Reflecting on my Genealogical Goals of 2019

Time sure does fly! It feels like only yesterday I was setting up genealogical goals for 2019, and yet here I am December 31st, 2019 - ready to close out the year! Similarly to last year, I wanted to take some time to reflect on my goals for the year 2019 and see how far I've gotten. If you're interested in my past goals of 2018 - here's the link! Also like last year, I will be answering each goal with "yes", "some" or "no" and explaining where I am with those goals.

Genealogical Goals of 2019

1. Test a male descendant for Y-DNA Avilés - Yes

On a recent trip to Puerto Rico in March, I was fortunate to have visited extended family in Lares, Puerto Rico - the town my Avilés ancestors lived in. Not only did I get a chance to see where my 2nd great-grandfather lived most of his life and some of his lands, but I was also able to meet two men who are direct descendants of my Avilés line. However, this line is said to be "Magraner" and not "Avilés" because my 2nd great-grandfather was born out-of-wedlock, said to be the son of Damián Magraner Morell from Sóller, Mallorca. Their haplogroup falls under one of the most common for European men so no close hits yet. Hoping more will come of these results soon! 

2. Add on my Rivera and Correa lines to FTDNA - Yes

I've recently posted this month about upgrading my Correa line and the current finds the line has... so far there might be some potential Sephardic Jewish origins in this line - hopefully more discoveries to come. I've also added my Rivera line but nothing interesting there so far, currently I have the possibility to upgrade to Big Y-700 for my line and currently considering it though I don't know what will come of it.

3. Continue to learn about my Correa family - No
Besides learning a bit more about my Correa family via DNA, I haven't been able to learn more about my family through records. I've scoured the records in Coamo and San Juan as well as nearby towns but nothing yet. I've also looked at the Carcaño branch and found some other people with the surname in towns near San Juan but I'm also stuck there as well. Hopefully this wall will come crashing down soon!

4. Visit the Archivo Diocesano and AGPR to attain testamentos and dispensas de matrimonio - Yes/Some
Though I was able to find information about my family from both the Archivo Diocesano and the AGPR I placed it under "some" as well because I know that there is probably much, much more to research in both archival places. For example, I was able to find dispensas for cousins marrying in Maunabo that I had no idea about - all related to the Martínez branch of my family that came over from Guayama. This goal is also hard to accomplish within one year because time is limited while I'm in Puerto Rico and there are so many files to search as well.

5. Begin to interview family members - No
I feel like I'm going to beat myself up for not starting this sooner but I need to get on this! My goal is to record older family members talking about their lives and our family and create a digital bank of voices and information before these people are gone. I need to think this goal through next time I am in Puerto Rico!

6. Push all my lines into the 1700s - Some
The generation between my 4th and 5th great-grandparents' would be the branches that be able to reach the 1700s. So far on my paternal side there are many branches that have reached the 1700s, the ones currently stuck at my branches from Corozal and San Sebastián. On my maternal side, my Patillas, Morovis, Vega Baja, and San Sebastián sides of the family haven't been explored into the 1700s - 3/4 of these towns don't have church records online which halts me from exploring deeper into their lineage. I heard Corozal, Morovis, and Vega Baja are becoming available in Puerto Rico via La Sociedad Genealógica de Puerto Rico while San Sebastián hasn't allowed any organization to digitalize their records.

7. Continue reading books about genealogy - Yes
This year I've been fortunate to have read a lot of books but out of the books I've read so far, not many have to do with genealogy. So far I have read: "The Man Who Stole Himself: The Slave Odyssy of Hans Jonathan" by: Gísli Pálsson, a book about a mulatto man from St. Croix who ends up in Iceland via Denmark (worth the read!), "She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity" by: Carl Zimmer, this book was a bit more intense because it dealt a lot with the science of DNA but it was definitely an interesting read. I also read "1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus" by: Charles C. Mann, definitely was an eye-opening book to what life was like in the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans, and "Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love" by: Dani Shapiro, which was a very interesting book about a woman's journey of who her biological father is post-DNA testing. So out of 19 books read so far 4 were related somehow to genealogy which isn't too bad. I also read "The Coming" by: Daniel Black and "My 15 Grandmothers" by: Genie Milgrom but the former was more of a historical fiction narrative of a slave's journey through the Middle Passage while the latter was about researching your Sephardic ancestors and I wasn't able to pull too much information for myself, if I count these books this would be 6 books about genealogy!

8. Take a genealogy course - No
For monetary reasons, I decided to hold back on this goal this year but I'm hoping sometime next year or even 2021 to register myself and take a genealogical course. Though so far the courses I've found are not really geared to the Caribbean/Latin America, I figured it's better to start building myself a genealogical resumé which includes a variety of courses. This will give me some more "seriousness" as I continue to make a name for myself as a genealogist.

9. Get savvier with the use of DNA results - Yes/Some
With the use of DNAPainter I have been able to identify pieces of DNA that I share with African Americans with no known connection to Puerto Rico and recently thanks to MyHeritage and AncestryDNA I was able to find genetic connections to Guadeloupe. I'm hoping that this goal extends itself into the next year and I can find out more about my connection to Guadeloupe. I also say "some" because I would like to learn more about Y-DNA testing and how to read more into my results. For example, I recently upgraded my Correa Y-DNA to Big-Y700 and I would like to be able to read more into the results myself.

10. Build stories around my factual evidence - No
Though I set up this goal, I'm not sure exactly how to go about it. Though Ancestry builds a "LifeStory" for your ancestors' lives, it doesn't necessarily touch upon facts based on your country, for me this would be facts from Puerto Rico. For example, one of my ancestor's story shows a fact about the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence which doesn't really have to with his life in Puerto Rico, especially since this time it was a part of the Spanish crown. I need to figure out a way to build facts about my ancestors - maybe creating some sort of timeline with important Puerto Rican facts based around towns and the island's history and seeing where my ancestors fall within that timeline.

This year also marked for me my 200th blog post, as well as 8 years of blogging and 15 years of genealogy which is definitely a lot of time dedicated to this obsessive hobby! In a few days I hope to create new goals for 2020 and explain why I want to follow this goals! Stay tuned and Happy New Year! 

A Puerto Rican Look at: Y-DNA111 (Correa)

Like my Avilés/Magraner line, I tested my Correa Y-DNA line while I was in Puerto Rico, this time with my maternal grandfather. Though I originally tested this line at Y-DNA67, I have upgraded the line to Y-DNA111 on FTDNA and with the recent Thanksgiving sales I have finally upgraded the line to Big-Y 700. The results will take a while to upload, especially with what I can only imagine are a bunch of people taking advantage of the sale. So I figured I would write about what I know at this level and see what else comes from the upgrade.

CORREA - SURNAME ORIGINS 

Though I have posted about the Correa surname before (post here and here). I'd figure I cover this quickly again to tie it into the genetic understanding of this line. The Correa surname comes to me via my mother and her father, and from there runs via the paternal line up to the 1700s. This is what the paper trail has shown me at least, remember that there is always the possibility of a NPE (Non-Paternity Event) which are usually not traced on paper. Below you can see me, Luis, at the bottom and my line all the way until my 6th great-grandfather Juan Francisco Correa (I have blurred of people who are still alive).

9 Generations of Correa [Personal Photo]

In an ideal genealogical world, this would mean that my Correa cousins and any other male Correa tied to this line would all descend genetically via their Y-DNA from this same man. Matching other Correa men would help attest to this, but unfortunately so far there haven't been other men in my family or relatives that I know who have tested. Y-DNA testing (and rightfully so due to its cost) is something more serious geneticists/genealogists use to trace lines that either ran dry via paper-trail, experienced traumatic events such as slavery, the holocaust, wars that disconnected them from information, and/or was adopted and not sure of their origins. I personally have not tested all of my Y-DNA possible lines, especially since I would have to find distant males cousins to test for lines that have "daughtered out". So far, I have tested my own Rivera line (since I wanted to know more about it since it's a common surname), my maternal Avilés line (said to be tied to Mallorca via a NPE), the Charles line (arrived to Puerto Rico from Guadeloupe and was previously enslaved), and my Correa line (surname interest/since the paper trail ran out). 

When I mean surname interest, I have always been interested in this name for two reasons. 1) It's not that common of a surname in Puerto Rico, though there is always the mention of Capitán Antonio de los Reyes Correa it's not a surname I often hear when I meet other Puerto Ricans, and 2) I have always heard that the surname is tied to Sephardic Jewish origins in Spain. 

The surname for example appears in Amsterdam via Isabel (Rebecca) Correa, a famous Dutch Sephardic poetess who was born in Portugal.

Isabel (Rebecca) de Correa [Jewish Virtual Library]

It has also appeared amongst those tried for "judaizantes" ("Judaizers") during the time of the Spanish Inquisition. A quick search of Correa + Inquisición gave me various hits. 

Tribunal de la Inquisición en Llerena [PARES]

Tribunal de la Inquisición en Llerena [PARES]

Does this mean that my own Correa family were Jewish as well? Not necessarily but the genetic information is interesting to add. Let's see what my grandfather's genes say about this line!

CORREA - GENETIC ORIGINS

When I got the autosomal and haplogroup results for grandfather on 23andme, I was very interested since it seems that his haplogroup isn't that common amongst men in their database/that have tested. So I wanted to see what it would be like in FTDNA.

FTDNA Landing Page [FTDNA/Personal Photo]

My grandfather's haplogroup is current listed as "J-Z18271", this name is expected to change once I get my Big-Y700 results - expected to arrive sometime in February. Below you can see where this specific SNP (Z18271) has been found in Europe. This specific branch can be found in various parts of the world, but it's interesting to note that it's mainly found amongst Eastern European countries. This is a very different result than expecting to find many "genetic cousins" scattered amongst the Iberian Peninsula and other parts of western Europe.

SNP MAP [FTDNA/Personal Photo]

CORREA - HAPLOGROUP ASSIGNMENT

The main haplogroup my grandfather belongs to is "J" which you can see how it got into Europe below. Further below is an image of my specific haplogroup for my grandfather as well, currently at Y-DNA111.

Migration Map [FTDNA]

Correa Haplogroup [FTDNA/Personal Photo]

This group has its origins mainly in the Middle East amongst the Arab and Jewish populations. This was interesting to me taking into consideration the Sephardic Jewish theory of this surname. Remember that genetics predate current religious, political, geographic divides. It is possible that somehow my Correa family was a part of the Arab/Morsico or Jewish/Sefardí population in Spanish which was later pushed out during the reconquista. It made it's way into Puerto Rico where it has been present for the last 300 years.

Some research places the haplogroup amongst the "Kohanim" or Cohen branch of Jews, which is the "priest" class. If this is the case for my family, this would obviously be very far back and probably not in recent times, though it would be very interesting nonetheless! My family has likely been Christian/Catholic for at least the last 300 years while in Puerto Rico. Since I haven't been able to trace them off the island yet, I am not sure what their history and religious practices were before arriving to Puerto Rico.

J-Z18271 Branch [GenoGenea]

GENETIC MATCHES

Currently, I have one match from the entire database of FTDNA for my Correa Y-DNA111 test, and it's a genetic cousin who shares another line with me, so it was interesting seeing him match me on the Y-DNA level on another completely different line as well. As you can see the surname for his earliest ancestor is not "Correa", if not "Santiago". So somewhere along our lines there was a NPE, we're not sure who's line it comes from but we're thinking it might be his. Currently, this cousin is tested at Y-DNA37 so their haplogroup isn't as specific as mine. The genetic distance is 3 meaning that our relationship is further back in generations, but I'm not sure if this distance "closes" once they upgrade their Y-DNA test.

Y-DNA Match [FTDNA/Personal Photo]

CONCLUSIONS

I'm hoping that upgrading the test will give some more insight into whether it's more likely to be Arab or Jewish in origin. I have been in contact with some of the administrators of the FTDNA project I am a part of via my results in the J haplogroup. They are also interested to see what comes out of this result since I don't match many other people. This is very fascinating for me and definitely something I am learning along the way with. I'm not super well-versed in Y-DNA analysis so learning via my multiple accounts has been pretty helpful! Hoping my results come faster than I expect!

ARE YOU A CORREA FROM PUERTO RICO? 

HAVE YOU TAKEN A Y-DNA TEST?