Good information.  

I have one also, what about the last name Garcia de la
Cadena-some of my relatives went with Garcia and
others went with Cadena (which I'm having a problem
finding).  Can anyone from Zacatecas Jerez help me
with this one?

Alberto Duarte

--- Erlinda Castanon-Long <longsjourney@...>
wrote:

> Welcome to the wonderful world of genealogy! What
> I'm sharing may 
> sound very trying but I must tell you the longer you
> do genealogy 
> the more satisfaction you get when you work long and
> hard and your 
> family is reclaimed after going through many
> records. I found a 
> record I'd had for 3 years the key to taking my
> Gutierrez family 
> from 1750 in Jalisco to 1650 in Michoacan! At other
> times I can 
> thank another person who's shared their information
> and records that 
> opened a door for me. My husband had done the
> records for his family 
> back to 1854 and found someone else online through
> Familysearch.com 
> who'd done that line back to mid 1500's and was more
> than willing to 
> share including documentation.
> 
> When I started reading records I would discard all
> names that were 
> spelled differently... WRONG!!! I now know the
> families seldom even 
> saw the records and the people giving the
> information were not 
> always the people the records were about.  There
> were many times 
> where the scribe put the grandparents as parents and
> the birth dates 
> were very wrong. I have a marriage record for an
> ancestor that says 
> he was 50 but he was really 72 when he married a
> second time! 
> 
> You may find the people using different names during
> their lifetime, 
> I have an ancestor who appears as Antonio Carmen,
> Jose Carmel, 
> Antonio del Carmen but they are all the same person.
> I've found 
> times when the men all used the fathers surname and
> the women used 
> their mothers and grandmothers surnames, they have
> been very 
> challenging to put together as siblings.
> 
> I've found the spelling of their surnames change
> from record to 
> record with the scribe and local customs being in
> control. De la 
> Cueva becomes Cuevas, De Los Rios became Del Rio and
> then Rios...  
> De Avila became Davila and Avila. De la Torre
> sometimes stayed that 
> way or changed to Torres. And then their are the
> families who got to 
> chose which one of the hyphenated surname to use..
> Villasenor y Jaso 
> became Villa or Villasenor with other siblings using
> just Jaso!
> 
> It sounds confusing but once you get familiar with
> the names and 
> style of the records for that area it all comes
> together.. The parts 
> of the puzzle finally fall into place and you
> understand why we do 
> this... to honor our families and to reclaim a
> history many of us 
> never knew existed.
> Best wishes in your search
> Linda in Everett
> 
> 
> 
> 


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