Family History

         Many people I know can follow their family history so well that they not only know the country they originated from, but they also can follow ancestors to everywhere they went. On the other hand there are some that aren’t so lucky, and I fall into that category. Although I constantly ask my relatives and parents if they have any idea where we come from they often have difficulty answering me. They only have many stories about them and how they got to where they are today. Even though I don’t really know much I do know that we originated from Spain.

         I researched and found out Martinez is definitely of Spanish origin, and it's quite a common name in Spain today, especially northern areas like La Riocha. Like all names ending in -ez it means "son of”, so originally it derives from the common name Martin, which is found all over Europe. The surname Garcia is also of Hispanic origin, coming from the peninsula where Spain and Portugal are located.

         Martinez is my dad, Richard’s, last name and I know more about where his side of the family comes from than I do about my mom, Onofre’s, side of the family, even though I see my mom’s side of the family a lot more than I do my dad’s. I guess that is because my mom’s family hasn’t really migrated anywhere else since they moved here from Spain. I know that my dad’s family has been in all over the country since they migrated to the Americas. Therefore, I figure since they have lived in many places then I probably have relatives all over the US that I don’t even know about.

         I have heard so many stories at family gatherings about where I come from, even though most of them are just repeats, that there would not be enough time in the day to retell everyone of them. So the one I‘ll tell is my favorite one of all, which is just about how my parents met. They met after high school. My mom being from Cononcito and my dad was from Penasco. I guess my mom used to be the “player” type that didn’t really want to be tied down in a relationship, which my dad was fine with because he liked his “freedom” too. So as time went on they got together and tried things out but they just weren’t ready for anything serious. So they separated and went their own ways. Eventually, about seven years later they ran into each other again at a club that they used to go to here in Albuquerque. This time they were more mature and were ready to try things out between them again. They have been together ever since. I don’t know why but this is my favorite story, even though it is the shortest one out of all of them.

         Maybe I’ll be the first to find out about our ancestry since today technology offers us so many opportunities, and then in a hundred years my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. can have the opportunity of knowing where they came from so they won’t have the disappointment of being uninformed about their ancestry. It is so easy to lose your knowledge of your roots and I just hope in a hundred, two hundred, even three hundred years from now that my family roots are still deep in the minds of those who live on in our name, and hopefully it won’t just be this little bit of information that I wrote here today, but more and more information that came from farther than my grandparents past.