Genealogy Chat

How can I trace my spanish ancestors?

Google

spanish genealogy

!

You'll get loads of results -- in English -- that should give you a start, at least in learning what resources are available.

This site (which belongs to a genealogist who provides services for a fee) says:


http://www.spanish-genealogy.com/

1. You cannot trace your ancestry using only microfilm and the internet.
Civil registry - birth certificates and so on - exist in Spain only from 1870 on. Before that, family trees have to be built mainly from the sacramental records of the Catholic Church - baptism, marriage and burial records. The simple fact is that (for a variety of reasons) most parishes have not been microfilmed and never will be. Unless all of your ancestors happened to live and die within one of the dioceses that has been microfilmed, you're going to need someone to go to the appropriate archive in Spain and consult the original records.

The same is true for tracing one's Spanish ancestry over the internet. The internet has become a wonderful asset to genealogists everywhere, and those tracing British or American ancestry, among others, can make significant progress using a variety of pay-per-use websites operated by private enterprise. Unfortunately, there is no such online resource for Spanish genealogy.


-- unfortunately, the site seems non-functional (in the same way as when you try to look at notes for individuals in trees at GR -- no scroll bar) so I can't read much more than that!

You'll probably find that much of the information available is US-centric, i.e. aimed at people in the US researching early Spanish-American ancestors.

Someone else here may have more direct knowledge and advice, but you can't go wrong if you just start by searching the net for what's out there!

Thansk all! At least I have an idea of where to start!

Just another suggestion --

Google the names you're looking for, in various forms. E.g., if you're looking for John James Smith, try

"John James Smith"
"Smith John James"
"John James" Smith
"John J Smith"

etc. My gr-grfather's sister married someone whose uncle had a wife and kids in Chile, and I've found that the Spanish family in question has had a fair bit of genealogy work done on it, and there are family trees on the net with info about the wife's ancestry and some descendants.

A Spanish friend of mine told me that huge numbers of Church records were destroyed during and after the Civil War and it was impossible for her to research her Barcelona family.

Jan