So while I've been here in Puerto Rico I've been trying to get the ball rolling on getting some ancestry work done. I've visited the AGPR (Archivo General de Puerto Rico) and tomorrow the records I ordered are supposed to come in! (The records are from Lares, Puerto Rico). I've been looking at pictures and trying to match names to faces and trying to find a way to get to the InterAmericana University here in Puerto Rico to order records from the church in Yabucoa.
I also went to the Santa Maria Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery to see if I could find my great grandmother who is supposedly buried there. I looked at the tombs to see if I could find it by glancing over them but some were almost completely destroyed and unreadable which was really sad to see. I went to the office to ask and apparently you need to know the name of the owner of the tomb. I asked her to check for a Alejandro Rivera Gonzalez, her husband and the one who would have been buried first if he died there but nothing came up. So many years have passed and so many generations that I'm not sure who was the last person to 'own' the tomb. Could it be a friend, or maybe a relative? The only way to be sure that she is or isn't buried there would be to actually walk around the entire cemetery and even then with the illegible tombs I wouldn't be able to know if one of them were her's.
Even though I wasn't able to find their tomb I was able to walk by La Perla and see the street a bit of where my great grandparents would have lived. Alejandro Rivera Gonzalez and Mercedes Ortiz Marrero in 1930 lived in Barrio Mercado in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The part of Mercado they lived in was a part of La Perla; specifically they lived on Calle Lucila Silva which from the picture here you can see near the bend. I was able to take a picture from that point down Calle Lucila Silva, or what it was named then. It was kind of surreal to see a place where my ancestors lived about 80 years ago and having not known them.
I was pretty happy with being able to see that street but it would have been cool to walk down the street and potentially find the house but that is asking for a bit too much. Since I have one month of ancestry.com I've been adding records to family members and trying to get in contact with the distant cousins I've found, luckily some have responded! I have about 400 members left that have hints or records attached to them to go through.
Hopefully if I find some interesting pictures I'll post them up here! Also if I find anything new out from the AGPR records!
I also went to the Santa Maria Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery to see if I could find my great grandmother who is supposedly buried there. I looked at the tombs to see if I could find it by glancing over them but some were almost completely destroyed and unreadable which was really sad to see. I went to the office to ask and apparently you need to know the name of the owner of the tomb. I asked her to check for a Alejandro Rivera Gonzalez, her husband and the one who would have been buried first if he died there but nothing came up. So many years have passed and so many generations that I'm not sure who was the last person to 'own' the tomb. Could it be a friend, or maybe a relative? The only way to be sure that she is or isn't buried there would be to actually walk around the entire cemetery and even then with the illegible tombs I wouldn't be able to know if one of them were her's.
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| One of the old defense points along the coast this one near La Perla |
Even though I wasn't able to find their tomb I was able to walk by La Perla and see the street a bit of where my great grandparents would have lived. Alejandro Rivera Gonzalez and Mercedes Ortiz Marrero in 1930 lived in Barrio Mercado in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The part of Mercado they lived in was a part of La Perla; specifically they lived on Calle Lucila Silva which from the picture here you can see near the bend. I was able to take a picture from that point down Calle Lucila Silva, or what it was named then. It was kind of surreal to see a place where my ancestors lived about 80 years ago and having not known them.
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| Calle Lucila Silva in La Perla in San Juan, Puerto Rico |
Hopefully if I find some interesting pictures I'll post them up here! Also if I find anything new out from the AGPR records!
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