The families in A Tale of One Love, Many Worlds were real people. This is their story as the records tell it: my father’s family, the Mascorros, and my mother’s family, the Garcías, followed one generation at a time.
Their roots reach from Italy, Spain and the Canary Islands to the founding families of the northeast, and to the church and civil records that still carry their names
FATHER'S FAMILY
Mascorro
From about 1655
MOTHER'S FAMILY
García
From about 1700
EARLIEST ORIGIN
Madeira, 1518
Italy, Spain, the islands, New Spain
TWO FAMILY LINES
Choose a side of the family and follow it down to me
My father’s family
The Mascorro line
From Juan Asencio Mascorro, around 1655, through colonial Jalisco and north to the Rio Grande.
San Luis Potosí → Jalisco → Aguascalientes → Ciudad Guerrero, Tamaulipas
Families that join: Zapata
My mother’s family
The García line
From José Juaquín García and Isabel Juana Guajardo to Ciudad Mier, where the family stayed for generations.
Monterrey → Ciudad Mier, Tamaulipas
Families that join: Chapa, Guajardo, Alanís, Vela
WHERE WE COME FROM
Seven beginnings, on three continents and two islands
Each of these ancestors is named in my family records. Together they explain where the family came from before it reached the Rio Grande.
1627
Italy
Juan Bautista Chapa, born in Villa Arbisola near Genoa; sailed to Cádiz at 13, then to New Spain.
1500s
Canary Islands
The Báez de Benavides family of La Orotava, Tenerife; Capitán Francisco Báez de Benavides crossed to New Spain and died in Monterrey in 1666.
1594
New Spain
Juana Robles, a founding mother of the northeast, with Indigenous roots on her mother’s side.
1650
Spain & La Florida
Juan Ayala of Córdoba married Magdalena Díaz Mexía, born 1651 in St. Augustine, Spanish Florida.
1518
Madeira
Beatriz Pereira de Castro, born on Porto Santo, Madeira.
1737
African heritage
Gregorio Mascorro and his wife, recorded as mulato libre in Ciénega de Mata, Jalisco.
1767
A land grant
Salvador Vela Olivares received Porción 90 – 6,248 acres – from the King of Spain.
DNA REGIONS
What my DNA results show
Ancestry regions from my DNA test, grouped as the test reports them.
Iberian Peninsula 67%
- Spain30%
- Canary Islands15%
- Northern Spain13%
- Basque4%
- Portugal3%
- Madeira2%
Indigenous Americas 23%
- Noreste & Río Grande (Mexico & USA)23%
Jewish 6%
- Sephardic, Eastern Mediterranean5%
- Sephardic, Northern Africa1%
Western Europe 4%
- France3%
- Belgium1%
Total 100%. All bars are drawn to the same scale.
ANCESTOR PROFILES
Ancestors, each with a page of their own
Who they were, the line from them down to me, and the records that name them.
PROFILE NO. 01
9th great-grandfather
Juan Bautista Chapa
1627 – 1695
THE RECORDS
The documents behind every name on these pages
Christenings, marriages, burials and a border crossing for both families, with zoom and high-resolution downloads on the Charts & Documents page.
