The family Clemente Garza and Cirila Garza

I present to you the family of Clemente and Cirila

The great-great Granparents that were born and lived in the mid-1800s

 

The family research is progressing slowly.  These last few days I have concentrated on the generation before the generation of my grandfather, Serafin Garza Garcia, in the family of Clemente Garza and Cirila Garza.

 

Reviewing the historical records, it was very clear that by the middle 1800s the Garza families in Villa de Garcia had grown to a point where a large portion of the village population had the last name of Garza.  So I spent most of my time making sure I had the right Garza in the right timeframe.  Although I have access to some of the civil registry databases and some church data bases, unfortunately the information is not well organized, they are incomplete, Tey are difficult to find (take the case of Clemente Garza, there were over 100 Clementes Garza born about the same timeframe and in, or near, Villa de Garcia!.   To make it the search more difficult, the records are difficult to read due to sloppy or extra fancy handwriting, or due to the abbreviations used in older Spanish, or because of having to work with bad copies. 

 

Nonetheless, I have managed to form a picture of the Clemente-Cirila family, the great-great-grandparents of our generation.  By the way, since they both had the same last name and both from Villa de Garcia, I assume that they were related at least as second or third cousins.  I have not yet found Clemente's parents records, but I would guess that his father was a relative of Cirila's father, Pedro de la Garza.  I also noticed that in the three generations, from Clemente-to-Rufino-to-Serafin, the family began to drop the "De La" in the last name and went from "De La Garza" to just "Garza."  It does not seem to be a conscious effort to change the name, but simply the result of the Civil Registrations Judges and the Church priests who wrote these records, they simply began to shorten the names from "De La Garza" to "Garza."  I thought that change might had happened earlier in the history of the Garza Family, but, at least in this branch of the family, it began to happen in the middle 1800s.

 

Clemente and Cirila were married sometime around 1845.  I have not found any civil registry of their wedding but I hope to at least find a church record in the near future.  They had at least six children born between 1848 and 1860:  Victor, Anastasia, Pedro, Juan, Rufino and Fernando.   There may have been another son named Lesmasdo, but I have not been able to verify that he was their son.  (Although I have verified all the others through birth registrations, there could have been some errors in the records or a interpretation of the information so I have to state that I'm less than 100% certain of the information in this analysis)

 

Victor (de la) Garza, eldest son of Clemente Garza and Cirila Garcia, was born 1846.   He was married to María de Jesus Elizondo on the 4th of July 1869 when he was about 23 years old.   Victor died March 10, 1910 en villa de Garcia when he was 64 years old.  He lived General Treviño street.

 

Anastasia Garza, daughter of Clemente Garza and Cirila Garza, was born in 1847 and never married (considered an old maid),.  She died in Villa de Garcia of hidropesia in November of 1890.

 

Perdo Garza, son of Clemente Garza and Cirila Garza was born on Feb. 8, 1849.  He was baptized on the 10 of Feb at the Parroquia del Valle de Jan Juan Bautista.  The Godparents were Jesus and Paula Buentello.  I have not found much information on him other than his baptism registration, but his name does appear as witness in several other registrations of Rufino's children.

 

Juan Garza, Son of Clemente Garza and Cirila Garza was born in 1858.  He was married to Edusvigis Rocha on the 28th of September 1909 when he was 52 and Edusvigis was a widow of 36 years of age.  I have not been able to find information if he was married before.  He died of Pulmoranry Emphysema with cardiac complications as diagnosed by Dr. Gustavo Flores, on the 12 of June 1938 in San Luis Potosi at the age of 80.  (apparently he moved from Villa de Garcia to San Luis Potosí).  He was a businessman, a merchant, like his father and brothers.   His widow Edusvigis Rocha de Garza was from the city of Matehuala and was 70 years of age when Juan died.  Edusvigis was the daughter of Victor Rocha (75 at the time of their wedding), a businessman, and Mariana Leora (dead at the time of their wedding).   It is possible that Juan was the link that allowed Rufino Garza to move his family from Villa de Garcia to San Luis Potosi in the early 1900s - It could be that he went to support Juan in his business.

 

Fernando Garza was born on May 31, 1864.  He married Maria Guadalupe Fernandez en Villa de Garcia, Nuevo Leon on the 31 of October 1890 when he was 25 years of age and she was 23.  Fernando was the son of Clemente Garza and Maria Cirila Garza and Maria Guadalupe was the daughter of Jose Enrique Fernandez and Maria Tomasa Garcia.  Fernando died in Laredo, Texas on October 4, 1936.  He had been living in Laredo for over 20 years when he died.  He used to live at 520 Garfield, Laredo, TX.