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Solving Family Mysteries
Part 1

By Roger Hernández
August 2006

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Genealogical Resources: Sites to See

Roger Hernández's family tree

Hispanic-oriented websites include
CubaGenWeb, the Hispanic Genealogical Society (with a focus on Mexico and Southwestern states), and Hispanic Geneaology, whose specialty is Puerto Rico.

Find more genealogical resources here
The letter was from a Father Andrés, and brought bad news: the parish archives had burned during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). My heart sank. Municipal documents in Spain date back only to the middle of the 19th century, while parish records start in the 1540s, according to Mayra Sanchez-Johnson, a genealogist who specializes in Cuban and Spanish research. Centuries were lost with the destruction of San Llorenç’s archives.

But Father Andrés had good news too: a “faithful parishioner” was named Martí Tomás Surós. “Is he perhaps related to you?” the priest asked. I didn’t know but figured if the Surós name is as rare as my family said, the chances were good.

In 1991, six years after I first heard of Martí Tomás Surós, I met him. As my wife and I drove up from Barcelona, Maçanet de la Selva arose on the western side of the highway, blue hills in the distance. There was the thousand-year-old steeple of San Llorenç with homes of red-tiled roofs clustered around it.

Martí was a vigorous man with a mane of platinum hair. He invited me to his home near the plaza by San Llorenç for almuerzo (lunch). Over chicken and butifarra sausage, he said he believed we were related but did not know how. He was a man to be trusted in matters of local affairs; Martí was a member of Maçanet’s Taller d’Historia, the town history club.

Martí’s experience at the Taller d’Historia taught him where to look beyond the lost parish archives. He knew where private land records were kept and that documents at Town Hall survived the war. His research skills paid off when he turned up the death certificate of Tomás Surós Buadas. It named five sons, including one named Jaime—my maternal great-grandfather “Bitito,” as his children called him. Tomás died on December 24, 1883, by which time Bitito, family lore says, was already in Cuba. I had never heard of my maternal great-great-grandfather Tomás before, and Nana didn’t know his name either. But she remembered that when she was a child the family did not celebrate Nochebuena dinner like other Cubans. Their Christmas Eve celebration was muted to observe the day Bitito’s father—her grandfather, my great-great-grandfather—died in far-off Spain.

The certificate also said Tomás’s parents were Salbador—with a “b,” not a “v”—and María. That established a link to a notebook recording land rental payments bearing the signature of Salbador Surós, my great-great-great-grandfather. The first entry reads, in 19th-century Catalan that Martí translated into castellano: “He recibido de Joan Font I Costas 4 mesurons de trigo que paga por el año 1834.Salbador Surós ; (I have received 4 mesurons of wheat from Joan Font I Costas, which pays for the year 1834. Salbador Surós.”)

Martí took us to a two story stone-and-brick house on the outskirts of town: Can Surós, he said, Catalan for House of Surós built in the 1700s and the birthplace of Bitito, Tomás and, possibly, Salbador and further back. I touched a rusty iron hoop that perhaps generations of my family had used to open their front door. The building was now abandoned. Martí said it was taken over for unpaid taxes around 1915.

Yes, talk to older relatives with long memories, but remember that younger ones may have done family trees whose branches intersect with yours and corroborate family lore
Even prior to that loss, the Maçanet my ancestors knew was a place of poverty, where peasants ate the crops they grew and only had meat “when they slaughtered a pig,” Martí explained. Salbador’s land was inherited by Tomás, as evidenced by his signature on a later book of receipts. It passed on to his oldest son Antonio, attested in yet another document. Bitito and his other brothers, cut out of the inheritance, took the path of countless Spaniards in the 19th century: travel across the Atlantic to hacer las Américas. Bitito, Pedro, and José sailed to Cuba; Baldomero, another brother, to Argentina. It was the Spain-to-Latin America version of the American Dream.

The three Surós brothers who went to Cuba were progenitors of quite a clan. Between them, they had at least 20 children, who in turn had at least 82 children, not counting the Argentinean branch or Antonio’s descendants. I do not know how many Surós cousins I have in my own generation. Over the years I met perhaps a dozen, and stay in touch with Jimmy, who lives in Caracas. When Fidel Castro came to power, Jimmy’s parents opted to seek exile in Venezuela. Jimmy was born in Bayamo, near Manzanillo. The latter is the Cuban town where Bitito settled, perhaps in the 1870s. Bitito’s descendants, including my mother lived there until the 1940s.

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