Another view

 

Calisphere, Keystone-Mast Collection. Valparaiso.

From a similar vantage point in the photo shared yesterday of Valparaiso, Chile taken by famed photographer Carleton Watkins in 1852, the undated photo above shows a booming town. Perhaps Gabriel Vasquez took in this view before departing on a ship for the voyage north to Mexico. Maybe he traveled with an older brother or uncle.

Keystone-Mast Collection. Vina del Mar, Valparaiso.

Below is a view of the city and port from an opposite vantage point taken in 1861, with the Iglesia de La Matriz visible on the left side. This was taken at least three years after Gabriel had left Valparaiso.

William Letts Oliver. Valparaiso, 1861.

Revisiting Gabriel

 

Carlton Watkins. Valparaiso, 1852.

While I await news from the Parroquia La Matriz in Chile, I'm revisiting the documents mentioning Gabriel Vasquez in Mexico. The informacion matrimonial from 1863 has detail that I overlooked previously, so it is worth blogging about this again. There are two versions of this document from December 1863, one from Altar, Sonora, and another version submitted to the church in Hermosillo, along with the marriage record from 11 February 1864.

FamilySearch. Marriage record, 11 Feb 1864.

The informacion matrimonial submitted to Hermosillo has a different look than the handwritten one I reviewed back in 2012, and has typewritten text with blanks to complete the information provided by the parties to be married. As with the other record, this one was completed by Bartolome Suastegui, the parish priest of Altar, Sonora, on 18 December 1863. The handwriting is faint, but there are some interesting details that I didn't see in the original document.

Sonora Church Records, Hermosillo. 1863.

This document lists Gabriel as a 25 year old merchant, who has been in Altar for the past five years. His bride-to-be, Maria Jesus Suastegui, is listed as 17. The document also clearly lists the witnesses, or testigos, for Gabriel and Maria Jesus. The first testigo is Jose Ortiz y Loroña, a 25 year old laborer from nearby Oquitoa, who said he had known Gabriel for five years.

The second testigo is Oriol Sotelo, a 30 year old shoemaker. He also said that he knew Gabriel for five years, putting his arrival in Altar from at least 1858, when he would have been 20 years old. Oriol also testified on behalf of Maria Jesus, and stated that he had known her since she was born, indicating that he was a friend of the Suastegui family. There was no fourth testigo on the document.

The handwritten informacion matrimonial was completed the day before, on 17 December 1863 in Altar.

As far as I can tell, Gabriel does not appear in any other records in Sonora earlier than 1863.

A Leap

 

Iglesia de la Matriz, Valparaiso, Chile. 1863.

Since learning about my Chilean ancestry connection back in 2012, I have tried over the years to reach further back for information on my 3rd-great-grandfather Gabriel Vasquez, and his parents Jose Vasquez and Agustina Rojas. In 2013, I wrote to the Archivo Nacional in Chile. I received a response, but it generally pointed me to the resources on FamilySearch, which wasn't very helpful. Nine years later, I'm poking around again for Chilean records.

This week I emailed the Diocese of Valparaiso, who responded quickly that for the date range I'm looking for, I need to check with the church at La Matriz, which was the first in Valparaiso. A church has been at this location since 1559. I immediately reached out in Spanish to the email address for the church, and received a response from the secretary confirming receipt. I have fingers crossed that somewhere in those records is a baptismal entry for Gabriel, and perhaps a marriage or other records on Jose and Agustina. Hopefully more to come soon on this line of my tree.

Valparaiso is high on my travel wish list for a future visit.

Comparing DNA Ethnicity Results with MyHeritage

After seeing the latest AncestryDNA update, I thought I'd do a comparison with the results from MyHeritage. I downloaded my raw data from the AncestryDNA test, and uploaded them to MyHeritage. It took about a week. This morning I received a message from MyHeritage that the results had been processed. There are some curious differences in the percentages between Ancestry and MyHeritage.

MyHeritage DNA ethnicity estimates, 2022.

MyHeritage has me at:

- 28.5% English

- 22% Scandinavian

- 20.9% Irish, Scottish, Welsh

- 11.3% Italian

- 7% Mesoamerican & Andean

- 6.5% Middle Eastern

- 3.8% Greek & South Italian

The percentages for Scotland, Ireland and Wales are similar to the results from Ancestry. The high percentage for Scandinavian is a bit off from Ancestry, which has England & NW Europe much higher. The result for Mesoamerican & Andean is comforting, and close to my Indigenous Americas - Mexico result on Ancestry. I like that MyHeritage also shows a high confidence for the genetic groups Mexicans in Sonora and Arizona and California, as well as Chile, which matches up with AncestryDNA and my own research.

The high concentration for Italian and Greek/South Italian is a little weird. I wonder why Spain doesn't show up, but Middle Eastern does.

The results are interesting, but not substantially different from the past few years of reports from Ancestry. I do like some of the other tools offered by MyHeritage, including the Chromosome Browser and the AutoClusters tool. Ancestry's Thrulines may better than MyHeritage's features. I'll continue checking out the differences and the research offerings with MyHeritage.

In the meantime, there are some new-to-me records for Chile on FamilySearch.

Valparaiso from another view

 

NYPL Digital Collection. Valparaiso, Chile.

Back in 2012 I wrote about my 3rd-great-grandfather, Gabriel Vasquez, who was born in Valparaiso, Chile around 1838. That post included a black and white image of a lithograph of ships entering the port at Valparaiso in 1830. I found a color version of the same picture in the New York Public Library Digital Collection by Jean Louis Tirpenne.