Heritage & Ethnicity

Exploring the diverse ethnic and cultural roots of Southern families — British, French, Spanish, African American, Romani, and beyond.

Three Cultures and a Wedding: San Fernando Cathedral
Heritage & Ethnicity

Three Cultures and a Wedding: San Fernando Cathedral

By the time Alejandro and Carmen exchanged vows there, San Fernando Cathedral had already witnessed nearly two centuries of people arriving from elsewhere and calling San Antonio home. Founded by families from the Canary Islands, the small parish church built its first walls in 1731 and was initially called Villa de San Fernando de Béxar. Then Mexican, then American hands rebuilt it after war, fire, and flood, layering a Gothic-revival face over its eighteenth-century Spanish masonry without los
Leaving Minonk
Illinois

Leaving Minonk

The Eiben Family and the Road to Texas In the 1880s and 1890s, Minonk, Illinois, sat at the junction of multiple major rail lines. The city of Minonk, located in Woodford County, also had numerous new German immigrants who had come to work in the coal mines, supply lumber to the booming city of Chicago, or farm the surrounding area and nearby lands in LaSalle County. We had decided to detour to LaSalle and Woodford Counties to research my mother-in-law's family, the Eibens. Her great-grandfa
Traveling the South: A Genealogist's Road Trip
Travel

Traveling the South: A Genealogist's Road Trip

For me, as a long-time genealogist, the American South is one big treasure map. But the South has been largely overlooked by mainstream historians. While history books have long celebrated the Northeast — even the great patriot societies — the South's rich and diverse heritage, shaped by Spanish, French, Native American, and African American cultures, has received far less scholarly attention. The burning of countless Southern towns during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War destroyed record