Trinidad

 

Ancestry. US Border Crossings, Calexico, CA.

One of my long running research questions has been to resolve the connection to the Guerrero-Leyva mystery matches on my Mom's side of the tree. In August I tried using the DNAPainter matrix tool on these matches. I've also tried Ancestry's new clusters with ProTools. Now I'm looking at traditional genealogy to see what the records say about how these people connect together. 

My Mom's mystery match CH has 219 cM in common across 9 segments, so it's a strong match. There are a lot of shared matches of matches to CH, including many living individuals in California and Arizona, so I'm going to limit some of the personal data I share with this post. A potential complication I see is there are hints of endogamy, with matches sharing matches who I would not think should be connected together, on both my Portillo and Campuzano sides of the tree.

CH's mother was Trinidad Leyva. She was born in Mazatlan, Sinaloa on 20 January 1892. All signs point to the connection somewhere on Trinidad's paternal or maternal line. The record above from her 1941 US Border Crossing entry in Calexico, California shows a reference to her Alien Registration number. I've submitted a query to the US National Archives in Kansas City for a copy of her A-File (I've had good luck in the past, so fingers crossed).

Mazatlan is a bit south of our primary location in Sonora for my Mexican side of the tree, but Northern Sinaloa does appear as an area where we have a specific connection. Trinidad's maternal line appears to come from the borderlands with Sonora as San Javier is located in the far northern part of the state (within the darker brown in the image below).

AncestryDNA. Ancestral Journey for BAJ.

On the primary side of the border crossing record above, dated 31 July 1941, Trinidad was crossing from Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico into Calexico, California with her daughter Rosalva Guerrero. This record tells us a lot, who she was visiting in Mexicali (her cousin Amalia Silva), and who she was going to live with - her son Ignacio Guerrero Jr. in Calexico. In addition to her birth location and birth date which repeats across other records, there are other identifying details and a photo.

Google Maps.

Ancestry. US Border Crossings, 1941.

An earlier border crossing record shows Trinidad going to Glendale, Arizona between September 1923 and January 1924 with three of her children - Inez Guerrero, Ignacio Jr and Rosalva. She had another son, Francisco Guerrero, on 9 October 1924 in Glendale. Trinidad had at least these four children with Ignacio Guerrero Sr, before she had two children with Jose "Joseph" Rivas in Calexico, California. CH is one of those two.

My Mom has a DNA match from CH's brother James, and several from children of Ignacio, which tell me our common connection is backward from Trinidad's branch. This is also exactly the spot on the tree where I know very little, other than my 3rd-great-grandfather Manuel Portillo (born about 1830-30 Aug 1880). I don't know his parents, so one of them may connect to Sinaloa and the Leyva family.

Something else of promise, in CH's most recent Ancestral Origins update, she had 17% Indigenous Americas Mexico, 14% Iberian Peninsula Spain, 7% Northern Spain, 6% Portugal, 2% NW Italy, 2% Sephardic Jews in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1% Sephardic Jews from Northern Africa.