52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks #30: Easy ~ The Puerto Rican Pedigree of Antolina Quinones Y Quinones, Great Grandmother of Cristina Mercado ~

This week’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks theme is Easy.  The ancestry of Antolina Quiñones Y Quiñones is an easy limb of a Puerto Rican tree to chronicle, research, and source.

It is also a branch that has proven to be a never-ending fountain of interesting information.  I discovered beheadings, assassinations, battles, Conquistadors and exterminations of native populations, sugar lords and enslavers, spying intrigues, migrants, mayors, governors, settlers, Spaniards, Belgians, Italians, and cousins marrying cousins.

This is the pedigree of Antolina Quiñones Y Quiñones, the great grandmother of illegitimate Cristina Mercado I wrote about last week.  While I hit roadblocks on the descendants of slaves and Native Americans in Puerto Rico, for obvious reasons, Antolina’s ancestry seems to be one of the easiest branches I have ever investigated.

Antolina was born around 1750 in Loiza, Puerto Rico.  She is the 6 times great grandmother to the individual I share a close relation with.  She married Don Sebastian Mercado in Loiza and was the mother of the mayor “Alcalde” of Loiza – Don Leon Mercado Y Quiñones (also mentioned in last week’s post).

First of all, looking at her near ancestry, Antolina’s parents Ana Antonia Quiñones Y Ortiz De La Renta and Andres Quiñones Y Ortiz De La Renta were first cousins once removed and have traceable ancestry back to Spain and Belgium from individuals that came to the Caribbean as agents of Spain.  Face it – when cousins marry cousins, you have less to research!  Antolina is a descendant of the De La Renta line from Spain two times over.  She is a descendant of the De La Corte (Court) and the De La Maleta (Van Maele) lines from Belgium.  The De La Renta line came to the Caribbean in the 1500s.  The Belgians arrived in the 1600s.

Second of all, because Antolina’s mother descends from the Governor of Colombia and Puerto Rico, and the counselor to the brother of Christopher Columbus – Jeronimo Lebrón de Quiñones – her pedigree is well-documented, making it simpler for her descendants to research her antecedents.  Jeronimo’s brother Lorenzo was the presidente of Nueva Galicia and Colima in Mexico.

Jeronimo’s son Juan married Francisca Soderin Y de las Varas.  That is spelled Soderin – not an error.  They were both born in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.  Francisca’s father was born Giovanni Soderini in Florence, Italy in 1511 and died in Santo Domingo.  His nickname was “Florentin” – ding ding ding – a clue as to his true origins!  While researching his twig, I found him referred to as one of the “Caribbean sugar lords.”  He owned at least 200 slaves when he died.  Giovanni is the 12 times great grandfather of my relative.

Giovanni was not safe in Italy.  For years, his Florentine family had been at odds with the de Medici.  His father had been beheaded (something about a de Medici Pope ordering thus at the behest of Malatesta), so perhaps for safety, or maybe just for monetary reasons, or both, he became an agent of the Spanish crown and went to the Caribbean.

Lucky for researchers, there is the existence of the Soderini pedigree in the Libro D’Oro Della Nobilita Mediterraneo, along with the pedigrees of other Florentine ruling families Giovanni Soderini descends from, taking it even further back than a researcher like me could have imagined when I started out reading the United States census records in Puerto Rico from the 20th Century.  When a Soderini researcher consults the online source of the Golden Book of Mediterranean Nobility, they can simply take the names and dates and add them to their work.

Soderini Coat of Arms

One of the other ruling families of Florence that Giovanni Soderini descended from is the da Uzzano (Miglioretti) family, which is another fascinating twig.  Gonfaloniere di Giustizia Niccoló da Uzzano is the 18 times great grandfather of my relative and is another in Antolina’s line that has a plethora of information out there on him.  Would you like to see what he looked like in 1431?

bust by Donatello

There is absolutely no royalty in this twig that I know of.  It doesn’t matter.  There is no shortage of intrigue in medieval Florentine ruling families.  There is also no shortage of colonial history in the Caribbean background of Antolina’s ancestors.  This post has only just touched these narratives.  It is not true that you can only research back before the Reformation in Europe if you are royalty, because once a Soderini researcher hits the right line, you can go back to the 1200s in both the Soderini and da Uzzano branch.  Thank you KB and PV.*

Do you have any comments, corrections, or additions – please feel free to email me – cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net.

*PV and KB are relations of the Soderini and were some of the friendliest researchers I have come across while doing this genealogy.  If not for the both of them, and another researcher on a French genealogy website, I would have been stuck at the Lebron family and not researched the Soderini.  I lost contact with KB after Hurricane Maria in which she lost power for months.  I hope she and her family are okay…

 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks #29: Challenging ~ Update to Week #2 and Challenges on a Collateral Puerto Rican Line

Challenge Update

Earlier in the year for, 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, we were given the prompt Challenge. The link to that post on Filomena Napolitano’s potential Zingari ancestry and the challenge it presented is below.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week #2 “Challenge” ~ Second Great Grandmother Filomena Napolitano – Proving, Disproving, or Accepting the Existence of Romani Relatives in Her Immediate Family ~

I have been researching more of Filomena’s father’s ancestry in Nola, Italy and would like to give an update.  I am convinced the Marotta line from which her grandmother Rosa descends was Italian Romani (Zingari), and that Filomena’s Marotta cousins and aunts and uncles were Italian Romani, as evidenced by the multitude of her relatives being referred to as cart drivers, with some as recent as the 1860s.

Further, Filomena’s great grandmother was part of another Zingari family in Nola.  I tried to trace where the oldest of that Criscuolo line may have come from.  I was able to trace back to a Gaspare Criscuolo who was born around 1700 in the Kingdom of Naples.  Unfortunately, for record keeping purposes in Nola, as they relate to his grandchildren, nobody could remember when or where Gaspare died, or where he came from.  There was even an odd reference on a record that stated tha he and his wife Catterina might have been from Naples but they were not sure.

There is more to be found in Filomena’s lines and down the road I will have to put into writing what I find in Nola.  I don’t believe these Southern Italian Zingari were part of a marginalized ethnicity as we see in groups allover Europe today.  It should be noted that for the time period I am researching, Romani were still enslaved in Moldavia and Wallachia.  I believe mine had already blended with the populations of Campania, not like in Moldavia and Wallachia.  Wouldn’t it be amazing if someday the church records from the Cathedral of Nola became available online?

Current Challenge – Puerto Rico – Pedigree Collapse

The current challenge in a collateral line in Puerto Rico is probably a common one for many researchers.  No father listed.   It is great for Puerto Rican researchers that many church records pre-United States involvement on the island are online at Family Search.  These records are not indexed and if they were, I would not trust them.

While looking for the marriage record of a third great grandfather of the individual I was researching, Jose Felipe Escobar Y Lopez, to bride Cristina Mercado in Nuestra Senora del Carmen in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico in 1867, I noticed that she had only one appellido.  I thought maybe it was a priest’s error.  But she was referred to as hija natural of Doña Bernarda Mercado.  Bernarda was also listed as single on that marriage record.

Just in case, I confirmed by finding Cristina’s baptism.  Sure enough, no father was named for Cristina.  Doña Bernarda Mercado Y Cardona was the daughter of the mayor of Loiza, Puerto Rico, Don (Alcalde) Leon Mercado Y Quiñones.  Then, from there, the research on the Quiñones line got easy – which leads to next week’s prompt Easy.  But because the father of Cristina Mercado is unknown, there was a total pedigree collapse where her father’s family branches upwards.   Perhaps with DNA expertise, this common research challenge could be solved by today’s family detectives.

Do you have any questions on my sources, comments, additions, or suggestions?  Please feel free to email me.

-cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net.

 

 

 

 

 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks #28: Reunion ~ Elisabetha Scheid Bold

A couple of years ago, I wrote about my third great grandmother Elisabetha Scheid Bold after I had discovered she came to America to follow her children as a widow. It was a surprise that she was on a passenger list with her daughter Rosa, leading to a reunion with her children. In the very the least, she reunited with those that had stayed in New York City.

Who is Elisabetha to me? She is the mother of my immigrant second great grandmother Emilia Anna Bold Leies. Elisabetha was born in 1822 in Rodalben, Germany to Johann Jakob Scheid and Catharina Buchler. She was baptized by the oldest brother of her future husband, Father Peter Bold. Elisabetha married Franz Jacob Bold in 1842 in Nunschweiler, Germany. Their children Emilia, Alexander, Anna Maria, Richard, Ferdinand, and Rosa came to the United States under the following circumstances:

 

• Emilia came about 1866 at age 23 to Wooster, Ohio. It is a mystery who she came to meet and reside with until her marriage to my second great grandfather Johann Leies.  He too arrived in 1866.  I should note I do not know the year of their marriage.
• Alexander came in 1866 at age 16 to Wooster, Ohio.
• Anna Maria came in 1867 at age 15 to New York City. I do not know who she stayed with until she married in 1868. Her first cousin Franz (Frank) Scheid was also an immigrant that year and he may have already been living in New York City.
• Richard came at age 17 in 1871 with his brother Ferdinand who was 13. Richard went to Chicago and stayed with Alexander who had moved to Chicago until he married. They both became Chicago police officers.
• Ferdinand stayed in New York City. I speculate that he stayed with his sister Anna and her husband, also from Nunschweiler, Jacob Leies until he married. Ferdinand and his family were living in the tenement that collapsed and is known to history as the Grand Street Tenement Disaster. His wife and child survived. His in-laws perished.
  
  

  

  
• Rosa came with her mother Elisabetha in 1880 at age 19 to New York City.

I have so many questions.  What could it have been like for Elisabetha to send her young children across the ocean without her? What was that bad in Nunschweiler that caused her to do this? Was it something at home? We will never know why. She may have even thought she would never see them again. I wonder if she had a reunion with her Chicago children, especially my ancestor Emilia.

In 1900, according to the census, she was listed as aunt to the head of household Jacob Werlein. Because I am unable to map their relationships to Elisabetha, I can’t determine whether she was the aunt to Jacob or his wife Louisa. Elisabetha passed away in 1906 in New York City.  She outlived all of her children except Alexander.

Does anyone reading this know of Elisabetha? I would love to hear from you! 

Do you have additions, comments or deletions? Please feel free to email me at the address below!

-cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks #27: Independent

This week’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge is Independent.  There are many in my tree that fall under this prompt.

My immigrant second great grandmothers Emilia Anna Bold Leies and Anne Marie Aloisia Heinzen strike me as two independent women of their time because they both made the trek to this country without the benefit of being accompanied by parents or a spouse.  Emilia may have come with one or more of her brothers, however, Anne traveled alone.  Emilia’s mother, Great Great Great Grandmother Elisabetha Scheid Bold is another.  She came to the United States after the death of her husband in her old age to live out the rest of her days.  Does that mean Emilia inherited her independent nature?  I am positive her sister Anna did, because she came to New York City alone at age  15.

My immigrant second great grandfather Fritz Eckebrecht, who gallavanted across the post-war South and lived with the Comanches, all while he was still a teenager, also comes to mind.

So does my great grandfather Cesidio, an immigrant who came to America alone to earn money for his family still behind in Italy.

My great grandfather Serafina must’ve been extremely self-sufficient and busy raising the children while Cesidio was in America.

Lastly, I also think of my immigrant second great grandfather Italian Army Captain Angelo Ferraro because he was there on September 20, 1870, when the Italians Captured Rome from foreign armies during the Italian War of Unification.

Happy Birthday to my great uncle, Father G. John Leies, born on today’s date 110 years ago!  He started the hunt!

 

–cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net