Angel Delgado Silverio

My digging through my African ancestors starts with the most recent person and working my way backward.  This would be Angel Delgado Silverio, my dad’s maternal grandfather, his mom’s dad.  My dad had told me that he remembered his grandfather well since he grew up around his maternal grandparents.  This is the man that my dad stated he believed he was born into slavery.  My dad, Luis, was born in the town of Quebrada Negrito, which is found in the municipality of Trujillo Alto.  Here is where his grandfather, Angel, also claims to be from.  This is also where my grandmother, Maria de Jesus, and all of her siblings were born.

When my dad was alive, I was able to find records of his grandfather with his assistance.  I had advised my dad that I was not able to locate any records that indicated that his grandfather was born into slavery as he initially thought. It seems that Angel was actually born after slavery was abolished on the island of Puerto Rico.  At the time of his marriage to his wife, my great-grandmother, Maria Dolores Diaz, he claimed to be 24 years old.  I believe that that was incorrect and he was much older. I located their wedding record and their marriage was documented on the 26th of November in 1919.  In the record, it states that Angel is the son of Candido Delgado and Francisca Silverio.  My grandmother, Maria de Jesus, was the oldest of nine children.  Below is the record of their marriage that appears in book 5 in Trujillo Alto’s Civil Marriage Registry.

Here is where the mystery starts and where I believe I solved the mystery.  While his parent’s first names are accurate, the fun begins with the last names for Francisca “Silverio”. In addition, Angel’s birth date gets to hop all over the calendar across many years.  I have found that if you cannot find an individual, then the best thing is to look at family members to see if they can be located.  My only solution was to locate birth records for his siblings.

This becomes research intensive if sibling names are unknown. Since I had nothing but parents names, I proceeded to search for the parents through potential children by extracting names from the indexes of civil books.  I extracted every Delgado I could find and then proceeded to read each record entry.  By doing this, I was able to locate many family members and add them to the tree such as Angel’s children, nieces, nephews, and siblings. In total I found that Angel was one of eleven children.

I then turned my research towards the 1910 US Census for Puerto Rico, which is the earliest available while under the US government.  There are prior census records for Puerto Rico, which are in Spanish, under Spain’s rule and I will discuss this as I step further back into the timeline.

I expected to find Angel’s family living in Quebrada Negrito, but they were not listed in the 1910 Census.  I was able to locate one of his sisters, Paula, but she was married with children and in her 30’s. This was an indicator that Angel may not have been 24 years of age when he married but actually much older.

I opened up my search to include other towns in Trujillo Alto and was able to locate his mother in Quebrada Grande, living with two sons and a grandson.  However, Angel was not one of the children living at home.  With finding his brother, Saturnino in Trujillo Alto’s Civil Registry for birth records, I was able to confirm that Francisca was indeed his mother. Saturnino is listed as her son as you can see from the below image.

In this image, notice how she lists her last name as Silverio y Cruz.  There are also records that will list Rivera for her.  Just understanding this family and generation has been difficult and a long process in my research.  In a record, their daughter, Florentina, dies at the age of 6 days. Francisca is listed as Francisca Silveria de la Cruz, where Silveria is documented with ending with an “a” and as a middle name.  A copy of the document which came out of Book 3 of Trujillo Alto’s Civil Registry is shown below.  So in reality, if Silverio is the last name, then it means the child’s name should be listed as Florentina Delgado Silverio, but that is not the case. Most importantly, the “de la” was dropped in the last name of the child.

I then turned to Saturnino’s birth record, recorded in Book 1, Folio (page) 69v, and born on June 4, 1885.  Saturnino’s father, Candido, is documenting his birth and here is where the twist comes in.  Candido provides the mother as Francisca Silveria Rivera but it was not a mistake according to the document. The reason is that Francisca’s father is listed as Juan Silverio Cruz and her mother is Teresa Prieto.  This would make Francisca’s name as Francisca Cruz Prieto.  Yes! Another set of last names but the correct ones.

Francisca’s father, Juan Silverio Cruz, and mother, Teresa Prieto, had other children, which I will go into detail but in another post as the confusion continues around these last names and their children.  According to this document, all were from Trujillo Alto and all were still alive in 1885 when Saturnino was born. From what I could find, they were all always living in Quebrada Negrito and the descendants of this line still live there today.

One thing that was noteworthy is that in documents outside of the 1910 Census, Francisca is listed as “negra” and not “mulatto”.  Color is assigned by the one documenting the record so it is always a good thing to look beyond just the census records and see how other records have recorded.

What I can deduce is that Silverio was not Francisca’s last name. However, she took on the last name in honor of her father. Her name from what I have found was Francisca Silveria, but as a middle name and not the last name. She potentially took on this name to honor her father or simply decided to remove last names.

Angel’s and Saturnino’s father, Candido also states that his parents’ names is Anastacio Delgado and Marcela Agosto. Both, Anastacio and Marcela are listed as being from Trujillo Alto but that also changes in other records.

When it came to Candido, I found his baptismal record in the book reserved for free and enslaved Black people and Pardos; which can be of mixed African ancestry or Native American. He was listed as Francisco Candido and his parents are listed as Juan Eustaguio Delgado and Marcela Agosto.  Juan Eustaguio and Marcela were listed as Pardo Libre or free brown people.  Candido’s baptism occurred on November 25, 1832, and it was documented that he was born on September 3, 1832, in Trujillo Alto.  Below is the image of his baptismal record.

I am able to conclude after reviewing all these documents I have held for years but unable to deeply research them until now. And that I have accurately documented the right individuals. While the family took on the last name Silverio, it is apparent that they did so for a reason to which I do not know. I have Angel’s WWI and WWII registration records but have not found a real birth record for him to date as he must have been born prior to 1885 or his parents never baptized or registered his birth. I can say that Angel nor his parents were enslaved at the time of his birth.  However, I need to dig further to determine if they were able to purchase their freedom, as permitted under Spain’s laws or if their enslaved ancestors goes back further. My next research step is reviewing what I have on Francisca and her sisters along with their mother.