I have not always been a hunter of the dead. I was always curious about the history of my family when I was growing up. I would ask older relatives about even older relatives and about the times in which they had lived. My father’s family all lived in Spain, Cuba, or Florida and I did not know them so I had little information on them other we were Basque from northern Spain, had been warriors in the middle ages and had a coat of arms. But time marched on, I made the Coast Guard my career, married, had children, and ceased to inquire.
After I retired and divorced, I had a girlfriend in California who was quite the Genealogist which made me curious about my own name. I knew my mother’s family back to the great-great grandparents and my father’s side back to his father and mother’s given names and that his father had been born in Santander. I knew his maternal grandfather and both his grandmother’s surnames but none of this grandparents given names . This would later stop me in my tracks for awhile. In 2001 Julia the genealogist girlfriend and I queried Google for results on the Bolinaga and found very little and my interest in family history again slumbered.
A question from my youngest son a year or so later as to where we came from re-awakened my interest family history and I became a hunter of the dead.
By this time I was aware of the LDS Family Search Website, Ancestry.com and Google had much more to say about the Bolinaga than before.
I bought a copy of Family tree Maker and began entering into all of the Bolinagas I could find, then realized that there was such a thing as spelling variations and entered them as well. I made decision to do a name study of the Bolinaga/Borinaga/Boliaga surnames. I still did not know exactly which line we fit into but I had a very comprehensive picture of the Bolinaga around the world from the 1500’s onwards.
I researched my mother's family names -- Midgett, Ewell and Whitehurst in eastern Virginia and the Outer banks of North Carolina and found quite a bit of information on them. I learned to order films and read photocopies of the actual sacramental records of my ancestors in the aldeas in the Valle of Leniz, how find records in the archives of Spain.
I made finally made contact with a long lost aunt, my father's full sister, and found out the given names of her grandparents and where they came from in Spain.
I began to learn Spanish, Latin and French to help me read records. I studied the ancient, medieval and modern history of Europe to help me understand the context of the records I was finding.
I did genetic testing to unlock the secrets of my deep ancestry and found some surprises in both may maternal and paternal lineages. I will do a separate post on that subject alone later.
I began to take college courses in anthropology to gain insight in the cultures I was encountering.
The Catholic Church in the Basque Country of Spain in cooperation with the Basque government began to index all of their sacramental records and publish that index online making finding the dead much easier. Google Books came along making me aware of mountains of research previously hidden in books unknown to me in libraries of the world.
I have now have a database of over 150,000 souls, most of them related to me or to someone who is related to me.
In short, I have become a hunter of the dead; those who can be much harder to find than those who live.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
In Principio
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hi, Mr. Bolinaga. Found your site out of curiosity after reading your post at Dienekes'. Something inside was ringing Bolinaga is a Basque surname, so I had to check. Curiosity and the cat, you know.
ReplyDeleteI can't probably help you much with your research but this item called my attention: ... had been warriors in the middle ages and had a coat of arms.
The case is that, because of the rather horizontal Basque society and for reason of the pacts with Castile, in the Middle Ages all were gentry, at least in Biscay and Gipuzkoa (often in Navarre and Araba too). It was called "universal gentry" ("hidalguía universal" in Spanish) and served, at least in theory, for Basques to be treated as legally noblemen and not as mere peasants in the rest of the Crown.
If you read on the life of Lope de Aguirre, his quarrel with the judge of Lima was because this one had got him whipped and, because of being gentry, he should not have been legally. Not sure if you know the story but the case is that Aguirre followed the judge until he found the occasion to murder him, so hurt was his pride (and so stubborn and ruthless he was).
The case is that most Basques were legally gentry but in practice yeomen. They often had (and still have) their family crest sculpted at their farmhouses, specially if they were somewhat cult and well off. These farms were indivisible upon inheritance what kept them middle sized - but they were family farms normally, just that. Of course there were some that were rather wealthy and influential (jauntxoak = "lordies") and had upon a time tower-houses (mini-castles built upon the farmhouse) and led parties of militias but mostly Basque hidalgos were just peasants. Free peasants though.
They formed militias for the defense of the provinces but would only work outside them as mercenaries. That was also estabilished by law. Basques could not be conscripted either, except for the case of local defense, as per above. But many Basques served as mercenaries or professional soldiers anyhow, more often as sailors probably, because the inheritance system always generated a excedent of young people who had to find their way in life somehow (soldier, sailor, merchant, priest, artisan, farmhand, buy a new farm, search fortune in America...)
Maybe you know directly that your ancestors were warriors but anyhow, I hope this note helps to contextualize your findings.
Agur.