The picture becomes clearer

I've been working in the baptismal records of St. Augustine during the early part of the second Spanish period (Volume I, 1784-1792) in the transcriptions available at the St. Augustine Historical Society research library.  It is much easier to use these transcriptions, at least from 1784 into the fall of 1788, because the entries during that period were made in Latin, and I do not read Latin.  It was in 1788 that Bishop Cirilo de Barcelona made his visita (inspection tour) of St. Augustine and he decreed that henceforth entries should be made in Spanish.  He cites errors and other unacceptable conditions in the records, and prescribes a form which is preserved in the baptismal record. 

I have also just finished transcribing from the original the 1786 census of St. Augustine taken by Father Thomas Hassett, the priest at St. Augustine.   It is not a complete census, as Hassett himself points out in his introductory comment.  He purposefully left out the government officials and the troops stationed at the Castillo de San Marcos.  Spanish censuses frequently left out military personnel.  For one thing, they were probably considered transient, even though other records I have examined show many of them participating in the daily life of the town. 

These documents, along with marriage records, form the basis for reconstructing the family structure of the town, and I am beginning to see patterns of relationship.  Another aspect found in the baptismal records is the godparent relationship, which I've mentioned previously. 

It is necessary to bear in mind that with these Spanish censuses, however, the one consistent aspect of them is their inconsistency.  There were no prescribed formats and no preprinted forms.  Not all entries have all the information.  For example, it is traditional in Spanish records (as it is in French records) for a woman, married or not, to be recorded by her maiden name.  This is a boon to family historians researching their female lines.  Most of the entries in the census and baptism records have the women by their maiden names, but not all of them.  Then, too, it is careless to assume that because the woman's surname is the same as her husband's, that it is not her maiden name.  Non-first cousins could marry, and sometimes did.  It is also possible that, even in a town as small as St. Augustine, you could have two unrelated individuals with the same surname.

More information is necessary in these events, and the marriage records are the best source for that.

They're next.
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The records do not always give us what we want

I have recently had an inquiry concerning a Spanish marriage record from the middle of the 1800s.  The individual who sent me the copy of the record wanted to know why the prospective groom's grandparents were not mentioned in the record, to see if the page she sent me revealed any information on that score.

Alas, it did not.  It often happens in these records that there is a variation -- sometimes a wide variation -- in the amount of information provided.  You would think, for instance, that a will would name any heirs to an estate, or that an inquiry into an intestacy would reveal the names of heirs.  Not always.  I had one probate case -- in fact, it was the one I have discussed here before, of the doctor who committed suicide in St. Augustine in 1809.  The rather lengthy packet of documents mentions, more than once, the doctor's two daughters.  Nowhere in the documents are their names revealed.

And in the marriage record in question, there is no information as to why the groom's grandparents were not named, nor would there be.  It is often the luck of the draw in how much information we find in a particular document.

I am currently dealing with baptism records in my research into the families of St. Augustine, FL, during the Second Spanish Period, and I find a tremendous variation in the amount of information provided.  Some records list not only the parents and godparents, but both sets of grandparents as well.  Some reocrds list the profession of the father or the godfather, and sometimes both.  Others are mute on the subject. 

One tactic I intend to employ, once I get all the transcriptions done, is to see whether it was one particular priest who entered the more complete information into the records.  That may or may not have been the case, but it has my curiosity up.  It could very well be that one of the priests was more prone to gather more information than the other one was.  It could also be that parents just did not reveal a great deal of information about the family.

We just have to understand that we may not always find what we want to find in the documents.
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