A Gómez Family Line from Luquillo, Puerto Rico Traces Back to the Canary Islands, Spain

Further genealogical research has led me, once again, to the Canary Islands in Spain, this time through a line on my mother’s side of the family. My maternal Gómez Family from Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, has one particular line that came over from Luquillo. Before that, these ancestors originated from Santa Cruz, Tenerife in the Canary Islands. This is the first time lineage in the Gómez Family can be traced to Spain going as far back as about 1770.

I was raised knowing that my mom’s side of the family was from Mayaguez, located on the western side of Puerto Rico, but I never heard of any family in Luquillo which is on the east coast of the Caribbean archipelago. My family research shows that my second great-grandmother, Adela Perez Corsino, was originally from Luquillo, Puerto Rico. She married my second great-grandfather Manuel Ruiz Malave who was from Las Marias and they later settled in Mayaguez.

Looking further back on Adela’s line, we come to my sixth great-grandparents, Jose Iglesias and Catalina Ramos. Both migrated from Santa Cruz, Tenerife in the Canary Islands to Luquillo, Puerto Rico sometime around 1780. My sixth-great-grandparents Jose and Catalina, born around 1770, were part of a wave of Canarian migration to Puerto Rico. The Spanish thought people from the Canary Islands would adjust better to Puerto Rico than the Spaniards on the mainland.

The Catholic church marriage registration record from 1812 for my fifth great-grandparents, Antonio Iglesias and Joaquina Martínez, in Luquillo, Puerto Rico provided a wealth of information. The record lists Antonio’s parents, Jose and Catalina, as originating from Santa Cruz, Tenerife. Antonio was a widower when he married Joaquina and the patrinos or god-parents of their wedding were Francisco Marrero and Carmen Ramos.

Tenerife is the largest of the seven main Canary Islands whose indigenous people were called Guanche and lived on the island as far back as 200 BC. They were indigenous Berber people, believed to have come from North Africa. In the 15th century, the Spanish conquistadors arrived in Tenerife and began assimilating and controlling the Guanche people to the eventual point of extinction.

Europeans first visited the Canary Islands sometime between 1330 and 1334 with the territory being sought after by the British, French, Portuguese, and the Spanish. Eventually, by 1496, the islands were fully controlled by Spain.