Part 1: Fourth Great Grandparents - Jose Maria Lara y Maria Guadalupe Peres.

I hit a brick wall with my 4^th great grandparents, Jose Maria Lara and Maria Guadalupe Peres.  They likely married in a parish near Tarimoro, Guanajuato prior to 1819.  Their marriage record, which is not indexed on FamilySearch, had eluded me.  The only parish in the vicinity of Tarimoro with marriage records not indexed for the time period when they could have been married is San Bartolome in Rincon de Tamayo.  I went page-by-page in hopes of striking water. 

Here is the record.

Jose Maria Lara (JML) and Maria Guadalupe Peres (MGP) were married on February 18, 1817, in Rincon de Tamayo, GTO.  They were both widows – which is somewhat uncommon because widowed husband typically find a young single woman to remarry.  Marriage records usually do not list the parents of a widow, but instead mention the deceased spouse and their place of burial.  One of the first things I look for in a marriage record is the name of the groom’s parents (the groom is usually mentioned before the bride).  The lack of parental information requires extra research.

JML’s first spouse died approximately ten months prior to his nuptials to MGP.  His first spouse is listed as Maria De Jesus in both his marriage informational and marriage records to MGP. An omitted surname makes it significantly more difficult, if not impossible, to find the record of a prior marriage. I’ll use what I can from his records to verify and complete his life story. I know the following about JML:

• Mestizo/Español (no Indigena)
• 34 years of age in 1817
• Originally from and resident of Huapango, Tarimoro, Guanajuato. 

I should note that in 1817, Huapango fell under the religious jurisdiction of Salvatierra; Tarimoro did not have a parish back then.

The death record for Maria de Jesus could aid me in tracking down her marriage record because of vital information - such as her age, surname, and residence - that it could contain.  The more I know about Maria de Jesus the more confident I can be in my research.  I'm hoping that JML's marriage to Maria de Jesus contains the names of his parents.

JML’s second nuptial records state that his first wife was buried in the Rincon de Tamayo Parish.  I take that to mean that she was buried in the Parish’s cemetery and not literally in the building.  This also led me to believe that her death record would be in Rincon De Tamayo's archive.  The death records for this parish are not indexed, so I had to search page-by-page.  Given that she passed away ten months prior to March 1817, I figured that I could find her record sometime in the first half of the 1816 records.   Unfortunately, the pages for the entire 1816 year were omitted from the online records.  The records for 1815 and 1817 were included, but 1816 was nowhere to be found.  The search for her ecclesiastical death record in the Rincon de Tamayo records came up empty. 

I turned my attention to finding their marriage record.  

A search on FamilySearch turned up a few marriage records for JML and Maria de Jesus that caught my attention.  Below is the most likely candidate. 

Name    Jose Maria Lara

Spouse's Name  Maria De Jesus Mandujano

Event Date          11 May 1802

Event Place         San Bartolo, San Bartolo Agua Caliente, Guanajuato, Mexico

Father's Name    Jose Antonio Lara

Mother's Name  Andrea Duran

Spouse's Father's Name  Nicolas Mandujano

Spouse's Mother's Name               Juana Paulina Ledesma

The actual record also states that he is from Huapango, a small rancho, which is an important fact because it matches the residence of JML in his second nuptial records. This gave me some confidence that this record could be a match.  San Bartolo Agua Caliente is about 20 miles or 31 km away from Huapango. 

Because I don't have sufficient information from Maria de Jesus to verify this record, I had to do some additional research to verify that I'm on the right track.  My first step was to find the birth records all of their children.  I wanted to know if they had any children born after 1816. If I'm on the right track, how could she have any kids born beyond the year she passed away.  JML and Maria de Jesus Mandujano (MdeJ) had several children together, all born before 1817.  Their last child was born on March 1816, approximately ten months before JML married MGP.  

The lack of records of any kids born to JML and Maria de Jesus after 1816 gave me confidence that I might have found the correct record.

My next step will be to catalog the baptisms and marriages of the children of Jose Maria Lara and Maria De Jesus Mandujano.  If she is listed as deceased in their marriage records - according to my theory she passed before any of her children were of marriage age - then I’ll have more confidence that I’m on the right track.

Another reason why I search for marriage records is because they often list children that could not be found through searching for baptismal records.  It's possible that the records available online do not have all the baptismal records for siblings.  

Lets see what the records tell me.

Citations:

"México, Guanajuato, registros parroquiales, 1519-1984," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9G2M-S9PZ?cc=1860831&wc=3VH8-3TP%3A167586901%2C167586902%2C169430301 : 20 May 2014), Rincón de Tamayo > San Bartolomé > Matrimonios 1810-1868 > image 156 of 482; parroquias Católicas, Guanajuato (Catholic Church parishes, Guanajuato).