) the exact same names but married twenty years earlier.

    Luckily, the other Pinedos are ancestors of my father so all of that research was not lost. Now I am desperately trying to connect these two Pinedo lineages.

    Profile picture for user arturoramos

    arturoramos

    19 years 5 months ago

    Permalink

    In reply to Caution in Use of Resources by meef98367

    People with the same name

    Emilie, that is a great article. I ran into a very similar situation recently. As I mentioned to you, Esteban Valdes, the local historian in Totatiche is writing a book on the Pinedos and Ortegas in the Totatiche/Colotlan region. I was very excited when he told me because my mother's name is Pinedo and I thought I had traced her lineage back to the mid-1600s in Jerez to a certain Diego Pinedo and Josepha Gamboa.

    Well, as it turns out there was a bad link in the chain. I had a Feliciano Pinedo Covarrubias whom I had down as a son of Manuel Pinedo and Gertrudis Covarrubias. He was born a couple of years before their marriage, but that didn't seem so strange. When I sent my Pinedo genealogy information to Esteban Valdes he immediately pointed out that I had the wrong parents for Feliciano. His parents were Manuel Pinedo and Gertrudis Covarrubias but a completely different set of people by the same name.

    I didn't believe him until I started looking at films and lo and behold there were children born to Manuel and Gertrudis fifteen years before the marriage of the couple I had in my records. I looked up in the film the marriage date for the couple he claimed to be my ancestors and there they were... (almost) the exact same names but married twenty years earlier.

    Luckily, the other Pinedos are ancestors of my father so all of that research was not lost. Now I am desperately trying to connect these two Pinedo lineages.

    Profile picture for user meef98367

    meef98367

    19 years 5 months ago

    Permalink

    In reply to People with the same name by arturoramos

    People with the same name

    Arturo,

    Yes, when I saw that article, I couldn't help but think, gosh, even the Americans have the same problems we do keeping everybody straight. I thought it was a Mexican problem. Thank goodness that people nowadays are allowed to be more creative in naming their kids. The idea now is to give each kid a unique name not used by other family members.

    When I was researching my mother's maternal lines in Dona Ana County, New Mexico, I thought I had finally, after years of searching, found my Jose Provencio married to Jesus Medina, not very common names (ha!), only to compare my notes and land documents, etc. and found there were two couples with the same names of the same ages living at the same time in that county. The land records showed that they had different children and lived in different villages, so I finally found my couple, but I so easily could have "adopted" the wrong one. I have also had the same problem with my mother's paternal side. Her father was Jose Marquez, and his father had that name, and so did his grandpa, and his great-grandpa---I am not kidding---that name went back in that lineage for many, many generations. I was beginning to think it went back to ancient Rome--Josephus Marcus, ha, ha. They also named all their sons Jose Marquez. I finally after many years found that they had been given mi
    ddle nam
    es at baptism that they did not use, then I had to sort out the women and children in each generation who also carried the same names--ay Dios!

    So, the lesson is--be cautious. What you see may not be what really was.

    Emilie

    euler2luna

    19 years 5 months ago

    Permalink

    In reply to People with the same name by meef98367

    People with the same name

    Well, on that same theme I have attached a page from a dispensa that
    ranchos member Sally Quinoñes found where two daughters are given the
    same name! Without this document who would know?
    George

    Emilie Garcia wrote:
    > Arturo,
    >
    > Yes, when I saw that article, I couldn't help but think, gosh, even the Americans have the same problems we do keeping everybody straight. I thought it was a Mexican problem. Thank goodness that people nowadays are allowed to be more creative in naming their kids. The idea now is to give each kid a unique name not used by other family members.
    >
    > When I was researching my mother's maternal lines in Dona Ana County, New Mexico, I thought I had finally, after years of searching, found my Jose Provencio married to Jesus Medina, not very common names (ha!), only to compare my notes and land documents, etc. and found there were two couples with the same names of the same ages living at the same time in that county. The land records showed that they had different children and lived in different villages, so I finally found my couple, but I so easily could have "adopted" the wrong one. I have also had the same problem with my mother's paternal side. Her father was Jose Marquez, and his father had that name, and so did his grandpa, and his great-grandpa---I am not kidding---that name went back in that lineage for many, many generations. I was beginning to think it went back to ancient Rome--Josephus Marcus, ha, ha. They also named all their sons Jose Marquez. I finally after many years found that they had been given mi
    > ddle nam
    > es at baptism that they did not use, then I had to sort out the women and children in each generation who also carried the same names--ay Dios!
    >
    > So, the lesson is--be cautious. What you see may not be what really was.
    >
    > Emilie
    > ----- Original Message -----
    > From: arturoramos2
    > To: general@lists.nuestrosranchos.org
    > Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 3:59 PM
    > Subject: [Nuestros Ranchos] People with the same name
    >
    >
    >
    > Emilie, that is a great article. I ran into a very similar situation recently. As I mentioned to you, Esteban Valdes, the local historian in Totatiche is writing a book on the Pinedos and Ortegas in the Totatiche/Colotlan region. I was very excited when he told me because my mother's name is Pinedo and I thought I had traced her lineage back to the mid-1600s in Jerez to a certain Diego Pinedo and Josepha Gamboa.
    >
    > Well, as it turns out there was a bad link in the chain. I had a Feliciano Pinedo Covarrubias whom I had down as a son of Manuel Pinedo and Gertrudis Covarrubias. He was born a couple of years before their marriage, but that didn't seem so strange. When I sent my Pinedo genealogy information to Esteban Valdes he immediately pointed out that I had the wrong parents for Feliciano. His parents were Manuel Pinedo and Gertrudis Covarrubias but a completely different set of people by the same name.
    >
    > I didn't believe him until I started looking at films and lo and behold there were children born to Manuel and Gertrudis fifteen years before the marriage of the couple I had in my records. I looked up in the film the marriage date for the couple he claimed to be my ancestors and there they were... (almost) the exact same names but married twenty years earlier.
    >
    > Luckily, the other Pinedos are ancestors of my father so all of that research was not lost. Now I am desperately trying to connect these two Pinedo lineages.
    > -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
    > Nuestros Ranchos General Mailing List
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    pineda37 (not verified)

    19 years ago

    Permalink

    In reply to People with the same name by arturoramos

    Searching for Pinedas/Pinedos

    You seem to know alot about the Pinedos in Zacatecas...so I'm hoping you can help me out. Perhaps the bext question to ask is what towns do you think were really hubs for Pinedos and Pinedas?

    I'm asking because I've been stuck for a while and don't know how to proceed. I have found 2 marriage records for my great grandfather, named Nicanor Pineda, in Tlaltenango, dated 1903 and 1914. I also found the death certificate for his first wife in Tlaltenango. The problem is that I've been unable to find his baptism or birth records...I've been searching the Tlaltenango records for some time (for 1870s-1890s), but nothing. I'm wondering now if Nicanor Pineda might have been born and baptized someplace else.

    What I do know is that his father's name is Pedro Pinedo according to the records I've found and, if my grandfather remembers right, Pedro Pinedo might have been in the cavalry. I believe that Nicanor's mother was named Pioquinta (Men/Car)dosa.

    So any idea on other cities to start looking at? Any help is appreciated

    makas_nc

    19 years ago

    Permalink

    In reply to Searching for Pinedas/Pinedos by pineda37 (not verified)

    Searching for Pinedas/Pinedos

    pineda37 wrote:

    >You seem to know alot about the Pinedos in Zacatecas...so I'm hoping you can help me out. Perhaps the bext question to ask is what towns do you think were really hubs for Pinedos and Pinedas?
    >
    >I'm asking because I've been stuck for a while and don't know how to proceed. I have found 2 marriage records for my great grandfather, named Nicanor Pineda, in Tlaltenango, dated 1903 and 1914.
    >
    Chris if you don't mind why not upload those two marriage records into
    the "albums" area and send the group the link. We can leave them up for
    a month or so and then take them down after those that are interested in
    looking at them have done so. I for one would be interested in seeing
    what they say. Did you send a record to the group awhile back?

    You don't have to do this but it would be interesting to have a look see.

    joseph

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