Using Newspapers Can Lead To Some Surprises/ They could lead to photos

Newspapers have proven to be my best resource the past month. A photo posted at FamilySearch for my great-uncle who was killed in WWII led me back to researching in newspapers. 

I've been searching for a photo of my great-uncle William Kappel for years. I was so happy to see his photo in the photo hints at Familysearch.org. The photo below obviously looks like it came from a newspaper. 

There was no source citation at FamilySearch. I did a little digging and found the same photo was attached to his Find A Grave page. There was only a link to a source for the photo at Find A Grave. The link took me to the  Field of Honor site for Margraten Netherlands American Cemetery. I had contributed to my great-uncle's page before. I was contacted by the cemetery for a photo of William. Unfortunately my family didn't have one. I'm very glad they found one. 

Thank goodness there was a source citation on William Kappel's page. I had not been to his page in quite a while and didn't know a photo was added. 

According to the citation the photo appeared in a newspaper called the Chicago South End Reporter, which was accessed through newspaperarchive.com. I tried to find that paper available online for free at Chronicling America and other not for profit sites, but I couldn't find it anywhere else. 

I then went to the paid subscription newspaperarchive.com site to find the photo. There was no date or page number in the citation so I searched on his name, William J Kappel, and filtered my search for just the newspaper in question. This didn't produce any links to the photo I was looking for. I thought maybe the name was just misspelled but even using variant spellings the correct entry never came up. 

What I finally decided to do was to search page by page through the Chicago Southend Reporter for the period just after his death. Doing this, bingo, he appeared on the front page of that paper a few weeks after his death. The photo was part of an obituary. 

I'm thrilled to finally have a photo of my war hero great-uncle William Kappel. The additional information about his work at Pullman and his wife and son are also nice to have. Most of my Chicago family members were employed by Pullman. 

The success I had with this newspaper research spurred me to do more. I noticed that another newspaper site, newspapers.com, had the Mattoon Journal Gazette available. My Mason/Owens ancestors lived in Mattoon from the mid 19th Century. 

I had used newspaperarchive.com before so I was familiar with the filters at that site. Generally their filters worked well for me in the past, but failed to bring up the correct article this time. I noticed that newspapers.com has fewer filters, which were harder to use I thought. Narrowing dates and finding specific newspapers was a little more difficult for me at newspapers.com. 

When searching for my Mason family in the Mattoon Journal Gazette I was able to get some hits just searching on the surname using the search feature. I was surprised at how few entries there were. Usually you find obituaries, and visiting reports when someone took a trip. I was just finding a few mentions regarding illnesses in the family. 

Learning from my previous experiences I decided to check the paper just after my great-great grandparents Peter Mason and Mary E. Owens-Mason died. I was able to find write ups about their deaths by using this strategy. 

I was thinking there had to be an easier way to find the family in the papers. I then decided to use quotation marks and search for each individual family member. That produced much better results. I think I've covered the Mattoon Journal Gazette pretty thoroughly now. 

I found several articles about the 1911 death of my great-great grandmother Mary E. Owens-Mason. Each mention included more names of people traveling to Mattoon to attend her funeral. Most of the Mason family, including Mary, relocated to Chicago around the turn of the 20th century. Mary died in Chicago in 1911 as detailed in the obituary below. 

There were a number of visiting notices in the paper for my Mason/Owens family. These notices were always very common. People love to see their names in the paper, which I'm sure increased subscriptions. I already knew Josie Durham was my great-grandmother Mary's sister. If I hadn't known, this could have turned out to be a key piece of information linking the two women. What is interesting is the address. I didn't have the name of the street where the family lived. Another newspaper notice gives the address of 4th street. It sounds like they lived on the corner of 4th street and Moultrie in Mattoon. 

I'm happy with where my research stands on the Mason/Masson family line, but would like more documentation for Mary Owens-Mason's family. I was so happy to see Mary's siblings listed as attending her funeral. This is further confirmation of her lineage. I will need to research some of the other names of people attending to find out if they are relatives? 

I found a few references to my great-grandfather Fred Mason. The first references refer to his battle with typhoid fever along with the rest of his family in 1885. 

 

Ada Mason was unlucky health wise because later she was also diagnosed with blood poisoning. 

Ada and her sister Ida were staunch Catholics according to the many articles I've found for them participating in church activities. Ada apparently was considering becoming a nun according to an article in the Mattoon Journal Gazette. Ada is often mentioned as a singer for Catholic masses and other entertainments. 

My great-grandfather Fred Mason wasn't that strictly religious apparently; he was arrested for theft in 1893. His son Claude followed in his footsteps which I will expand on in another blog post. 

I discovered something that surprised me. I didn't know my great-grandfather was married before he married my great-grandmother Helen Mullen. I am surprised it took me 20 years to find this out. I found a death notice for his first wife in the Mattoon Journal Gazette. Catherine or Kathleen Rafferty-Mason died on 22 October 1899. I was able to find a tree for this couple at Ancestry. 

This tree also listed two children born to this marriage. I had noticed these two children, named Vera and Claude, listed with their grandmother Mary on the 1900 and 1910 Census. In 1900 they were listed as her children, but in 1910 they were correctly identified as grandchildren. I had assumed they were illegitimate children of one of Mary's daughters. 

I was able to confirm Vera and Claude were the children of Fred Mason and his first wife using Catholic church records for the Springfield diocese in Illinois.

  

Claude's godparents were his aunt Ada and uncle Edward

The most important result of my search for confirmation of Fred's first marriage was discovering family photos attached to the tree of a descendant of Vera Mason, my grandmother's half sister. I had never seen a photo of my great-great grandparents Peter Mason and Mary E. Owens-Mason. That was a very exciting find! The photos also included some of their children which I had never seen before. Unfortunately I still don't have a photo of my great-grandfather Fred Mason. 

Using online newspapers requires some experimentation when it comes to the search features provided. Filters sometimes help narrow the search. Using quotation marks can help too. And sometimes you just have to search page by page. I don't assume anymore the search provided will pick up all references to a family. It is worth the time and effort because the information helps fill in the stories of our families. 

Using A Naturalization Certificate to ID old photos/ Plus Learning more about Naturalization

I've spent the last week and a half waiting for the mail carrier to bring me a naturalization certificate with a photo of my great-aunt Mary Kappel. The mails are slow these days with odd gaps in the days when I receive mail. In the past I've never gone days without receiving mail like I do now.

Last fall I received a bunch of copies of old Kappel family photos. These are the first photos I've ever seen of my great-grandparents and their family. Most of the photos were unmarked. I was able to identify my great-grandmother, Mary Kurta-Kappel; otherwise, if the photos weren't marked I had no idea who was in them?

Since I now knew what my great-grandmother looked like from identified photos I had a vague idea of who was in the photo below. The back of the photo also says Koppel (which was how the name was spelled in their native Austro-Hungary). I've been to the village the family came from, in today's Inzenhof, Austria, so I recognized the place the photo was taken. It appears the photo was taken outside a typical local house. I also knew that she visited her family in Inzenhof in 1908, and didn't return to the United States until 1910. I inferred the identities of the children based on the names on the 1910 passenger list for the family.

Koppel from the back of the photo. Written in the local German Script. 

I assumed the eldest daughter in this photo was Mary Kappel, she was the eldest girl in the family, who also appeared on the passenger list returning to America. It was just an assumption because this photo could have been taken on another earlier visit in 1904 when Mary had previously returned for a visit? The children could have been her nieces and nephews?

1910 Passenger list.

When I compared the photo above, using facial recognition software, I got a match between the child I thought could be Mary, and the woman in the photo below. They were 99.7% alike. I assumed they both could be Mary? I had no positively identified photos of her though.

Using my access to Ancestry.com through the Los Angeles Public Library I found a naturalization for her. I had no idea she was required to naturalize? It was an accidental find when I was looking for anything they had on her. I thought the fact her father naturalized automatically gave her citizenship?

Yes, she had to naturalize because she was born in Austro-Hungary in 1900. Her father Frank didn't become a citizen until December 1926. If she had been under 18 when he became a citizen she would have automatically become a citizen (my grandfather Rudolph just made it under the wire. He turned 18 a few months after his father became a citizen).

It was good for my photo identification project that she did have to naturalize. Sometimes the Naturalization Petition had a photo of the applicant. Unfortunately in both the case of Mary and her mother neither petition contained a photo. If you want a photo, and the naturalization was during the time period photos were taken, then you have to obtain the Certificate of Naturalization which is generally only available through the US Citizenship and Immigration Services or USCIS.

You can apply for a copy of the C-File at the website, and it costs $65 for copies of the entire file which may contain several pages or just a couple. It's easiest to request a copy using the certificate number you can probably find either using an online index to naturalization records or by finding a copy of the actual naturalization online that contains the certificate number. Without the number you'll have to pay for both an index search and the document retrieval. If they search both the index and retrieve the documents the entire process can take over 1 year. With the certificate number it takes 2 or 3 months.

Since I tried to contact descendants of Mary Kappel who matched me on my AncestryDNA test and I never received a reply my only hope of identifying her in the unmarked photos would be through the photo on her certificate of naturalization. I forked over the $65 again (which is a bargain because they wanted to raise the price to $300) and waited for the documents. That was back in early May. I didn't seem to get the option to view the records online this time, like I did when I ordered my great-grandmother Mary's C-file? My request was completed July 14th, 2020. I gave it a few days before dashing to the mailbox every time I heard the mail carrier.

After over a week of running to the mailbox I decided to email USCIS and asked if I could possibly view the documents online like before? Someone was nice enough to email the documents to me ( just went out and checked my mail again and still no documents?)

Looking at the photo on the certificate I wasn't sure if the woman, and child, on my previous photos looked alike? They looked somewhat  alike to me. Using Familysearch.org "Compare-a-Face" and Amazon AWS Rekognition they appear to definitely be the same person. Compare-a-Face leaves no doubt with an 100% likeness.

Amazon AWS Rekognition is a little more exacting when it comes to comparisons, and I feel it's the gold standard for comparisons. Their likeness is 97.9%. I feel like anything over 95% means it's a virtual certainty the two photos are of the same person.

Now I can attach all of these photos to Mary Kappel-Breckinridge at both Ancestry and Familysearch.org with confidence. If any of her descendants believe I'm wrong they can always contact me.

I was thinking my days waiting for documents in the mail were gone? Not everything is online yet. Nice to finally relax and not have to wait for the mail carrier! That's over, for now.

A Y-DNA Test Revealed An Unknown Problem then Solved it

The beginning of this journey

This story begins with a book written about our Forgey/Forgy family written in the 1950's called "A Genealogical History of Forgy, Forgey and Forgie in America" . In that book the author Lucille Forgy Wallace speculated whether all of the early families coming to America were related?  In 1958 there was no way to prove this because no documents survive that would prove or disprove a relationship. All of these families came to America in the 18th century. They were ethically Scottish but many of them came from Northern Ireland. Since all of these families were coming from the British empire there are no passenger lists to even trace these families back to a specific place, which might prove a relationship.

From Lucille Forgy Wallace's book

One of the goals of our Forgey/Forgy & Forgie DNA project at Family Tree DNA has been to test the hypothesis that all families carrying these names are related? A distant cousin of mine with the surname Forgey was the first to test for our group. That was back in 2011. His first match with a related surname was a Forgie. This match was a mismatch by 3 markers on 37 markers. Mismatching by this many markers does prove a relation, but that relationship would be quite distant going back to Ulster, Ireland or Scotland?

Initially having only one surname related match I checked the Y-Search and noticed there was another Forgy male in that database but that man had a different haplogroup. My distant cousin's haplogroup was I- M223 and the Forgy at Y-Search was in a different I-M253 haplogroup. I felt like maybe we were seeing proof all Forgey/Forgys weren't related? According to an Irish surname study and Lucille Wallace's book the Forgey/Forgy and Forgie surnames are variants of Ferguson. There are different unrelated Ferguson lines so it's possible all people with the surname Forgey etc. aren't related either.

My Uncle later tested and matched our first tester and distant cousin on 37 markers. They mismatched each other by 1 marker on 37 markers. They are now both in the Big Y project at Family Tree DNA, and they now have their own SNP named I-BY19896 which is hundreds of years younger than our previous SNP prediction. So we are confident that all of the Forgey/Forgys that headed south from Pennsylvania to initially settle Tennessee, along with the border area of Virginia, and North Carolina are all related.

Discovering a different haplogroup and possible different unrelated family line led me to seek out more people descended from that line to confirm there was another haplogroup and not an NPE.

A Surprising Thing Happened

It took me a few years to find another person in that line to test. In 2014 another male in the Robert Forgy DNA line tested. A surprising thing happened when his test results came in. He didn't match his distant cousin, who was a 5th cousin on paper, or anyone in our Forgey group which had now grown larger. Most testers matched the I-M223 haplogroup. This man was in a R haplogroup. Now we had two distant cousins who didn't match anyone? Did both of these lines have NPE's or just one? We needed more testers to find out.

Six years later

Fast forward 6 years later we had someone in another line which had not tested join our group. He was from the Hugh Forgey Revolutionary War veteran line. He turned out to be from the very common R-M269 haplogroup also. He had many pages of matches. One of his 12 marker matches turned out to be our R-M269 match that didn't match his cousin or anyone else. Our previous Robert Forgy descendant was only tested on 12 markers. These two men were perfect matches on 12 markers. With such a common haplogroup this could be a coincidental match? The 12 marker test needed to be upgraded to at least 37 markers, which we did.

Last Friday the upgraded results came in and these two men still match on 37 markers. I'm confident now there is a different haplogroup shared by those with these shared surnames. The I-M253 haplogroup could unfortunately be an NPE?

Our two R-M269 haplogroup matches mismatched by 2 markers on 37 markers. Our more distantly related testers tend to mismatch by two markers on 37 markers. There definitely isn't a close relationship between these two cousins. The relationship could be 300 or more years ago.

Does this prove that all Forgey/Forgys were never related? It certainly could be there was a line break hundreds of years ago resulting in different male haplogroups? Both of the R haplogroup men do match a Ferguson so it is possible that their surname comes from a different Ferguson line. We do now know there were two different male lines going back hundreds of years that aren't related. So it appears that all of the men that originally came to America were not related through the male line.

As more people from different surname lines test we might solve more mysteries and find more haplogroups. We may solve problems and find new problems to solve. DNA is always unpredictable.

All Forgey/Forgy or Forgies who have tested at Family Tree DNA are invited to join our project

Never Give Up/ A lesson from my Nicaraguan Research

I began my Nicaraguan family history research in 1999. I wasn't sure how to approach it at all before I had access to the internet in the early 2000's. I found a LDS Family History Library outline for Nicaraguan research posted online which laid out the record types and information they provided listed. According to the online church records went back the farthest, but I didn't know which parishes my family may have belonged to? I asked my mother and she said she provided her baptismal information to the parish church she married in here in California. I called that parish and they told me she was baptized at Nuestra Mercedes Church in Granada, Nicaragua, but they didn't have a copy of that document anymore. I was able to find a photo online of the church. After seeing what the old church looked like, and discovering the history of that parish went back to the late 1500's I really wanted to know how long our family belonged to that parish.

The only information on my Grandmother Graciela Del Castillo's family came from her death certificate which stated she was born in Granada, Nicaragua in 1893, and her parents' names were Nicasio Del Castillo and Elena Garcia. My mother had no other information. She said her grandfather Nicasio was a lawyer in Nicaragua. My mother was brought to America at age 3. She couldn't remember much about Nicaragua other than she rode a donkey and monkeys threw twigs at the family as they made there way to a ship that brought them to the United States.

Where My Family Journey Started

My journey to acquire more information from Nicaragua started in earnest in 2002 when I began writing to Nuestra Mercedes church and the civil registration office in Granada, Nicaragua.

I sent $10 for a search of the record books index of Nuestra Mercedes church for the marriage and birth records for the birth of my grandmother Graciela Del Castillo, and marriage of her parents Nicasio Del Castillo and Elena Garcia. I had no idea when my great-grandparents married but my mother said she believed my grandmother was illegitimate. I inferred that maybe they married soon after she was born. I had a date and year for my grandmother's birth. This search produced no results. I thought maybe my grandmother's family belonged to a different parish?

The Priest suggested I contact the archdiocese office, which I also did with no response at all.

I wrote a letter to the Civil Registration office in August of 2003 requesting a search for the marriage record of my great-grandparents Nicasio Del Castillo and Elena Garcia. No response at all either.

Someone also working on Nicaraguan genealogy told me the only way to get searches for certificates would be to go to the office in person. Since I could not do this myself and didn't know of any family still living in Nicaragua I decided to contact the US Embassy in Managua and ask for their help. They told me to fax the civil registration office in Granada and they gave me their fax number and I faxed them in 2004. This produced no results because my friend the Nicaraguan researcher was right. Another person told me that office doesn't respond to mail requests, only in person requests. 

In 2005 I wrote to the parish where my mother Edna Forgey-Kapple was baptized again. According to the church where she was married Nuestra Mercedes was the church she was baptized in. I thought maybe a relative might have been listed on this record which may have furthered my research. This time I received no response at all from them, unlike in 2002. 

I was 0 for 5 when it came to my search requests in Nicaragua. I continued my research off and on through Google searches on my names and searches for records online. I also posted on genealogy message boards for Nicaragua. I received a response from someone who had information on my grandmother Graciela's siblings, their children, and spouses (you can read the response I received here at Boletin de Genealogia) . 

When the Managua, Nicaragua civil registration records came online I was able to find some of my family's documents because my grandfather Charles Forgey was stationed in Managua as a US Marine. This information didn't take me any farther back because my grandmother's family lived in Granada likely for centuries. 

In 2015 a fellow researcher, and DNA match, contacted me and encouraged me to go out to Nicaragua where he said there was an archive that had census records for Granada which would at least take my family back another generation. Many records were lost when American slaveholders from Tennessee overthrew the Nicaraguan government in the 1850's hoping to establish a slave owning country for US slave owners. 

My Nicaraguan fellow researcher said Nicaragua was generally as safe as anywhere in the United States. I decided to take his advice travel there, which I did in December of 2015. I was able to review the Census for Granada, Nicaragua for 1882 when my great-grandfather Nicasio Del Castillo was 16 years old. He was living with both of his parents and siblings in the parish of Nuestra Mercedes or La Merced. I was not only able to add my great-great-grandparents Francisco Del Castillo and Alejandra Granizo, but I also was able to identify my 3 times great-grandfather also named Nicasio Del Castillo. I found the elder Nicasico in the census records and the many other records held by this wonderful archive. The staff was extremely helpful finding references for me. 

I actually visited Nicaragua in December of 2015 and 2016. Unfortunately the civil registration office was closed both years for the Christmas holidays. The church offices were also closed the weeks I was there. 

Someone not long ago contacted me stating they found the death certificate for Elena Garcia which stated she was the illegitimate daughter of Andrea Garcia. The death certificate also implied she never married the father of her children because it listed her as single. It then occurred to me that was why no records of marriage were found. 

FamilySearch Images

Last week I discovered the wonderful Familysearch Images page which seems to have some images not yet in the catalog where I usually access them (it could be they are cataloged in a place I haven't searched?). The Granada, Nicaragua records are also in the catalog where they are easier to search with better descriptions. . 

I had been searching for Granada, Nicaragua church microfilms and digital images for years off and on. This feature, which was new to me, encouraged me to try again. I had immediate success when searching my research area. I found church and civil registers were available. I had no idea these images were now available online. 

Since I have time on my hands while staying at home social distancing for COVID-19 I've been searching these book images nonstop for 2 weeks. It's really paid off. I've found images for all of the records I began asking for in 2002. It's unbelievable because I never thought I would ever see them. I heard local officials were against providing these records online. 

The first record I discovered was my grandmother's baptismal record in the archdiocese book for 1893. I knew she was born on 10 September so I was able to find the record quickly. I found out she was baptized as Lucrecia (her middle name) Garcia confirming she was illegitimate. There are indexes for baptisms making finding these records easy. 

I then was able to find her civil registration record. Her birth was registered by Nicasio Del Castillo which supports his paternity. The civil registration records listed her as Lucrecia Del Carmen Garcia.

My mother's entire family called Francisco Alvarado "Padrino". I had thought that was just a nickname the family used for him. I discovered from this, above, birth record  that Francisco was my grandmother's godfather. I didn't think he would be because he was about 17 when she was born. I've since discovered that anyone at least 16 years of age is eligible to be a godparent. In the will my grandmother Graciela wrote in 1956 she does write Mr. Albarado "mi padrino". 

Obviously since neither record lists a Graciela my requests for her birth information would have produced no results. 

I was able to find my mother's baptismal record and her name was correctly written in both the index and records. I was happy to learn the names of my mother's godparent. 

There are church baptism records going back to 1856. Civil registration records only go back to 1879. 

I was able to find my great-grandfather Nicasio Del Castillo in the baptismal index (which is an individual volume, you have to then find the book for that time period). I knew he was born about 1866 from the census. I searched a book for that time period and oddly he wasn't in that book? Sometimes there are several books for the same time period, which I discovered, he did appear in the second book also covering that time period. 

I was so happy to have a birth record confirming what I found on the census. 

I didn't know when Nicasio Del Castillo died, and there are no indexes for church or civil death records. Finding this record required searching pages of the easier to search church records books which covered the years 1904-1929. I knew he died after 1919 because I was told he wrote a poem for my grandparents' marriage that year. I also figured he probably died before 1925 when my family came to California because something seemed to happen to reverse the family's financial fortunes in Nicaragua? I decided to begin my search after my grandparents' marriage in 1919. After going through a number of pages I did find his death record in 1921. 

The church death record gave the correct approximate age for my great-grandfather Nicasio. Oddly it stated he was married to Elena Garcia which the children's birth records don't support?

I was then able to easily find Nicasio's civil death record in the un-indexed records for 1921. His son Samuel Del Castillo reported the death. Apparently he didn't have much family history information. It appears later someone added Nicasio's parents' names. It does appear that the clerk added this information around the same time judging by the handwriting and ink use. Elena Garcia is named as his wife again although I have been searching the marriage books and can find no marriage. 

Children born to Elena Garcia, registered by Nicasio Del Castillo, are all illegitimate. Rudolfo Del Castillo appears to be the last child born to Nicasio and Elena. He would have been 13 years younger than my grandmother. This child is registered with the local government by Nicasio in 1907. He was said to be the illegitimate child of Elena Garcia according to this record.

My grandmother's older brother Alberto Del Castillo claimed, according to his marriage record, that he was the legitimate child of Nicasio and Elena. My grandmother didn't know she was illegitimate until she was an adult and she asked her godfather, and cousin, Francisco Alvarado to confirm that. 

Reading through the records I'm wondering if there was some impediment which prevented them from marrying? In one of the books recording illegitimate children later recognized by fathers someone said they were not allowed to contract a marriage which prevented them from marrying the mother of their children. I don't know if there were laws regarding race, or laws that prevented cousin marriage? The records sometimes raise new questions.  

I knew from my previous archival research in Granada, Nicaragua that my great-great-great grandfather Nicasio Del Castillo died in 1884. Thankfully I didn't have to page through many pages for that year before finding his death record. The record stated he was a notary, which in Nicaragua is the equivalent of a lawyer in this country. He was said to be the legitimate child of Nicasio Del Castillo and Flora Lacayo. Two names I have added to my tree. 

I had absolutely no idea when my great-great grandfather Francisco Del Castillo died? He would have been born about 1840. No books survive for that time period. The death record would have been my best source for further confirmation of his parentage. When I searched the church records I found that his daughters Adela and Flora both died within a month of one another in 1919. The death records stated both parents were dead. Both parents were alive in 1882 I knew from the census. I did a page by page search for a death record, and any interesting information in the death records books beginning in 1882. Church records produced no information so I had to turn to the more voluminous civil registration records. 

It took me days to search the civil registration. I did find a death record for my great-great grandmother Alejandra Granzio the wife of Francisco. I have still found no death record for him and 3 volumes of death records are missing, and he likely died in a year covered by one of those books.   

According to  my great-great grandmother's death record her father's name was Marcelino Granizo. Her mother's name appears to be Gentas? I couldn't make out her last name. 

I decided next to look for records for the parents of my great-great grandmother Alejandra Granizo. The surname Granizo was very rare in Nicaragua and Spain. I love rare surnames because they don't require as much effort to research. I paged through death records because Alejandra would have been born in the 1840's and no books survive from before 1856. I began with the earliest records looking for all my family names, and for anything interesting. I noticed at the end of every year death statistics were recorded regarding the number of deaths and cause of deaths, which was interesting. 

I found a death record for Alejandra's possible mother, but her name didn't match the name on her death record? A Pia Gutierrez was said to be the widow of Marcelino Granizo according to this death record. She died in 1866 at age 60. I didn't find a death record for Marcelino so I assume he died much earlier. 

I had thought that Pia could have been Alejandra's step-mother. Going through the death records some more I found a death record for a likely brother of Alejandra. Vicente Granizo's death record says he was also the son of a Marcelino Granizo. He died in 1883 at the age of 44. If his age is correct he would have been older than his sister Alejandra. His record states his mother was Pia Fernandez. Did Marcelino marry a Pia Fernandez then a Pia Gutierrez? Possible, but I believe the informants of both deaths didn't remember the exact names of the decedents parents. They had a vague recollection the surname was a name ending in ez. My DNA results point to a relationship with a Gutierrez Nicaraguan family so I'm assuming for now that Alejandra's mother was Pia Gutierrez.   

Reading through all of the records I'm so happy to see that my ancestors were educated people. I'm happy they had an opportunity to learn to read, and write and follow a course of study in the legal profession. Below my great-grandfather Francisco Del Castillo is described as a Lawyer and Notary. 

My mother always said that she was sorry I never met Francisco "Padrino" Alvarado. Since I'm interested in trying to learn languages and love to travel we would have had a lot in common. I'm sorry I never met him also. She said he had a trunk that he traveled with that had stickers from all over the world. I'm sorry I was never able to meet my Del Castillo ancestors too. Their love of music and poetry would be something shared in common with me; and I'm sure we would have had much to talk about. Finally getting to see more of their records and seeing examples of their handwriting has been rewarding. If some photos surfaced of them that would be wonderful. However I'm satisfied for now anyway.