For Alice BB - Interpretation of Tomas' Message

Alice,

Below is the interpretation of Tomas Alejandro's message; I cannot call it a translation because I am not fluent in Spanish as are Tomas, Arturo, etc.

Emilie
Hi, Ricardo,

It is a great pleasure that you wrote to me and to know that we share the same interests in genealogy and in our dear Pueblo el Valle de Guadalupe, Jalisco.

You tell me that you weren't born there. Tell me where you were born, where you live, and what you are involved in at the moment.

Thanks also for the genealogy you found; I think it is the one I sent myself to a world genealogy project about 6 or 7 years ago, that they present to you as a project not costing anything and that will be available publicly. I sent them what I had investigated up to that time, with great hopes that in truth it was a database open to the public, but it appeared that that was not possible and always there is that economic interest on their part, and all that information I sent (and I am sure they did this also with others) now appears in a private database and if you want to access it, you have to pay, with the respect that they take advantage of my trust and that of others in order to make themselves rich. I hope that at least they have the decency to give me credit for the information as the author of the research and the submission of that information. Maybe you can tell me, since it appears you paid for the information, I hope that at least they give me a mention, al
though I
have no knowledge of the commercial aspects, since I sent them the information with the hope that they were a public site and that anyone could consult and contribute to a world-wide genealogical database.

Exactly what is that database that you can access, where you say they have lots of information about Los Altos de Jalisco and how much does it cost to access it?

I am sending a copy of this e-mail to Monica Lynn Gonzales Ponce the webmaster of Valle de Guadalupe.com, to which I give thanks also for contacting me and putting me in touch with you. How nice that there exist several sites dedicated to El Valle de Guadalupe.

With respect to my parentage from Jose Isavel Villegas Franco and his sons Rigoberto and Cornelio, I wish to tell you that he is my cousin in the second degree, and his sons would be my nephews, since the father of Jose Isabel was the deceased Zeferino Villegas Gomez, first cousin of my father, and the father of Zeferino was my great uncle Jose Blas Villegas Navarro, brother of my grandfather Francisco. I do not have the pleasure of knowing Jose Isavel and his sons and I would like very much to know them, and get their information to complete my genealogy. I don't know if you can give me the information in order for me to contact them. It is strange that Jose Isabel is my cousin since he was born in 1938; he is almost the same age as my father who was born in 1932, but that is the way it is. There are many members of the Villegas family whose surname is Villegas Franco since three sons of my great uncle Blas Villegas are: Zeferino, Marcelino and Jose Luis. They marrie
d three
sisters: Simona, Mariana, and Elisea Franco Gomez, and from what I have heard (I don't have all his genealogy) they were very prolific marital unions, since each had a minimum of twelve children. In general, all the children of my uncle Blas (whose first marriage to Mariana Gomez resulted in 8 sons and not one daughter, a good thing for the continuation of the surname Villegas), had many children and descendants; like I said, all had a minimum of 12 children.

For certain I have doubts that I would like to resolve, and I would like to see if you or someone else reading this can help me. I have not found all the baptism records for the brothers of my uncle Francisco; I want to one day go to the parish of the Capilla de Guadalupe, that has recently been made a municipality in Jalisco, and I have to do it directly because shamefully the Parish of the Capilla de Guadalupe and of the Canadas de Obregon have not been microfilmed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), thus they are not available in the Family History Centers.

My great-grandfather Tomas Villegas Flores (in whose honor they named my father and I was named for both of them) appears to have baptized his children in the Capilla de Guadalupe, since it appears it was closer than El Terrero and closer than La Llave where he lived, so say my father and his brothers. It seems my great-grandparents Tomas Villegas and Paula Navarro had 18 or 19 children; this number seems a little exaggerated to me and I was told of the following children: Jose Blas, Modesto, Jose, Antonio, Regino, Francisco, Maria, Isabel, Merced, Francisca, Serapia all that my father and his brothers know of and mention. I also have found the baptism records of Jose Tereso de Jesus who was baptized the 15th of October of 1873 in the Capilla de Gadalupe, 5 months after the marriage of my great-grandparents Tomas and Paula, and I deduce that this marriage was one of urgency since my great-grandmother was four months pregnant when they married. The godparents of this fir
st child
were my great-great-grandparents Jose Felix Navarro Bandin and his wife Guillerma Franco Gomez, parents of Paula. It seems this first child died as an infant, and I still have to find his death record. I also found the birth record of Maximiano on the 29th of May, 1881, who also seems to have died in infancy, thus I only have references for 13 children, and it is correct that my father and uncles say that references to 5 or 6 others are missing.

I also would like to solve the mystery that at the minimum three of the brothers, Jose, Regino and Antonio Vellegas Navarro left to work and live in the United States in the decade of the 1920s approximately, and since then nothing was known of them, nor where they went to live, nor how many children they had, nor when they died, nothing, absolutely nothing, so far away from their family and the land that gave them birth, and that is another of my anxieties to know what happened to these three uncles, where they lived and died in the United States and if they have descendants so I can contact them. Perhaps you or someone who reads this can tell me how to find out the destiny of these three great-uncles in the United States.

Later I will send the old photos, inherited from my grandmother Mucia Gutierrez Ramirez de Villagas so that they can be seen publicly to see if someone recognizes them and can identify the people in the photos.

You also tell me that you have several books on genealogy. Could you give me the titles of the books you have? I want to tell you that for several months I have been a member of the group and site Genealogia, which initially was dedicated to the genealogy of Northern Mexico, principally Nuevo Leon, but has now been extended to include all the regions. The website is: http://www.genealogia.org.mx and it would be an honor to have you join the discussion forum. God willing you will become a member and we can count on your amiable presence and knowledge. Through this forum I found out that Dr. Don Marinao Gonzalez Leal, great historian and genealogist, which you must know about, now uses the internet and he is subscribed to the group Genealogia Mexico on Yahoo, to which I recently subscribed in order to contact Don Mariano and which I tell you about in case you want to subscribe. The link is the following: http://mx.groups.yahoo.com/group/genmex/

Greetings from Guadalajara; I await your response:

Tomas Alejandro Villegas Gomez