Por laurenmshook |

Hello, everyone. I'm researching the Mena family. Our family comes from Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco. Specifically, I'm mainly interested in finding the ancestry of my bisabuelo Jose Jesus Mena, born in Lagos de Moreno in June 25, 1897. His mother was named Melquiades Gonzales born around 1872.
The major problem I am having is that he was illegitimate. The civil registration record of his birth does not list his father's full name or his paternal grandparents. The birth record indicates that his birth name was Jesus Gonzales, but all records following immigration to the United States in 1916 use his father's last name - Mena. In his naturalization papers, he says that his father's name was Manuel Mena.
I've looked up several Manuel Mena's who were born in Lagos de Moreno or la Union de San Antonio around the same time as his mother. There are a few possible contenders, but I don't know how to move ahead.
One possible clue is that Jose Jesus Mena was remarkably tall (around 6'2") and had very fine Spanish features. I've wondered if I could research photos of Mena families if I could make a probable guess.
Has anyone else had any luck researching illegitimate children or have any advice?
Thank you for your help in advance.

Does your bisabuelo have any Siblings. Did you look up baptismal
Records? Who are the padrinos? Do you have his marriage record ?

His siblings are all half siblings from a different father, so their records were not helpful for his father's line. He married in the United States, and the record does not list his parents. He later had a church wedding in a Catholic church, and I'm hoping they will have more details.

I haven't been able to find a baptismal record yet - The oral history in our family is that he couldn't be baptized because he was illegitimate. I don't know if that is true though.
I'm ordering his alien registration file from the National Archives, so hopefully I'll find some kinds of clue there.

Indeed it can be very difficult to find the ancestors of an illegitimate child. If there are any male descendants of José Jesús Mena through a direct paternal line, I would recommend taking a Y-DNA test for him and posting the results at online databases. You may get a match from another branch of the family if they were also curious enough to take the same test.
Good luck with your search,
Victoriano Navarro

There have been many occasions where I have discovered the father of a illegitimate child. It sometimes takes a lot of work and luck. Sometimes the illegitimate offspring marry into the legitimate family and the truth comes out in marriage records, "informacion matrimonial", marriage dispensations. Sometimes I find the information in a baptismal record of a child where the illegitimate father uses his fathers last name when he baptized his child and sometimes gives the paternal grandfathers name. Sometimes I have found the information by following the descendancy of siblings. When following the descendancy of siblings you have to check their marriage records and baptismal records for clues. Sometimes a land dispute over inheritance will bring out information. Sometimes the illegitimate child will claim to be legitimate in some of their adult records and give the name of their biological father.

Though I have been successful at discovering the father on numerous occasions, I have also been unsuccessful at times. Sometimes my successes have come only after a lot of work and many years. Recently I found the legitimate father only after studying someone elses family tree because something seemed familiar to me. It turns out that I was unsuccessful in finding the records that I sought I my research but a sibling married many times and in one of his marriages a descendant worked on the family tree and he had information where the illegitimate son claimed to be legitimate and gave his fathers identity. In this case I was able to identify only because in my research I had identified the fathers surname even though I had been unsuccessful in identifying the father through my records.

R A Ricci

Genealogy Research