So original records are completely reliable, are they?

I have had some knotty problems to work out in my St. Augustine project.  This is one of the most amusing, to me.

I have a file on a fellow named Jose Manuel de Cala, and his wife, Francisca Rosy (or Rosi, the Spanish expression of the Italian name Rossi).  Francisca presents the problem, or, rather, the identification of her parents does.  It appears, deceptively, like there was a bit of Oedipus Rex here.

In the petition filed by Jose Dulcet for permission to marry Francisca, her first of three marriages, she is shown to be the daughter of Jose Rosy and Francisca Sans.(1)  Likewise, in the original record from the St. Augustine diocesan archive of that marriage, she is again shown to be the daughter of Jose Rosy and Francisca Sans. (2)  Again, on the original church record of her second marriage, to Francisco Sanchez, her parents are listed as Jose Rosy and Francisca Sans (wait for it; we're getting there).(3)

Okay, so there is all this evidence that Francisca's parents were as we have hashed out here.  However, when it came time for her to enter her third marriage, she having buried two husbands (life was riskier in those days), her father's name is suddenly Cayetano.(4)  On her death record, as well, the same name is recorded as Francisca's father.(5)  Both of these are original records.

So I dug further, in a translation I have of the church records of the San Pedro parish in New Smyrna, the plantation of Andrew Turnbull, where numbers of Minorcans, Italians, Greeks, and a few other nationalities were in conscripted labor growing and processing indigo.  I found a Cayetano Rosy, born 1 November 1773, baptized 2 November 1773, son of (are you ready?) Jose Rosy and Francisca Sans.(6)  I also found Francisca Rosy, born 31 January 1780, baptized 6 February 1780, daughter of (yes, you're right) Jose Rosy and Francisca Sans.(7)  There is another Cayetano Rosy there, too, but he was older, and married to someone else, not to Francisca Sans.  At least I was relieved to find that Francisca's brother had not married their mother!

Heed the warning: even an original record can be dead wrong!


1.  Petition of Jose Dulcet for permission to marry Francisca Rosy, Matrimonial licenses, Reel 132, Bundle 298R9, No. 89, East Florida Papers.

2.  Marriage of Jose Dulcet and Francisca Rosy, Ecclesiastical Records of the St. Augustine Diocese, White Marriages, Book 1, 1784-1801, 131-132, entry 148, http://vanderbilt.edu /esss/spanishflorida/index.php.

3.  Marriage of Francisco Sanchez and Francisca Rosy, Ecclesiastical Records of the St. Augustine Diocese, White Marriages, Book 1, 1784-1801, 23 [no entry numbers],  http://vanderbilt.edu /esss /spanishflorida/index.php.

 4.  Marriage of Jose Manuel de Cala and Francisca Rosy, Ecclesiastical Records of the St. Augustine Diocese, White Marriages, Book 2, 1802-1832, 99, entry 108, http://vanderbilt.edu /esss /spanishflorida/index.php.

5.  Death and burial of Francisca Rosy, Ecclesiastical Records of the St. Augustine Diocese, Deaths, Book 2, 1809-1882, 17-18, entry 34, http://vanderbilt.edu /esss/spanishflorida/index.php.

6.  Leonard J. McCown, compiler, Father Pedro Camps' Golden Book of the Minorcans (Irving, TX: self-published, 2003), 16.

7. Leonard J. McCown, compiler, Father Pedro Camps' Golden Book of the Minorcans (Irving, TX: self-published, 2003), 39.