This site is
dedicated to the memory of my ancestors and to the memory of all my
departed family members. After researching family history for many years,
I feel like I have come to know those ancestors whom I was not able to
meet during my lifetime. Though in some cases I have not even a photograph
to remember them by, I can almost visualize their faces, and experience
what they experienced in their everyday lives. It is my hope that each of
you will come to know these long departed ancestors and our more recent
and contemporary ancestors as well as I have come to know them. They will
live in my heart forever; I hope they live in yours forever also. May all
our family members be “...como dos gotas de agua….”; may we be as
closely united as two drops of water.
If you are descended from the Longorias of the Santa Rita Ranch in
southern Brooks County, Texas, I believe you will find a significant
amount of family history here. My purpose is to share this compiled
history with you so that you can pass it on to your children, and they in
turn can pass it on to theirs. This history is not a finished product; it
could never be completely up to date and despite my concerted effort,
factual errors, faulty interpretations and wrong conclusions have
undoubtedly been made. I welcome feedback from all of you to identify
inaccuracies and errors, help me to correct them, and to make this humble
history more accurate and complete.
If your surname is Longoria but are not closely related to those of us
from the Santa Rita Ranch, you may still find some information here that
is of interest. The sections on our Ancestral Origins, the Ancestral
Homelands in Old Spain, and Ancestral Migration to New Spain should be of
interest to everyone. The section on the Origin of Surnames may also be of
interest.
I have researched all of my genealogical roots, but to date that
research has been most fruitful in my LONGORIA branch. My research into my
wife’s ALCALA branch, my mother’s VILLARREAL branch, and my paternal
grandmother’s TREVIÑO branch has yielded good results, but they are not
as extensive as on the Longoria branch. Not surprisingly, the roots of
some of these branches frequently had common seeds in the not too distant
past.
I continue my research into all branches and will update this site when
appropriate.
Notation on back of photograph
from my maternal great-grandmother Antonia Vidaurri de Trevino to
her daughter Ninfa. |
It
reads:
"Ninfita,
Cada vez que veas este retrato de tu mama ten presente lo mucho que
te ama y sus deseos son que tu, Anita y Genovevo sean tan unidos
como dos gotas de agua; tu mama que te ama hasta la eternidad.
Diciembre 19 de 1903. Antonia Vidaurri de T." |
Translation:
"Ninfita,
each time you see this picture of your mother keep in mind how much
she loves you and her desires are that you, Anita and Genovevo will be
as united as two drops of
water; your mother who loves you until
eternity. December 19, 1903. Antonia Vidaurri de T." |
NOTE: In this website, I have sometimes named
individuals by including both their paternal and maternal surnames in an
attempt to distinguish between similarly named individuals. To be
consistent with the capabilities of my genealogy software, I adopted the
convention of listing the paternal surname first and the maternal surname
last. This may not be consistent with the Mexican custom of listing
the maternal surname first, but it is the only way I could maintain
consistency with the database generated by my genealogy software.
Using my own convention, I would write my own name as Raul N. Longoria
Villarreal.
Also, as in the caption for the photo
above, I sometimes will include "de" in a lady's name to
show that the surname that follows was her husband's surname. Using
this convention, my wife's name would become Minerva Alcala de Longoria.