Several years ago, ok, more like 15 or so years ago, I was attending my dad's family reunion. Back in the day, the family reunion was held every year. My dad was one of 10 living kids so it was normal to have close to 100 family members attending the reunion. It was very easy for me to not remember who was who because for all of my growing up life, I lived with my mom. I knew my mom's family like the back of my hand. We usually visited them every weekend and in the summer, we has several sleepovers at my Uncle Charlie's house. At this Luna (My dad's family) Family reunion, my dad was re-introducing me to my Aunts. After the introductions, as we were walking away, my dad asked me if I remember my aunts. I told him no and for the next few weeks after I felt sad. Sad because I knew so little about my dad, how he grew up, and who his family really was. So this sadness spurned me into action and I started learning what I could about genealogy and started researching my Dad's family tree.
I found out a lot of things that I never knew about my Dad's family tree. When I first interviewed my Dad, I found out that my dad was not one of 10 kids, but one of 12 kids!!! From the very beginning he told me that the other two kids died very young. With my Dad being the second youngest, he really didn't have a lot of memories or details, but he told me that one died when they were a baby and the other was a boy who passed away around 12 years old from appendicitis. So for the last 12 years or so, I had no clue who these other two kids were but they always had a spot on our family tree.
Last week, after paying for and using Ancestry.com, I found who I believe is the young boy. His name is Marcelino who shows up in the 1930 Census as a 5 year old. He was 10 years old when my Dad was born but I don't have proof of that because the 1940 Census won't be available until sometime in 2012. But I was still wondering who the other child was. During the research that I did last week when I found Marcelino, I found other pieces of information that helped me truly understand my family immigration to this country. I had several years ago found that my Grandfather Tiburcio had immigrated in 1918 with my Grandmother, two daughters named Jesus & Jucua and my Great-Grandmother (Tiburcio's mom) Monica Fernandez from my Grandfather's Application for Naturalization records. What I found out last week was that my Grandfather didn not come with my Great-Grandmother, she came with his brother Lino almost a month later. I found this by getting a copy of the Immigration Manifest that everyone immigrating to the US had to fill out. It wasn't until the day after finding this document, that I found the other child.
The document that I looked at was the front of the Manifest, I didn't scroll down to see the back side of the form which list my Grandmother Vicenta, My aunt Jesus "Jessie" who was 6 years old, and my new aunt Simona who was 5. Well finding this information made me sad again, because I knew that I found several years ago, my Grandfather in the 1920 Census and Simona was not listed with his family. So that leads me to conclude that she passed away sometime between the time they immigrated to the US through El Paso, Tx in July 1918 and the day the 1920 Census was taken.
So for the rest of my genealogy research, I will be finding a family for Simona. I feel a need to bring all of this together for her so that all of my family, both near and far will know of our long lost Aunt Simona.
