Forgotten gravestones in the Basque Country

Previously... 

I had the opportunity to visit Barcus and Esquiule last​ year, their churches, graveyards and town halls. But only Marie Larrory was supposed to be buried there (Marianne Etchegoren migrated with her family shortly after Marguerite Lerdou was born). Unfortunately she was not in the grave of the present-day Larrory and she could be buried in one of the many unkept headstones which names are almost completely erased. 

We waited for the town hall to open and asked for information regarding these tombs. They had none, the oldest records went missing a long time ago and recommended to try to identify them by gravestone rubbing. They were many headstones in this pitiful condition and we were only there for the day. I guess a collaborative restoration and indexing project is in order.

Carved in stone? Cemeteries and headstones as a Genealogical resource.

When you start playing rock-paper-scissors, you may intuitively consider the paper as the weakest element and the rock as the strongest. But the beauty of the game is showing that all three elements are just as resistant. It just depends on how we use them.

Unless you are very very lucky, you've been there, you've seen the paper trail vanish in front of your eyes: lost baptismal books, torn marriage records, missing pages of a notary's archives, whole churches burned to the ground (yeah, thank you, Carlist Wars) or plain and simple bureaucratic stupidity.

But of course, silly me! It is just paper! So you consider using a tougher material. After all, that is the whole purpose of a headstone: eternity.

Some headstones display a lot of information, besides the usual dates of birth and death, and the FAN (Friends And Neighbors) strategy can uncover even more data. Moreover, if you are well versed in the subject of funerary art, you could even come up with an accurate profile of the family's socioeconomic status. So, again, the strength of this resource depends on how we use it, but also, the cultural context of our ancestors, and our own.

I've had avoided cemeteries as much as possible. In my culture (catholic-based but no more, extremely urban and obsessed with youth), you can easily ignore they even exist. But then I visited France and found myself walking around the well kept graves by the church of a village in Alsace. They didn't have tons of information but many had those telling details of lives well lived and suddenly, I didn't find it so gloomy. Then, it became easier, and, given the chance, I would visit the cemetery whenever I visit a village.

But when it comes to bigger towns, it is a whole other story. If they are not glamorous historical places where you can find A-list celebrities like Oscar Wilde in Pére Lachaise, Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir together in Montparnasse or Evita Peron in Recoleta, they can be quite sad.

Left: Oscar Wilde in Pere Lachaise, Paris. Center: Jean Paul Sartre & Simone de Beauvoir in Montparnasse, Paris.
Right: Eva Duarte de Perón in Recoleta, Buenos Aires.

But again, what are the chances of finding your great grand uncle buried next to Jim Morrison? (Hopefully, very low, the place is a mess).

Their big advantage is that they usually have an administrator, databases, a direct phone number and an e-mail address (seems obvious? Well, some of them don't). So when I started to work in Genealogy and ran out of resources to find information about that narrow time-frame between my elder's memories and public available data, I had to chose rock. Luckily, at least two of the main branches of my tree had established in the same town back in the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina (and their cemetery has an institutional e-mail address!).

I wrote my first email asking about my Sosas 8 and 9 with estimated dates and got an immediate reply from the administrator. 8 was there, and I got an exact date of death, but 9 wasn't (she was quite a character, actually). I've continued to email for information about other ancestors so I could ask the civil registry for death certificates, which were free of charge if you can provide the exact date (if you can't, you can pay, they will take your money and still not search for the records). I was filling the information gap faster than ever (except for my dear Margherite, who's date of death was missing).

Later the same year, I had the opportunity to go home and took my parents to a Genealogy road trip to our ancestor's town. Long story short: the copy machine of the civil registry was broken (so, logically, no searches), there was nobody in charge of the records in the church and the café across the main square was closed for mourning. Everything seemed to point out in the same direction. So we finally visited the cemetery. My contact was on vacation but I got a glimpse of how they had their files organized: a big poster with the coordinates of the parcels and an excel sheet that can only be opened in a very old PC that runs on Windows 3.11. Of course they have the original books but when we don't know the dates, it will take them too long to find what we need.

Big deal! All the information is carved in stone, right? Well, maybe initially it is, but sometimes headstones or metal plaques are removed, changed and summarized, losing all those telling details a database can never reflect.

To be continued... in France and Italy...

The Etxe strategy

Previously... La theorie de l'escargot.

Recap: After one unsuccessful attempt, one not even tried, and one shortcut, I found a way to leave the comfort zone and try a new technique to search for Marianne's hometown. Voici, la Etxe!

Esquiule is part of the Basque Country and for the Basque culture, the father's house (maison in French, Etxe in Basque) remains in the family for many generations, if not forever. This way, the houses become lieu-dit or landmarks and sometimes the street also carries the family name. There could easily be a Maison Etchegoren nearby.

So where in the area may the Etchegoren house be? According to Google maps, there is a maison Etchegoren and belongs to Barcus, the closest town to the West. This house is also mapped in the cadastre (a map that registers the properties of a certain district). 

Right: Cadastre of one of the districts of Barcus. Left: detail with the maison Etchegoren and neighbours.

I browsed the Tables Decenales of Barcus around 1818 for the birth of Marianne (who was 34 years old at the time Marguerite was born) and the next decade for her wedding. I found a Marie Etchegoren in 1815 (math was not their forte, or they really liked to lie about their age) and the wedding in 1843 of Gabriel Lerdou Hilarreguiborde with a 27-year-old Marie Etchegoren (born about 1816). Was she the same person?

Fortunately, the mayor of Barcus in charge of writing down the act clears this out for us: "Marie surnomée (a.k.a) Marianne Etchegoren". Both acts also name Marianne's parents: Benoit Etchegoren and Marie Larrory.

The marriage record has an extra hint. Before the name of her mother, there is the particle "feue" which means the late (as in deceased). Marie Larrory had died before her daughter's wedding and I found her death record in 1838, she was 51 years old but the only information of filiation is regarding her husband and his house.

This was a new opportunity to test the Etxe theory: Google it, or even better, Cadastre it. The house of Larrory is literally down the road (take another look to the detail in the picture).

Unfortunally, the Tables Decenales don't go back in time forever and neither does the civil registry.

But, it is still to be continued...

La theorie de l'escargot...

Previously... Un ticket pour Pau, s'il vous plait.

Recap: I had traced Margherite Lerdou all the way back to Esquiule, France, where she was born and cofirmed the names of her parents: Gabriel Lerdou Hilarreguiborde, born in Esquiule, and Marianne Etchegoren, born elswhere. Seems like I will be heading... Elswhere.

Leaving your comfort zone is not easy, but since you are already there, you might as well get something done. So I tried my old trick of Geopatronyme for the Etchegoren lastname but with only 5 hits between 1891-1915, the distribution was not going to mean much.

There was an even older trick, that I hadn't used before, and that some experts like to call “L'escargot”. No, it doesn't mean it will take forever to search for records in other towns, quite the contrary. We grab a map of the area and we pin the last known residence of the person (in this case was Esquiule, where Marianne gave birth to Margherite), that will be the center of our cloud of possible hometowns. Then, it is pretty much like connecting the dots, we draw a line to the closest town and the next dot should be as close to the center as possible (you will probably end drawing a snail, which I hate so I don't care about representing them correctly).

It does seem logical and sometimes it works. But we must keep in mind the circumstances in terms of Geography and History. What if there are mountains (like in this particular area) and towns are better connected by the roads of the valley than across the mountains? What if there was an exodus towards the cities?! Which cities?!! Where they moving east to reach the Mediterranean, or west, towards the harbours of the Atlantic to migrate to the Americas???
Don't panic, there is still one more trick that I learnt later and should work very well for those researching their Basque roots.

To becontinued... NOW!

How to use Twile for Genealogical Research

Twile is a website where you can upload your tree and create timelines for your family. It is free and accepting feedback. Speak now or forever wonder why you cannot find what you need.

As soon as I learned this tool became free, I signed up and started to test it. I had been waiting for a tool that would not only list my ancestor's events (birth, residence, marriage, death, etc) in chronological order, but also, put their lives in context.

Location, location, location.

I had used the maps where you can pin down the events geographically, which gives you a nice idea of the cultural origins, migrations and clues about where else to find records. But it became clear, early enough, that the town where my great-grandmother grew up, although in the same geographical spot, was not the same in which her daughter grew up, nor where her grand daughters were born. And you should see it now, because you can, if you go to Google Maps and use the street view tool. But how about then ? And when is then exactly ?

« You are forgetting the fourth dimension, Marty ».

Time is the key resource when using Twile. You sign up, upload your tree (even transfer from FamilySearch, although it has some issues with « special » characters, like simple accents) and you chose the Timeline view, which you can customize to suit your needs. At least some of them for the moment.

So, what's in the timeline ?

The most basic information would be the recognizable fields you already have in your tree (mainly birth, marriage and death), and then you can add milestones (education, voyages, prices, recruitment, etc).

You can chose to display the timeline of either one person, you and your direct family and, the whole tree (meaning everybody you have transferred or uploaded). So, for example, you could visualize how the events of two houses occur in parallel until their children get married ; or whether the length of generations is even among branches.

Context, context, context.

But what makes it really stand out is the possibility of adding historical events, this is what really gives you context. However, it is highly biased towards USA history. You do get WWI and WWII events and Inventions, which I emphatically recommend to understand why there are no pictures of your 5x grandfather's car (no, not even on Instagram).

Screen capture of several juxtaposed branches (from Argentina, Spain and Italy)...
plus the invention of the car.

I decided not to be shy and send them some direct feedback (down right corner talking balloon that reads Talk to us) and they answered later by email (not a bot!) : they are working on it (already aware of the special character's problem) ... and they are open to suggestions.

Make History Yours

So I started to brainstorm (with me, myself and I, these gals are nuts...) some ideas and I'm still pondering whether I should share them and how. Here are some of them:

• Go Global: of course, world, country or regional history are the first things to add (no-brainers, no umbrellas required). 
• Contemporaneous but not mixed: I would also like to display the lines of different branches in parallel so if they their origins are different you can customize their historical events (say Italians and Irish). 
• Stop clutter: The ability to narrow the time-frame or the branch we want to display would be useful too (maybe it is there, I haven't seen it, I know you can delete events but didn't dare to) to avoid clutter. And export or print would be nice too (the image was a screen capture).

Considering that it is a free tool, and hoping it stays as such, it should be able to profit from user generated content, which users can upload and share, evaluate and improve, like packs of events for a specific purpose (fashion, political movements, musical trends, etc). Let's also go wiki and encourage the experts to validate content.

Those were just the first raindrops of the brainstorm. 

Try Twile, send feedback and let's go dance in the rain.

Mind Map my Research

Genealogists may come in all shapes and sizes but if there is one thing we have in common is our thirst for knowledge. As such, some of us have learnt on the go and keep looking for opportunities to learn new techniques and improve the quality of our research.

I came across a great opportunity this year to test my methods and get everything straight from the beginning. I joined a free MOOC at FutureLearn called Genealogy : Researching YourFamily Tree.

I wanted to share one of the concepts that were discussed very early during week 2 : Mind mapping.

Mind mapping is a graphic way to organize your ideas hierarchically and experts like veteran genealogist (his words) Ron Arons are using it to improve their research.

Yes, it does sound like we've been doing this for years one way or the other but, sometimes, we've been restricted by space, or our system is far from reproducible, or we just simply don't like to doodle.

Don't panic ! There is an app for that, many, actually, some free and I tested one of them.

Mindly offers a basic app for free (with in app purchases) and I installed it a few days ago. I was able to learn how to use it in less than 10 minutes and it took less than an hour to translate my to do list looking research plan into a nice constellation of concepts.

Here is how they looks like in an early developmental stage.

I started with the main topic which was : Finding information about my great great grandfather Cipriano. Then I split the information into 3 different bubbles : what I know (Bio), what I want to know (Questions), and where to look (Sources). Each of these bubbles contains facts or clues or questions. For example inside Bio we will have Birth, Marriage, Children. Inside Questions there is Date and Place of Death. Inside Sources I will add links to only the likely sources (no point to look for him in Thailand, for instance). They can also contain images and links. When I find an answer from Questions I just move the bubble to Bio. And voila !

Did I break my brick wall ? Not yet, of course.

Am I motivated to do the research in an organized way ? Totally.

Does it look awesome ? You bet it does !