Relatives South of the Border

When you have a surname database posted at Rootsweb WorldConnect instead of your personal family line, you occasionally get emails from people who think you're a newfound cousin because their relatives are in your online file. Once in a great while it truly is a cousin, but most of the time I doublecheck my records and have to write back to explain the surname database concept and how we're not related as far as I know. I always offer to help them with any Carr surname connections they might have that need fleshing out.

By the way, I've noticed that more and more people use the expressions to flesh out and to flush out interchangably. It creeps me out when I hear them used inappropriately. You can flesh out an idea by putting meat on a bare bones concept. Or you can flush out an idea using brainstorming to draw it out. (I'm not sure you ever want to talk about flushing out your relatives, at least not in a genealogical sense. Save that expression for the hors d'oevres table gossip at your next family reunion.) But I digress.

This weekend I had an email suggesting that I was the cousin of a Mexican living in El Paso in the 1930s. Since my roots are mostly English and German, I haven't had much experience searching Hispanic genealogies. After we exchanged some messages and sorted things out a bit (we're not related), I was able to find her ancestor entering the US in the summer of 1918 at the El Paso/Juarez border crossing. I ended up finding him in Ancestry.com's Immigration Service border crossing record images online.

The record (paid subscription only) showed that this man was 23 years old and born in San Julian, Jalisco, Mexico. The form gave his height and the color of his hair and eyes. It provided his wife's name but didn't say whether she was accompanying him. The form asked all sorts of questions regarding his purpose of visit. He wasn't crossing the border for temporary employment but planned to stay in El Paso for a year.

I received a nice note back from this weekend contact after I sent her a summary of what I found. "Wow thanks so much! That is exactly what I was looking for!"

Image found at http://www.bailadoresdebronce.org/dances.html