Yesterday Carole and I went and visited Tepatitlan de Morelos. It's in Jalisco about 90 minutes from Chapala. It is now a prosperous city of about 100,000. It is the city where records, specifically church records are kept that go back to 1683 when the church was founded. My family, the Vasquez (grandpa) and Barajas (grandma) people were from the village of La Capilla de Guadalupe about 15 miles away. The village is located at the 6,500 ft level on the Cerro Gordo, an 8,000 ft mountain. Grandpa was born on the Rancho del Durasno (peach) and grandma was born on the Rancho del Aguacate (avocado). Tepatitlan, also know as Tepa, for short, is nice and clean place and without grafitti. The day trip was to generally acquaint me with the city and to look for a museum that gave the history of the city. We found it. Our local taxi driver who took us on this trip also was our translator. Long story short, we learned a lot about Tepa's history. After an hour the museum docent took us to a book store that specializes in local history. The proprietor of the un-named shop (common in Mexico) then put street maps and 100 pictures of the old Tepa on a CD for us. We also about two small books on the history of Tepa and Capilla de Guadalupe. The owner asked about my grandparents names. When I told him grandpa's name was Vasquez, his eyes lit up. Of the very earliest foundes/and settlers was a man named Vasquez de Coronado, who came over with Cortez from Spain in 1520. "Your people" are descended from him. I gave him grandpa and great grandpa's names and he said that he would try to find out if he could find any history on them, and let me know by email. Very Cool! I also bought two nice small poster pieces of the coat-of-arms of the Vasquez and the Barajas families of Spain, since that where's all of our names come from.
A couple of days before this day trip i went on Ancestry.com and found the 1930 census records, which, had the first records of my dad's family in the US, they were living in Los Angeles. The web site also showed that someone with the email name gnatwhite had been also saved the same census records. I have a cousin Nathan White, who is the son of my dad's sister Josephine (Josie). I emailed him via the web site and Nathan did indeed confirm that I was his cousin. Even cooler yet! I've have been trying to find cousins for two years but without success. I have wanted to share the 30 page family history that my dad researched, going back to about 1795, to as many relatives as I could. Today, Nathan's wife Linda (Spanish for pretty, btw) emailed me with some updates on aunts and uncles that she is aware of. WAY WAY COOL! I'll send her a copy of dad's family history, a picture of dad, one of myself then and now and hope to regain family relationships long ago lost. Some of my aunts and uncles are gone now, are my mom and dad. The tios and tias have to be in their 80's and possible older. Time is important. Nathan and Linda have given me a crucial lifeline to the past, and a link to the present. I an very much looking forward to reconnecting where I can. I haven't seen cousins mostly since childhood, and Theresa Fernandez at my brother's second wedding in the 80's. I am so jazzed!
Very cool!
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