Genealogy

I used to collect people. Names, dates, places. It looked like progress because the boxes filled. Then a crosswind hit and half the branches bent the wrong way. This morning I sat down at 7:10 with the 1910 census again. Same woman, same wrong age. My great-grandmother shaved off two years in that count and … Read more

She was in the fourth envelope. Nothing written on it, just buried under some old letter from 1961 about a cousin named Ricardo. Wrapped in wax paper like someone was trying to muffle her. She wasn’t smiling. Black and white. Probably late ’30s, maybe early ’40s. Thick paper, a bit curled at the corners. No … Read more

It was 3:47 a.m. when I finally admitted defeat. Not to life, though I’ve done that plenty — but to a squashed-together baptism record from 1784, handwritten in what I can only describe as cursive born of madness and a dying quill. María de los Dolores. Or was it Manuel del Olor? Could’ve been “Melón … Read more

I thought it would take a weekend. Two, tops. Couple cups of coffee, a few clicks, some Ellis Island manifests — bing, bang, boom, I find Fernando sipping Manhattan cocktails in 1920 and I close the file like a man who knows what he’s doing. Right. You ever tried to search U.S. immigration records for … Read more

It wasn’t supposed to arrive. Not really. The package was more of a rumor. A cousin—second cousin once removed, I think, but frankly the removals get blurry after the second gin—said she might send me “a few old papers” from her attic in Des Moines. She said it casually. As if they were coupons. And … Read more

I joined the group because I was lonely. There. I said it. I told myself it was for research. For “connections.” For tips on deciphering 19th-century death records written in the kind of cursive that looks like a spider gave up halfway through a poem. But the truth is, I wanted to feel less insane. … Read more

I wasn’t going to write this. I wasn’t going to write anything to you, ever, on account of the fact that you were dead and, more importantly, kind of a terrible person. But then you showed up yesterday. In a dusty civil registry entry from 1946, wedged between a grain merchant and a dentist with … Read more

There’s a specific kind of silence that lives in archives. Not the library kind, where someone’s always shifting in their seat or smuggling crisps in a sleeve. This one’s deeper, drier. Like the building itself knows it’s holding secrets and would rather you didn’t. I arrived 42 minutes early, naturally. Some people run on hope, … Read more

Once upon a time, I had this ridiculous fantasy: I’d walk into a Spanish archive, exchange a knowing glance with a librarian, and—bam—walk out holding a beautifully preserved record of my family tree, neatly traced back to some medieval knight. Reality check? I spent two hours staring at a glowing red number on a ticket … Read more

I came to Madrid expecting to spend my days in archives, bent over old documents, chasing ghosts through brittle pages. And while that has certainly been my primary activity—along with developing arthritis and picking fights with 18th-century handwriting—I did not anticipate becoming a regular at a neighborhood bar. Yet, here we are.  It started, as … Read more