A Marriage Where You Least Expect It

Recently, I was taking a look again at my "Rivera" line. This is my direct line going back to the early 1700s in Toa Alta. Besides my father and my grandfather, every male ancestor (4 in total so far) have been born in Toa Alta. Though 4 may seem insignificant, that's a total of close to 300 years of my family living in this one town. This post is going to be about discovering some new information about my 4th great grandparents!

Setting the Stage

My Rivera family was one of my catalysts for wanting to research my ancestry when I was younger. I wanted to know where my Rivera family was from and wanted to know where potentially in Spain they were from. Though initially it was difficult to find out about this family, I was fortunate to find out that they were from Toa Alta, Puerto Rico which led me to using the Civil Registry and the church records in order to push my ancestors back to the early 1800s. My earliest ancestors were José de Rivera and Gertrudis Román. José passed away sometime between 1824-1844 and Gertrudis passed in 1844, but besides that I had no idea of their parents' names. The "Rivera Román" children were all born during a time grandparents weren't added into baptism entries so I had no idea of their parents' names. I also had no siblings for José and Gertrudis to help with my search for parents or potential origins outside of Toa Alta.

Toa Alta [Google Images]

One day however, while looking through the records for Guaynabo I came across a "Rivera Belén" marriage entry in 1773. The reason this was important was because José was written as "Rivera Belén" in one of his son's baptism record. However, in neither of the other 8 baptism records does José appear as "Rivera Belén". Not wanting to lose the record I attached it to José as a possible brother and moved on.

Recently, I took a look at other marriages in Guaynabo to see if I could find any other "Rivera Belén" siblings and found a new record that completely shocked me!

A New Record

José de Rivera & Gertrudis Román - Marriage [FamilySearch]

José de Rivera & Gertrudis Román - Marriage [FamilySearch]

Searching my way up from the 1770s I bumped into a record that made me gasp - it was a marriage record for a José Rivera and Gertrudis Román. Could these be my ancestors?! The marriage took place on the 2nd of March 1802 and my ancestor's first registered child was in 1806 in Toa Alta so it was possible... So I took a closer look at the record:

José de Rivera was widowed of María Feliz and the legitimate son of Pedro and María Morales, resident of Toa Alta and Gertrudis Román legitimate daughter of Manuel and Margarita Ayala, all pardos libres.

So here we had some new information, José was widowed before he married Gertrudis and now we had the names of both of their parents, interestingly enough José named a son Pedro so having a father with the same name wasn't surprising.

With this I was able to go back into the marriage records of Guaynabo and find José's first marriage to María Feliz in 1791, stating again that he was a native of Toa Alta. Gertrudis herself was probably from Guaynabo seeing as she had other siblings born there, I have yet to find a baptism record for her there though.

At first I was hesitant to believe these were my ancestors, but the lack of a marriage in Toa Alta, the fact it mentions José was a native of that town, and Gertrudis Román's fairly uncommon name was enough to convince me that these were my 4th great-grandparents. The question remains though why José de Rivera lived in Guaynabo for a while and then ultimately decided to move back.

Something else that's interesting is the use of "Belén" in that one baptismal record. Could there be a connection to the Rivera Belén family somehow still?

I recently heard a genealogist say "solving one mystery, means adding two" (sorry I can't remember where I read it, if I find who I'll add credit here!), and this is absolutely true! Having a new generation of the Rivera family is amazing because hopefully I can research some more into these lines and find out more about them. I also have to learn more about Guaynabo, its history, and find out more about the Román Ayala presence there. 

52 Ancestors – #37 Gertrudis Román (1790-1844)

I'm going to keep this ball rolling and continue posting about my ancestors. So here's post 37 about yet another ancestor from Toa Alta, my 4th great grandmother Gertrudis Román.

When I first discovered Gertrudis through the Toa Alta church records I was really excited, being the wife of my 4th great grandfather, Joseph de Rivera, it made her a part of the oldest set of ancestors on my direct paternal lineage.

I started digging deeper into the records searching for their death records, I was fortunate to stumble upon a "Gertrudis Romana" who I'm pretty sure is my 4th great grandmother. It states… "al cadaver de Gertrudis Romana [sic] como de veinte y seis años viuda de José Rivera, pardos libres". 

Gertrudis passed away on the 29th of December 1844, having already been widowed of her husband José Rivera. Her age is listed as "26 years old" which would mean she would have been born about 1818 which I know is incorrect. This is the only little bit of information that is very inaccurate, and for now I do believe this is my Gertrudis Román but it does bother me a bit that it's so wrong. Very possibly, her age was guessed at the time of her death. She could have been in her late 40s and someone gave a wrong age and that's what was written down. I'm not sure if there was another Jose Rivera and Gertrudis Roman couple in Toa Alta, Puerto Rico at the time (at least I haven't found one) so even though the age is wrong I believe firmly she is my 4th great grandmother.

What's interesting is that it states she is a "pardo libre", and the fact that it's in plural probably means it was referring to her late husband as well. I have talked about this term before in other posts, how "pardo" for a while was a term used to describe people of color in Puerto Rico and later the term "trigueño" kind of substituted this word, sometimes the word 'mulato' was used as well. However, there is some debate to what the "pardo" mix actually entails. I'm under the impression (and agree with) the belief that pardo was a term used for mixed Spanish and native Taíno people. It is also very possible that it was used for mixed Spanish and African people (and possibly for someone of all three). We know for sure that José Rivera would have been a descendant on his paternal side from a European man seeing as he (and I) are I2a1*, a European haplogroup. This is the first time I noticed on the record that it was in plural and that it could be a reference to the husband. Potentially both José and Gertrudis were mixed free people of color in the Toa Alta society and married because they were in the same social class.

Gertrudis and José would have nine children in total, from what I have so far! I'd have to look and see how they were identified in terms of "color". In my 3rd great grandfather's death record there is no note of his color, probably because the entries were much shorter during the time period he passed away in. None the less, it's very interesting to see my 4th great grandmother listed as "pardo libre", I would love to do some more research into that term and see what kind of life - whether they enjoyed certain privileges or hung in between two worlds - and how this category would impact their lives and that of their children.