On 25 December 1807 at the parish of St Peter in the Catalan city of Reus, ‘Benito’ Vandenboske, a gardener, stated to be from Liedekerke in the Diocese of Mechelen in Flanders, married Francisca Girardi y Ripoll, native of Reus. The groom’s parents were named as Judocus Vandenboske and Francisca Gilis. I am unsure what…
On 18 January 1722 a soldier named Gil Hallfaste died in the remote Aragonese town of Estadilla. He was stated to belong to the Company led by ‘Don Bernardo Macsuini’ (Bernard MacSweeney) in the 1st Batallion of the Hibernia Regiment. The burial record states that the deceased soldier was about 50 years old, a Flemish…
A baptism recorded at Seville’s parish of San Roque in December 1868 must have tested the limits of the priest’s ability to spell phonetically – in the effort to detail so many foreign names and places, the child’s name seems to have been omitted from the entry, unless the name ‘Eduardo’ scribbled in the margin,…
A few newcomers to Madrid whose marriage licence applications are indexed among those presently held by the Madrid Diocesan Archive: * Lorenzo Noc, native of Festauer (?) Diocese of Constance; applied to marry Margarita Guile, native of Strasbourg: 2 Aug 1792 * Pedro Gerardo Bences, native of Paris; applied to marry Manuela Santoriad, native of…
Life after combat has never been easy for the wounded warrior and is not today either, as some of the stories of young men returning from Iraq or Helmand Province show us only too well. But next Remembrance Day (or Veterans Day, if you’re in the US) spare a thought for Captain Juan Meyer. On…
On 10 November 1717 a lady made her will before Madrid notary Domingo de Munilla y Zuazo. He wrote that she identified herself as Doña Guillerma Bambec, though she said that she was commonly – and mistakenly – known here as Doña Catalina. The notary said that she was a native of ‘Bucsel, Jurisdiction of…
Some references to Flemish soldiers in 18th century Zaragoza, in belated tribute to Belgium having at last established a new government.The diocesan register of marriage licence applications for the year 1730 includes a well-travelled scrap of paper pertaining to a well-travelled man-at-arms. Headed ‘Extractum ex Registro Baptismali Exemptae Cathedralis Ecclesiae Sancti Bavonis’ it transcribes the…