Updated My File

Hi, Everyone:
I updated my genealogy file folder. I added some more names to my surname
list and I placed my updated ancestral charts in the file, removing the old
charts. You will note that one of these charts is called a "Preliminary"
chart. This is because it is the information I am basing my research on. I
put it into chart form to aid my research and show Nuestros Ranchos members
more clearly the direction this body of research is heading.

This "Preliminary Cabral Ancestral Chart" is based on the research I have
done on my Cabral family history, plus what I have found on the IGI and
Family Search Pilot website. I put this all together with the information I
have been so fortunate to receive from my newly found cousins in
Guadalajara. Using this chart, I hope to follow this as a guide to learning
more about my Cabral ancestry. I cannot say enough kind words of gratitude
and appreciation to Sergio Alatorre for all his hard work and willingness to
share so much with me. And, I give thanks to his brother, Roberto Alatorre,
and also to Eduardo and Rodrigo Cardenas. I am so happy to have found out
about all of you and I hope that I will be able to meet all of you in
person. Hopefully that will be sooner than later. I also hope that we can
continue to help one another with our research.

My Cabral family history research began with the stories handed down and
certainly embellished and filled in where memory began to fail. It was said
that Benigno Cabral, my great-great-grandfather, was a Portuguese merchant
sea captain and that he had met Pioquinta Gonzalez Figueroa and eloped from
Spain to Zacatecas, Mexico. The full account is a wonderful story, but its
truth yet awaits discovery. I can imagine the embellishments added to
comfort a disquieted child who can't sleep late into the night. Yet, fact
or fiction, it is like a lantern that is held far ahead on the path and
beckons me to follow.

So far, the search has remained primarily in Guadalajara where the children
of Pioquinta and Benigno lived out their lives and where, one by one, they
have all been buried. Finding their birth records on the Family Search
pilot website, I was led to Huejuquilla El Alto, Jalisco. In Pioquinta's
death record that Sergio Alatorre found, it states she had come from there
and it gave her parent's names, Ignacio Gonzalez and Antonia Figueroa.
There was also found a record of one Jose Benigno Cabral born to Jose
Manuel Toribio Cabral and Josefa Limas in Huejucar, Jalisco. So, this is
where I am looking now. I had not been too successful in the past, but I
have had so much help that I feel I am finally making progress.

Corrine Ardoin
Santa Maria, California