A few years back I met my cousin Rio Healey-Diaz when he visited Los Angeles from New Zealand on his way to Mexico to discover his heritage. Rio is the great-great-grandson of Jovita García Díaz Higgins Cunningham. While Rio was here, my cousin David Hernández described to him the location of the graves of my… Read More


My 2x great aunt Jovita García was the sister of my great grandmother Jesús García de Alvarado. Great Aunt Jovita was born 7 Mar 1893, probably in Ensenada, Baja California, the youngest of nine children. She came to California with her mother, María del Rosario Moraila de García, around 1910, settling in Santa Paula and… Read More


Cathedral of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, Culiacán

When I first began working on my family history, I was surprised to hear the maiden name of my great-great-grandmother María del Rosario García (1854-1924), carefully recorded by my mother in her bride’s book: Moraila. That was an unusual Spanish name. Could it have really been Murillo, or something similar? Her mother’s name was Verdugo;… Read More


Last week I visited family in El Paso, and one of the things I did with my dad and some cousins was to see historic San Elizario, just outside El Paso. Aside from checking out the historic presidio chapel, founded 1789, where my ancestors were baptized, married and buried, I was curious to see the… Read More


The hand-written family history provided by my great-grandmother, Jesús García de Alvarado (1871-1966), has proven invaluable in building out the Alvarado line of my family history. At the same time, it has presented some conundrums. This article proposes a theory of our Alvarado lineage back to the Spanish colonial era, seeking to reconcile church records… Read More


In a previous post I mentioned that I had discovered that my great-grandparents José María Alvarado and Jesús García were married in San Diego on 10 Sep 1895. But where in San Diego? They had apparently met in Ensenada, and we do not yet know why they chose to be married in San Diego. The… Read More


Because the first children of my great-grandparents José María Alvarado and Jesús García de Alvarado were born in Ensenada, Baja California, and José María had indicated on his petition for naturalization that he emigrated to Los Angeles in 1899, I had always assumed that they were married in Ensenada. In a comment to a previous… Read More


Sonoratown along Buena Vista (North Broadway) From Fort Moore Hill

The city of Los Angeles, El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles, was founded on September 4, 1781 by a multi-racial group of settlers from Mission San Gabriel. The city continued to grow slowly; its leaders generally Californios of the landed classes who had received vast tracts of land, the ranchos, by grants from… Read More


On April 18, 1898 my great-grandaunt Trinidad “Trini” García married Victor Federico “Freddie” Goldbaum in Ensenada, Baja California. She was born about 1878 in Alamo, Sonora, the daughter of Francisco García (~1843-~1899) and Rosario Moraila (~1857-17 Nov 1924). He was born 20 October 1862 in San Francisco, the son of Louis Goldbaum (1832-1899), a Jewish… Read More