Question of the Week: Do you have any Spanish roots? [closed]

Question

Do you have any Spanish ancestors? Tell us about them with an answer below! You could also use the question image to share your answer with friends and family on social media.

Also, you might be interested in our Spain Project.

Comments

If History, If Geni is correct and Accurate-

Favila, duque de Cantabria is my 31st Great Grandfather.  Between 610-668. Spain and was murdered.

Sancha de Ayala is my 17th Great Grandmother. Born 06-01, 1360-1418. Toledo, Comuna de La Mancha, Spain.

Sancha Spouse came from England, Walter Blount, Knight: 1348 circa, Elvasion, Derbyshire, England died 07-21-1403 Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England.

Answer 1

I personally do not, but on one side of the family, I have an aunt descended from French & Spanish colonizers of Algeria, & on the other side an aunt of Mexican heritage, including descent from the indigenous peoples as well as Spanish colonizers, so I've done some research into each of their families.

Answer 2

My Spanish ancestor is Pedro Fernandos (or Fernandez/Fordinandoe) who arrived in Maryland in 1668 as a cabin boy for Captain James Neale.  He settled as a planter in Port Tobacco,Charles County, Maryland and left a long list of descendants, most of whom spelled the name as Farnandis, including my 3rd great grandmother , Jane Farnandis who married John Norris.  She was born in Maryland and died in North Carolina.

Comments

I also have Peter Farnandis (Pedro Fernandez) as an ancestor. He left a will naming among others a daughter Elizabeth who married Edward Brawner, Sr. , one of my ancestral lines that ended up in South Central Kentucky. I have more info but am in the middle of moving right now.

Answer 3

According to MyHeritage, I have 9.7% Iberian DNA (which varies according to estimates), and I have not been able to determine what ancestor (or ancestors) that comes from. Another estimate says I have a little Basque DNA as well. I wish I knew.

Comments

Hi, Erik. I am not sure I agree with that.

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Thank you for sharing your insight, Sharon. I don't disagree with you. Yes, I know about the "black Irish" with dark hair, but my mother wouldn't have fit that description at all. She had very delicate coloring similar to that of Nicole Kidman...no Southern European in her.

I'm think any Iberian DNA must be from my dad's side of the family. It could come from more than one relative. I am not certain of this, but I think my dad may have had an ancestor from Cornwall which is the southernmost portion of England. He also has French and French/Swiss ancestry. I think one of his ancestors may have come from the south of France--not exactly what we call "Basque Country" today but pretty close.

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One of my DNA tests said I have Ashkenazi DNA. Only something like 3 or 4% which is very little. The test said this is a pretty typical result for many Europeans. The two others I took (MyHeritage and familytreeDNA) came back as 0%.

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One might consider the Celts.  They came into Iberia before the Romans, spread across, and some believe traveled from northwest Spain to the British Isles.  Here's an article that discussed the possibility/controversy.  

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Well, that is a possibility. Thank you for your response. It may have come from France. I have a lot of DNA matches in France, so it may come from France. But I don't disagree with that theory. I just don't know. I have relatively few DNA matches in Spain and even less in Portugal (and South and Central America). So, I really believe it comes from French ancestors. I think most people know that the French are really a mixture of Latin, Germanic, and British people (among other ethnicities).

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My Heritage goes back to the early 1600s but if you put your DNA on other sites it can go back thousands of years. I had no idea that I had Spanish ancestors dating back over 30.000 years including matching DNA with one of the most famous excavations in Atapuerca in Burgos Spain. Turns out me and my sister ended up going back to our roots as I have lived in Madrid for 35 years and she in Tenerife for the past 5. My mother also shares a lot of DNA from The Guanches of Tenefife of just over 1000 years ago as they came over from North Africa, She also has some DNA from the Moors who invaded Adalusia , Apparently they were from Lebanon and part of the Ottoman Empire. I also found some connections with probably The Spanish Conqistadores as she has DNA from Panama, Mexico and Bolivia.,

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Apparently, I do have some Spanish ancestors, but they go so far back in my family tree that I don't know how I can carry their DNA, The Spanish explorer and conquistador, Juan Ponce de León, and I are 10th cousins seventeen times removed (supposedly).

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If   you know your haplogroup it would be a good idea to put your raw DNA on a free website called mitoYDNA,especially if you have Irish or British ancestry. They are able to tell you all your ancestors surnames and where they come from e.g Irish/Swedish and Scotish(Cesnsus recoreds going back to 1840s), They can also tell you where your haplogroups lived even using google maps as they compare your haplogroups with excavations going back thousands of years, I already knew that I had about 35 ethnticities but wasn´t sure if it was from my mother´s or father´s side, As I gave both parents a test I was able to know both haplogroups as females only get the MtDNA passed down through their mothers whereas males get the father´s and the mothers. There were no surprises as I had already put my dna on Gedmatch.com and a few others but what I was able to do was to see if some of my ethnticities such as Sardianian or Russian where maternal or paternal, The site takes a bit of time to figure out what you have to do but its kind of trial and error until you figure out what you have to do.

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Thank you. That's very interesting. I'll have to try it. I am familiar with the Gedmatch and YourDNAportal sites. I have explored pretty much everything they have. While I do understand a lot of what I am looking at on those sites, I don't understand some of it. I did see something interesting on one of those sites but now I can't find it and I don't remember which one it was. It tells you what ethnic phenotype you are. I am also a lot of different ethnicities. I didn't know exactly what I was looking at when I saw these different phenotypes until I looked them up. I know I saw the word "alpine" (or "alpinid"- one of the two) and I think I saw the word "Tronder" (or one of those Nordid types) and perhaps "Lappid" and "Baskid". I don't think I look anything like a Basque, but one of my father's brothers looked somewhat similar to an example of what a Basque looks like (a computer generated image of typical Basque features). My father looked somewhat different than most of his siblings. He was also a mix of various ethnicities (they all looked different). It's amazing how siblings can inherit different traits from their parents (perhaps more from one than the other), and not look similar to each other (especially when are made up of so many ethnicities). Case in point would be that may father had dark (brown?) hair and brown eyes, and more of an Alpinid face with a square jaw (he probably had other ethnicities as well). He tanned easily. There was nothing Nordid-looking about him BUT some if his siblings were blonde and blue-eyed with fairer skin. Here is my father (who was very handsome in his youth). I can clearly see some alpinid features (mixed with who knows what). There is a vague resemblance between him and his younger brother. https://www.wikitree.com/photo/jpg/Leachman-176

Here is the link to an illustration of what the Basque phenotype usually looks like. One of my uncles kind of looked like the male in this picture...especially the nose. But my father did not have a nose like that. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/606437906063813761/

Amazing...here's plenty of examples of fair-skinned Spaniards. When most people think of the Spanish (or Latins), they think of people from Central and South America. They forget that Spaniards are Europeans. I see a lot of white legs in this video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwpN6dUh8Y4&t=58s

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I have 45% Iberian according to MyHeritage and honestly don’t really understand how.

Answer 4

I am related to Juan Ponce de Leon, discoverer of Florida and first governor of Puerto Rico.  My great grandmother was Dolores Maria Ponce de Leon from Havana, Cuba who is reportedly a direct ancestor of him

Comments

He is a cousin of mine through the Ponce de Leon Family. My Order of the Crown of Charlemagne membership application has Fernando Perez Ponce de Leon (Master of the Order of Alcantara) in a long line of Ponce de Leon's all the way to King Alfonso IX of Leon, then up to Charlemagne.

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As it turns out, I am related to him, too. Small world. According to Wikitree, he is my 10th cousin 17 times removed. Supposedly we are both descended from Geoffrey d'Anjou (born in France in 1113).

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Whoops! Sorry for the duplicate comment.

Answer 5

I do. Among them, Allard Anthony although I have not been able to trace him from the Netherlands back to Spain. Anthony-76

Answer 6

Yes! I'm from Chile, South America, so most of my ancestors come from Spain, either really far back in time, when the colonizing of the country was just beginning, or more recent. The last of my spain born ancestors emigrated here in the early 1880s.

Comments

Hola Camilo, una compatriota por acá! Saludos

Answer 7

According to Wikitree Leonor Castillo-85 (King Edw I) is my 21st GGM. I think she's from Spain. Linda.  Frayer-47

Answer 8

Yes! My grandmother was born in Avilés, Asturias. She was from an important family there, related to the Marquis of Teverga and the Marquis of Pinar del Río. I have discovered she had a Galician ancestor and a whole Basque branch.

My grandfather parents were from Asturias and Southern Spain.

Comments

I believe my Estrada ancestors originated in Austurias/Cantabria.  My wife and I traveled to see the Torre de Estrada in Val de San Vicinete a couple of years ago.  Beautiful territory!  Also, my dad's maternal halpogroup is H1q, which I have read is believed to have origins in the Cantabria area.

Answer 9

Grandfather born Denia ,Alicanti Spain 1904? not finding out much about him

Answer 10

Yes  I do..My mothers father family was from Mexico and my grandmother ( his wife) was Spanish. Her roots run deep into California when it was Alta California. My family never knew how much of her history is around us.  Family names such as Miramontes, Pacheco, Sibrian, Archuleta, Briones to name a few. My AncestryDNA test says I have 20% Spanish.

Answer 11

According to MyHeritage, 94% of my DNA is Iberian and most of my ancestors are from Spain. I leave a link to my compact tree in case someone is interested on any branch of my tree. I included bios for some of my ancestors

https://www.wikitree.com/treewidget/De_Zuviria-1/5

Answer 12

According to my dna, l have Sepphardic ancestry which means Spanish Jews.  Also quite a few medieval Spanish ancestors, according to established research.

Answer 13

mother Spanish. traced many of her lines back to 15th century

Answer 14

My great great grandfather, Don Abascal was born in Spain and died in the Bahamas. His daughter was Rebecca Angelina Abascal Wark, my great grandmother.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Abascal-1

We don't know much about Don Abascal, Don probably being an honorific and not a first name, but the Abascal family was an aristocratic family, evidently with ties to Northern Spain.

Answer 15

My Father, Michel Salomon, was born in Fusagasuga in Colombia. My Paternal Grandmother, Maria Delores(Lolita) Castro is the source of my Hispanic background. My Grandmother and her father, Manuel Castro were both from Fusagasuga. My Great-Grandmother, Ernestina Perez, was from Bogota. As was her father Campos Perez. The DNA test I did on Ancestry.com, has 7% of my Heritage coming from Spain.

Answer 16

Yes, I have very deep Spanish roots, my 19th GGF Hernán Martín Serrano arriving in what is now the United States in 1598 with the Juan de Oñate Expedition of 1598 as founders of Santa Fe. Capt Francisco Montes Vigil another group of my ancestors arrived in 1695 with the well documented Juan Paez Hurtado Expedition. 

In 2016 through my documentation to my 6th GGF Juan Cristoval Montes Vigil, I was able to Join the Sons of the American Revolution due to his donations to the war effort which qualify him as a Spanish Patriot by both the SAR & DAR. Since then I have proven 2 more Spanish Patriots Ancestors to the SAR.

Juan Cristoval Montes Vigil's grandfather was Capt Francisco Montes Vigil. This lead me to his grandfather Juan Montes Vigil, who came from Spain and had recently been found to have a documented Royal Lineage through the Ponce de Leon Family to Charlemagne.  I then  petitioned the Order of the Crown of Charlemagne and sought Juan Montes Vigil as a proposed Spanish Gateway Ancestor. Six months later in July 2019 through the research efforts of the OCC, Juan Montes Vigil was approved as the first Spanish Gateway Ancestor. Now all documented descendants can use him as an acceptable Gateway Ancestor for membership into lineage Societies. I was accepted as a life Member of the Order of the Crown of Charlemagne in August 2019. The first to do so through Juan Montes Vigil and then went further back with the Order of the Meverovingian Dynasty.  I also used Juan Montes Vigil as a Gateway Ancestor to gain membership to the Military Order of The Crusades to Afonso I of Portugal and the Order of Three Crusades 1096-1192 to Amadeus III Count of Savoy.

Answer 17

Yes i do , and im enjoying to know about my hispanic roots

Answer 18

My ancestors came from Spain. They were in Sicily in 1600. From there they came to Mexico and worked their way north. In 1698 Bartolome Lobato was recruited to come to New Mexico to retake Santa Fe from the Indians, who had banded together to kick the Spanish out of New Mexico 12 years before. The Maestas came as well, along with Vigil's, I believe.

Answer 19

Yes, I do have many Spanish ancestors. For example, there is Sancho III, King of Aragon. I found many other Spanish relatives, many who were born before Spain became a formal country. Good luck to you in your search for long-lost relatives.

Answer 20

Yes. My grandfather was from Mexico, but my DNA shows little Native American DNA and quite a bit of Spanish ancestry, even some Ashkenazi Jewish. However, I know little beyond his name and that of his mother and a brother. I don't even know where in Mexico they originated. It's been a lot easier to research my ancestry on other branches that are within U.S. borders reaching back to the Mayflower.

Comments

Peggy, may I ask his surname?  My mother, father and I are almost 50/50 Native American & European.  In researching my lines in Guatemala (not easy!) it looks like Spanish families tended to intermarry and when they married/had children with native Americans, they were of a perceived "nobility" (e.g. daughters were gifted to Conquistadores and used as guides/ambassadors to other territories).  I might be familiar with some of the families in Mexico.