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Latin America Research Outline |
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Using This Outline
Latin American Search Strategies
Records At The Family History Library
The Family History Library Catalog
Map Of Central America
Map Of South America
Archives And Libraries
Archives In Spain
Latin American Archives
Biography
Family Information
Compiled Biographies
Cemeteries
Locating Cemeteries And Cemetery Records
Census
Church Records
Information Recorded In Church Registers
Inquisition Records
Locating Church Records
Search Strategies
Civil Registration
Information Recorded In Civil Registers
Locating Civil Registration Records
Emigration And Immigration
Finding The Immigrant's Town Of Origin
Locating Emigration Records
Gazetteers
Genealogy
Family Histories
Compiled Genealogies
Major Databases And Collections
History
Historical Chronology
Calendar Changes
Historical Geography
Local Histories
Land And Property
Language And Languages
Language Aids
Maps
Using Maps
Locating Maps And Atlases
Military Records
Types Of Military Records
Locating Military Records
Names, Personal
Native Races
Racial Terminology
Nobility
Untitled Nobility [Hidalgos/Fidalgos]
Titled Nobility [Nobleza/nobreza]
Military And Fraternal Orders[Ordenes Militares And Cofradías/Confraternidades]
Notarial Records
Periodicals
Probate Records
Societies
Other Records
For Further Reading
Comments And Suggestions
EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving a country (emigration) or coming into one country from another (immigration). Millions of people from many parts of the world have immigrated to Latin America. Except for those who descend from the native inhabitants, all Latin Americans trace their ancestry to immigrants. Most of those who immigrated to Latin American came from Europe. In addition, millions of Africans were brought to Latin America during the era of slavery and many East Indian and Asian laborers were brought to work on colonial plantations in the Guianas.
Before the mid-nineteenth century, Spanish and Portuguese immigration predominated in all of Latin America. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, many thousands of other Europeans immigrated to southern South America. Cities such as São Paulo, Montevideo, and Buenos Aires saw a great influx of Italian immigration. German and Eastern European colonists settled parts of southern Brazil and Paraguay, and Japanese immigrants occupied farming regions in southern Brazil and Peru.
During the early twentieth century, new waves of immigrants arrived from western and eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the Orient. In the large cities of Latin America, entire neighborhoods were composed of individual ethnic groups.
Before the nineteenth century, emigrants were not always recorded formally. Passengers emigrating by sea to another country simply registered onto ships at the time of departure. They were only required to show documentation that proved they had met any military service requirements. Once the emigrants arrived in Latin America, open frontiers and vast uninhabited territories allowed for relatively free and unregistered migration within the region.
Beginning in the nineteenth century, some documentation may have been required of persons leaving one country to reside in another. The issuing of passports became a common practice internationally during the twentieth century. A passport usually includes the name, description, nationality, occupation, birthplace, birth date, and spouse's name of the person receiving the passport.
Other emigration sources include records of permission to emigrate, passenger lists, and immigrant arrivals. The information in these records may include the names of the emigrants, ages, occupations, destinations, and countries of origin.
To continue genealogical research on an immigrant ancestor, you must know the town where he or she was born. If you do not know your ancestor's birthplace or country of origin, check as many sources as you can. You may be able to find the information you need by talking with an older family member. The following sources may also be helpful:
Latin American census records can also be a source of immigration information. However, they typically list only the country of a person's origin rather than the specific town or parish. See the “Census” section of this outline for more information.
The Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain, is the depository for Spanish documents dealing with the Spanish colonial period in the Americas. These documents often include the birthplace of each individual recorded. You may want to look for your ancestor's records in the following sections of the archive:
The Family History Library has book and microfilm copies of ship passenger lists from the Casa de Contratación de las Indias for the years 1509 to 1599:
Catálogo de Pasajeros a las Indias Durante los Siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII (Catalog of Passengers to the Indies during the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries). Sevilla: s.n., 1940–. (FHL book 946 W2sa; FHL films 0277577-578.)
Ship arrivals and passenger lists Another important source of information for immigrant ancestors is emigration records from the port city of departure. The major European ports of departure during the nineteenth century included Liverpool, LeHavre, Bremen, Hamburg, and Antwerp. Most emigrants after 1880 came through Bremen, Hamburg, LeHavre, Liverpool, Naples, Rotterdam, and Trieste.
Only the Hamburg passenger lists still exist or are available for research. Almost one out of three Central and Eastern European emigrants is found on the Hamburg lists. Many who departed from Hamburg went to the United States, but some emigrated to Latin America, as well as other places such as Australia and Canada. The lists include each passenger's name, hometown or last town of residence, age, and occupation, as well as the names of other family members.
Records at the Family History Library. For records of emigration from Spain to Latin America, look in the Family History Library Catalog under:
The library also has copies of the Hamburg passenger lists which are available for research. They are listed in the Family History Library Catalog under:
A gazetteer, or “geographical dictionary,” is a list and description of place names. Gazetteers describe towns and villages, rivers and mountains, and other geographical features. They include information about population size. Often, they describe the local industry and economy, helping you gain an idea of how your ancestors may have lived. Gazetteers may also include the history of place-name changes. This is especially helpful because the name of the place where your ancestors lived may have changed since they lived there. (See the “History” section of this outline.)
You can use a gazetteer to locate the places where your family lived and to determine the civil jurisdictions over those places. For example:
“Tupicocha—Poblado de Provincia de Huarochiri, Districto de San Damian”
This example is a reference from the following gazetteer:
Stiglich, Germán. Diccionario Geográfico del Perú (Geographical Dictionary of Peru). Lima: Torres Aguirre, 1922. (FHL book 985 E2s; film 0845239.)
There may be many places in each Latin American country with the same or similar names. You will need to use a gazetteer to identify the specific town where your ancestor lived, the department or state it was in, and the jurisdiction where the records were kept.
While some Latin American gazetteers may include the names of the Catholic parishes having jurisdiction over the listed places, many do not. If you need to find the name of a Catholic parish, consult a church directory for the country in which your ancestor lived.
Place-names in the Family History Library Catalog are listed under their modern names and boundaries. References in the catalog will lead you from outdated to modern names. If the name of the place where your ancestors lived changed since they lived there (or since the gazetteer you are using was published), the catalog will lead you to the modern name.
Gazetteers and geographical dictionaries are found in the Family History Library Catalog under:
The term genealogy
Some Latin American families have produced histories that may include genealogical information, biographies, photographs, and other excellent information. These usually cover several generations of the family. An example of a family history is:
Gangotena y Jijón, Cristóbal de. Genealogía de la Casa de Borja (Genealogy of the House of Borja). Quito: Imprensa Nacional, 1932. (FHL book 929.2866 B644g; film 0283562.)
The Family History Library has a few published Latin American family histories, some of which are on microfilm or microfiche. Family histories are listed in the Surname section of the Family History Library Catalog. Not every name found in a family history will be listed in the catalog; only the major surnames are included.
Many individuals and societies have compiled and published books that represent the ancestry or descent of a group of individuals from a specific place, time, or event. You may find compiled genealogies of an area's first settlers or of those who served in a military campaign. An example of a compiled genealogy of families from a specific area is:
Leme, Luiz Gonzaga de Silva. Genealogia Paulistana (Genealogies from the City of São Paulo). São Paulo: Duprat, 1903–1905. (FHL book 981.61; films 823,694–823,697.)
For an index to more than 2,000 published Latin American family histories, see:
Platt, Lyman De. Una Bibliografía de Historias Familiares de Latinoamérica y Los Estados Unidos (A Bibliography of Family Histories in Latin America and the United States). Salt Lake City: Instituto Genealógico e Histórico Latinoamericano, 1990. (FHL book 980 D23p.)
Compiled genealogies are listed in the Family History Library Catalog under:
The Family History Library has the following sources that contain previous research or can lead you to others who are interested in sharing information:
Emigration Patterns
Record-keeping Practices
Finding the Immigrant's Town of Origin
, marriage, and death certificates.
.
.
Locating Emigration Records
Records of the Colonial Period (1492–1810)
Records Beginning in the Mid-1800s
provide the best documentation of immigrants who came to Latin America after the middle of the nineteenth century. These records, which were kept in major Latin American port cities such as Buenos Aires, Salvador, Santiago, Santos, and Rio de Janeiro, are housed in Latin American national archives. For information about the archives, see the “Archives and Libraries” section of this outline.
SPAIN - EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION
Latin American emigration and immigration records are found in the Family History Library Catalog under:
[COUNTRY] - EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION[COUNTRY], [STATE or PROVINCE] - EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION[COUNTRY], [STATE or PROVINCE], [CITY or TOWN] - EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION
See also records under the heading COLONIZATION.
GERMANY, HAMBURG, HAMBURG - EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION
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GAZETTEERS
(Tupichoa—village in Huarochiri province, San Damian district)
Finding Place-Names in the Family History Library Catalog
[COUNTRY] - GAZETTEERS[COUNTRY], [STATE or PROVINCE] - GAZETTEERS
Additional geographical name information can be found under:
[COUNTRY] - POSTAL GUIDES[COUNTRY] - NAMES, GEOGRAPHICAL
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GENEALOGY
is used in this outline (and in the Family History Library Catalog) to describe a variety of records containing family information previously gathered by other researchers, societies, or archives. These records may include pedigree charts, compiled family history information, correspondence, and collections of original or copied documents. These are excellent sources of information that can save you time. However, because they contain secondary information, you must carefully evaluate them for accuracy.
Family Histories
Compiled Genealogies
[COUNTRY], [STATE or PROVINCE], [CITY or TOWN] - GENEALOGY
Note: If you find your surname in any of the sources described in this section, determine whether the entry actually pertains to your family. All persons with the same surname are not necessarily related. Often you will have to do some original research before you can connect your ancestry to families listed in these sources.
Major Databases and Collections
. The names of many thousands of deceased individuals who lived in Latin America are listed in the International Genealogical Index on microfiche at the library and at each Family History Center. The index includes names extracted from parish registers as well as names submitted by researchers. Although there are names from nearly all Latin American countries, the greatest number (over 24 million) are from Mexico. About one million names are included for the rest of Latin America.
(archive and patron), Family Registry and a computerized file of family information called Ancestral File
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