Mea Culpa

I got so caught up in doing more genealogical research on the family that I missed posting earlier today. Whoops. However, I'm kind of excited because I think I've finally found the Irish branch of the family. I'm basing that on the surname of my 4th great-grandmother via my paternal grandfather's side. I looked up the surname and saw that the origins are based in Ireland (in Galway *swoon* of all places). So, that's my excuse. However, it is sort of still Catholic related since, once again, I am using old church records of baptisms and marriages that Catholic priests kept. I'm sort of stuck in the early 1800s (1800-1830) right now but here's hoping I get unstuck soon.

Anyway, I've just spent hours doing this so I'm going to take a break from the laptop and eat (yes, I eat up until 10:30 p.m. sometimes) before I say my prayers. Oh, and I totally got back into praying the morning prayers today. Score!

That's it for now. As always, thanks for reading and God bless! :D

Genealogy through Church Records, Part One

I don't have much time to write as I'm in the middle of finding a lot of information on my mom's birth family (she was adopted) but, wow, God bless the priests and parishes who kept detailed records of marriages, baptisms, and confirmations.

I'm currently going through pictures of old (1555-1996) baptism records and I've already found my maternal great-grandparents... who mom didn't even know about. I've been having better luck with mom's side of the family because they were, well, wealthy and lived in a part of the country in which records were kept safely during the Cristero War. I've tried looking up info on dad's side but I get stuck in the mid 1800s since a lot of the fighting happened in the part of the country where that side of the family still lives. Apparently, the anti-Catholic folk burned a lot of the church records in the town my paternal family is from.

It's all so very fascinating and I would recommend anyone with some free time to try it out. You never know what you'll find out; I personally found out that my great-grandfather was baptized on my birthday, 105 years before I was born. How cool is that?

Anyway, just wanted to share this. It says "part one" because I fully intend to make this a series (or, at the very least, have a follow up).

I hope you all have a great week. :D If you have prayer requests, let me know. :D

As always, thanks for reading and God bless!

Family Tree and Baptismal Anniversaries

While working on the family tree this past Sunday morning, I discovered to awesome things: my mother's and my baptismal anniversaries. Furthermore, I discovered them on my baptismal anniversary. :D

See, I've been working on my family tree for months. I like history so looking at one's own family tree has always fascinated me. I'm currently stuck in the early-mid 1800s as many records were burned during the Cristero war (the town where my paternal grandparents and family lived at the time saw a lot of action, apparently) but I hope to find something to get me unstuck. Also, I'm pretty sure I'll soon find something that confirms whether there's some Irish ancestry on my paternal grandmother's side of the family (as is believed). The Spanish line, I'm happy to report, runs deep. ;)

As for my mother's side of the family, it's a little harder to find. My mom was adopted when she was days old and her adoptive father (yes, she was raised by a sole parent) didn't get many things in the process. Mom's been on her own since she was young so we didn't know much about that side of the family. Thankfully, I was able to find church records from the town she was raised in and found something she hadn't known her entire life -- whether she was baptized as an infant or not.

I skimmed through all the records of the year she was born until I found her birth date. I stopped skimming and went through them slowly until I found her. Her name, the name of my maternal grandmother (who had a different surname than we thought), the name of her godparents, and the name of the priest who had baptized her. It turns out that she had been baptized at a day one, which she never knew. Mom was baptized, did her first communion, and was confirmed when I was 3 years old... but it sounds like it was a conditional baptism since they didn't know whether she had been baptized or not. Anyway, needless to say, mom was so excited that she hugged me and was on cloud nine the rest of the day.

I was curious to see my own baptismal records (which my mom happily produced) and saw that my own anniversary was this past Sunday. That's right, I celebrated 28 years (yes, I'm that old :-P) of being Catholic on September 1st. With my mom's birthday and baptismal day being this month as well, you can bet we've found new reasons to celebrate. ;)

Anyway, I thought this was neat so I wanted to share. Okay, I really wanted to write and couldn't come up with anything else so I chose this to write about lol. Never let it be said that I don't try. ;)

I will have something to write for tomorrow's What I Learned Wednesday post... and hope to have it published early enough.

Now to have a late lunch and try to stay cool despite a leaky A/C and heat in the triple digits.

Hope y'all are having a great week thus far. :D

As always, thanks for reading and God bless!