Hello everyone. I am George Luna, a recent addition to the ranchos group. I started last July researching my family. I knew my grandparents names (Casimiro Luna and Maria Marquez) and that one of my uncles was born in Juanchorrey. My mother's side of the family is from El Paso via Chihuahua so I excluded that side of the family in my file. Joseph's advice about oral history is great, but in my case no one (my father and his three brothers and sister) didn't want to talk about their father when I first got interested in 1973. I dropped the subject (a mistake, but I was busy with family and a career as a Math professor) until I semi retired (teaching one quarter per year). My father was born in Taft, California and one brother and sister in Arizona and Bakersfield, California, resp. I knew that my grandmother and the 5 children were deported to Mexicali in the early thirties and that they grew up in Tijuana, BC. My father was working in San Diego in 1943 when he was drafted (he was after all a U.S. citizen) into the Navy. He served in the Pacific on the destroyer USS Adams. He died in 1993. I was born in San Diego in 1940. I first found the family in the 1920 census. I also found Casimiro's parents Macedonio Luna and Secundina Lopez in the same census. All were working in San Bernardino on the railroad. Since none of that side of the family is in the 1930 census, the online search was fruitless. That is when I went to Salt Lake City (I have been there three times, a week at a time) and discovered through census, baptism, marriage, and death records not only what happened to Casimiro and Macedonio (still can't find out about Secundina), but a pedigree chart with many de la Torre, Correa , Carlos, Gonzalez. I had on my chart a Andres de la Torre and his son Jose Maria de la Torre when I connected with the book: José León Robles de laTorre, Filigranas, Fundaciones y Genealogias, Tepetongo, Zacatecas(Torreón, Coahuila: Editorial del Norte Mexicano, 1999). Many of the names and fragments coincided with what I had; only the Gonzalez portion has discrepancies that I need to check out. In any case, at least one direct line has been established to Diego de la Torre (born in Spain in 1482) cofounder of Guadalajara, Jalisco and first governor of Nuevo Galicia. There is an apt quote by the Mathematician Mordell that goes something like "it is the ignorant miner who finds the nugget". I apologize for the long post, but I hoped it would explain the specificity of my search. I am looking in the Juanchorrey, Tepetongo area for: Casimiro Luna, Juana Zuniga, Crescencio Luna, Leopoldo Luna, Macedonio Luna, Secundina Lopez, Luisa Correa, Miguel Eusebio Gonzalez, Miguel Gonzalez, Ana Maria de la Torre. Maria Rosalia Gonzalez, Maria Antonia Valdez, Nicolosa Carlos and anything that might connect to the names in the file I posted. Thanks for your patience. It continues ?
