What I find most interesting about the searches, is how many people are "name related" to each other in smaller towns. Makes one wonder about "marriages amongst family" from decades back (or sooner?) then.
- Thread starter AlterEgo
- Start date
Cibao “i”
I think all the original Spaniards pretty much married one another. Wasn’t a huge dating pool. When Mr AE and I did Ancestry DNA it was comical. I had about 100 matches and he had way over 1000!!
According to my mother it was no uncommon nor was it illegal for first cousins to marry, and often if a brother died, a brother would marry his widow, resulting in a real mix up of DNA. My Ancestry.com shows 21,982 DNA matches from my fathers side, 14,356 from my mother's side, 23 from both sides, and 1556 unassigned.
Marrying cousins was widespread and still is culturally accepted in many places. There are people that feel pride when they know all their ancestors were from the little locality they were born in when everybody knows what that means, especially further into back in time when the population was smaller.
Guess where the repeated saying of "los primos se primen" comes from.
Keep in mind that as recent as the 1730's, the population for the entire Spanish part of the island (which was bigger than what the DR is today) amounted to about 6,000. Think about that. Today, many sections of SD alone have more than 6,000 people. The DR was essentially a depopulated place. In a country where there hasn't been much immigration since the 18th century (even the flow from Haiti which has been constant since colonial times, was rather small unlike today), where did all these people came from?
Well, for the most part, natural growth. In a country where traditionally the popuation was small (even Puerto Rico had more people going into the 20th century) and mostly scattered through the countryside, plus most probably lived their entire lives within a 15 KM radius or maybe even less from where they were born, plus having large families was the norm; do we really need much else to know what natural growth means in this context?
The national poet of the DR is Pedro Mir and one of his most well known poems is titled "Hay un paìs en el mundo." He wrote in the 20th century describing the DR of his time. A part says:
"...y tierra bajo los árboles y tierra
bajo los ríos y en la falda del monte
y al pie de la colina y detrás del horizonte
y tierra desde el canto de los gallos
y tierra bajo el galope de los caballos
y tierra sobre el día, bajo el mapa, alrededor
y debajo de todas las huellas y en medio del amor.
Entonces
es lo que he declarado.
Hay un país en el mundo
sencillamente agreste y despoblado."
In another part it says:
"Procedente del fondo de la noche
vengo a hablar de un país.
Precisamente
pobre de población."
In "pobre de población" he is not referring that the population was poor, but rather that the population of the country was very small.
Even today you still find places in the DR with a very scant to non-existence population, except that's how the DR was practically in its entirety since the beginning of colonial times. The places that today have a high density were not high density a few decades ago.
It should had been included in my previous post that any Dominican that today does one of the DNA tests and they show a small amount of indigenous, it should go without saying that they descend in part from the 6,000 of the 1730's since almost the entire indigenous DNA still found in the DR was limited to that population. That wasn't present in the ones that came from Spain, from Italy and many other places (including Africa in colonial times.) That got in the lineage of their offsprings because they took for wives (or husbands) Dominicans that were descendants from the 6,000 of the 1730's.
With Puerto Ricans, Cubans and a few others some indigenous DNA was already in them by the time thry settled in the DR.
With Puerto Ricans, Cubans and a few others some indigenous DNA was already in them by the time thry settled in the DR.
That is a lot. I don't think I have ever seen a Dominican with 11% or more of indigenous unless they are mixed with people from Central or South America. For example, one of my cousins has almost a third of her DNA as indigenous, but her father is from Central America. Most of that definitely didn't come from her mother. Her half brother from her mother side, who is also my cousin, has indigenous of barely 8%, which is within the typical range for indigenous among Dominicans. I'm more Spanish than he is, but he also has almost a fifth of Middle Eastern/North Africa and most of that comes from the Arab side as his father was Dominican of partial Arab ancestry (most likely Lebanese since that is most of Arab-anything in the DR) and less from the Canarian Spaniards in whom most of the North Africa among Dominicans originated in them (because most were mixed with the Berbers ir Guanches, who were the indigenous of the Canary Islands when the Spaniards colonized thrm, they descended from the Berbers from North Africa).
You will norice that a small amount of North Africa is widely found in Latin America, particularly places that received a sizeable amount of Spaniards from the Canary Islands. Yet, this small amount is basically lacking among North Americans and even parts of Latin America that never received a sizeable amount of Spaniards from the Canary Islands, such as Haitians or Jamaicans to name two. This is despite that nowhere in the Americas got a sizeable smount of people directly from North Africa except sone places (such as the USA) in very recent times. So, whatever North African found in Latin American arrived mixed in the many Spaniards, particularly from Southern Spain and especially the Canary Islands, as they migrated and settled in many areas of Latin America.
It should be noted that most of the Dominican towns founded in colonial times were founded in the 1700's and others (such as Puerto Plata and Montecristi) were refounded in the 1700's as they were originally destroyed in the Devastations of 1606. Other towns such as Santiago and La Vega, which were founded in the 1490's and 1500's, were never destroyed in the Devastations of 1606, but they received additional population from the Canary Islands that were added to the population already there. The new arrivals from the Canary Islands tended to be rather large given the population that was already there, such as in Santiago several military groups were composed exclusively of men from the Canary Islands because the population that was there before their arrival wasn't enough to procude men for all those companies. The addition they received from the Canary Islands was also in the 1700's.
It goes without saying that much of the North African input in Dominicans most likely arrived in the 1700's. But the indigenous was there since the very beginning of the colonial period.
It should be noted that most of the Dominican towns founded and refounded in colonial times was done with mainly families that had migrated from the Canary Islands, as the Spanish government was encouraging that migration (given the very low population of Spanish Santo Domingo and how rapidly the population was growing in the French part, that migration was meant to not loose the Spanish part to the French as their population would had completely absorbed the Dominican population) and the Canary Islands at that time were severely over populated to the point many were suffering of hunger. In Spanish Santo Domingo they found was thry couldn't in the Canary Islands, plenty of available land for farming. An added plus was that Hispaniola was a much more fertile area thn the Canary Island, especially the Cibao Valley which has one of the world's deepest top soil.
Very common in my family in the past, I have cousin's with duplicated surname. You can see it in the document I share above Anny Cesarina Taveras Taveras , My Grandmother Emma Feliu Feliu etc...
I don't sign Guzman but I am related to this family in both sides Mother and Father.
In Estancia Nueva Moca everybody is cousin, I guarantee you that.
JJ
Family Search has now taken me back to the 1500's based on available records. Turns out I'm slightly related to a few historical persons.
Fascinating stuff. All without hardly lifting a fingertip.
Fascinating stuff. All without hardly lifting a fingertip.
Great stuff, JD. Will you be having an exclusive autograph and photo session (for a small fee of course)?
Arnaud, a french first name, I have a friend who’s last name is Arnaud as well, he’s from SABA.
I spent about a month searching my family roots, I was able to trace my family and be able to download birth and death certificates of most of my ancestors.
I never thought I was related to a very distinguish family of own home City Santiago. The Feliú family of Spanish ancestors.
JJ
I never thought I was related to a very distinguish family of own home City Santiago. The Feliú family of Spanish ancestors.
JJ
On ancestry I have over 25,000 matches, and because most of my ancestors came to the New England states and Canadian Maritimes which at the time was a small population I have around 300 matches that have DNA from both sides of my family. My wife has around 800 on Ancestry with a lot on Puerto Rico and Spain, probably as many as in the DR.