MY FAMILIA : MORE ROOTS UNCOVERED

For my familia on the Torres side, which includes all the Kitå'an but also the Sauro clan and a whole bunch of others I don't even know about, I accidentally came across a legal document from the year 1861 that more than likely takes our family tree back to 1800 or so.

WHAT I ALREADY KNEW

Family information, backed up by the 1897 Guam Census, shows that our family goes back to :

PEDRO RODRÍGUEZ TORRES

and his wife

JOSEFA SAN NICOLÅS PÉREZ

But, till now, I couldn't go further back with Pedro.

Then, maybe ten years ago, I came across the vey document showing how Pedro Rodríguez Torres bought the house he lived in in Hagåtña, the same house our family lived in before the war, from his cousin IGNACIO TORRES AGUON.

It is from Ignacio that the Sauros and our family are related. An Unpingco married a Torres Aguon and that's our connection with some Unpingcos and some Aguons.

Ignacio appears on a lot of Spanish documents because he worked for the Spanish government as a clerk.

THEN I STUMBLE ON.....

Going through dozens and dozens of documents, I notice one where Ignacio Torres Aguon is mentioned as a grandson of Manuela de Castro, the widow of José de Torres. Keep in mind that the Spanish custom is for the married woman to keep her own name and not take on the husband's.

So, if Ignacio is the grandson of José de Torres and Manuela de Castro, THEN SO IS PEDRO RODRÍGUEZ TORRES a grandson of this same couple.

EVEN BETTER, the document spells out the names of all the children of José de Torres and Manuela de Castro. They are :

JOSÉ

RITA

SALOMÉ

MARÍA

ÅGUEDA

GUILLERMO

JOSÉ

MARÍA

This means that PEDRO RODRÍGUEZ TORRES has to be a son of one of these boys, who then married a Rodríguez. It also means Ignacio is the son of one of these girls, who then married an Aguon.

If only we discovered some document that tells us if Pedro was son of José I, Guillermo or José2. Those are the only possibilities.

Don't be surprised that some siblings have the same first names. It happened. Sometimes it happened because an older child died as a child, and when another child was born of the same gender, the parents named the child after the deceased one. I don't know if this is why there are two Joses and two Marias in this group. Maybe, but maybe not. Sometimes parents just gave two siblings the same name.

Well, as incomplete as this is, if we're talking about the same Ignacio Torres Aguon, and it's a 99% chance we are because we can find no other Ignacio Torres Aguon in any document of the time, this provides us with information about our family we never knew before.

So, in summary.....

1. Our ancestors were JOSÉ DE TORRES and MANUELA DE CASTRO, grandparents of PEDRO RODRÍGUEZ TORRES.

2. JOSÉ DE TORRES died around 1830 after having fathered eight children. So that's at least 8 or 9 years of marriage minimum, perhaps more. People married young then, as young as 15 even. So José was born by at least 1805, maybe even earlier had he married later in life. So, our family tree can go as far back as 1805 or so.

3. The document I found records Manuela selling her land to two of her grandsons : Ignacio Torres Aguon and Luís de Torres. Her land was in GOKNGA, which is commonly held today to be the same place as Gun Beach. Imagine if our family were still the owners of land at Gun Beach!