Confirming the 1877 Marriage Date of 2nd Great Grandparents Silverio and Maria Jesus Sanchez

A couple days ago, I blogged about finding the Información Matrimonio (Premarital Investigation) record for my 2nd great grandparents Silverio Robledo Nieto and Maria Jesus Sanchez Carbajal.¹ I mentioned in that post that an actual marriage date is not referenced in that record. This is typical for Información Matrimoniales; the marriage event is documented in a separate marriage record, the matrimonio.

Finding the Matrimonio Record

On Sunday, I found that matrimonio record.

Knowing the dates on which the banns were read often makes locating the matrimonio record an easy task. This task, for me, was made even easier in this case because both FamilySearch and Ancestry (which pulls the data from FamilySearch) provide an index entry record for this record…this index entry just doesn’t cite the actual matrimonio record or link to the digitized record. But the index entry notes a marriage date of 25 August 1877, which led me first to the información matrimonio record and then the matrimonio record.

What Does the Matrimonio Record Tell us?

On 25 August 1877, in the church serving Yturbide [also spelled Iturbide, now called Villa Hidalgo], Presbitero [priest] Jose Manuel Hernandez performed both the casamiento [marriage] and the velación [blessing[ for Silverio Robledo and Jesus Maria Sanchez. Yturbide/Iturbide [now Villa Hidalgo] is a municipio [municipality, similar to our counties] in the state of San Luis Potosí, in central Mexico.⁴

The casamiento and velación were performed in accordance with the stipulations mandated by the Council of Trent in the 16th century. These stipulations include a premarital investigation and the reading of the banns. This marriage record indicates that the banns were published on 29 July, 5 August, and 12 August. It also confirms that no impediments to marriage were discovered.⁵

The groom and bride are noted as residing in Temascal [a village in the nearby municipio of Armadillo de los Infante]. It is unclear from this record [or just my interpretation of this record], if both the bride and groom resided in Temascal prior to the marriage [brides traditionally married in the home parish, where baptized], or if just Silverio resided there.⁵

Jose Maria Nieto and Jose Maria Vazquez served as witnesses to the marriage, as they did during the premarital investigation.⁵

This record mentions padrinos. Padrinos are generally thought of in terms of baptisms; they serve as the godparents. But in the context of marriage, they serve as the sponsors, basically like a best man and maid of honor. In this marriage, Reynaldo Robledo and Adelaida Robledo served as the padrinos.⁵

It is worth noting that, unlike the información matrimonio, the matrimonio itself does not mention the names of the bride and groom’s parents.⁹ This is why those with Mexican ancestry should not ever settle for just the matrimonio record…dig for that premarital investigation as well.

Next Steps

• Did both the bride and groom reside in Temascal, or just Silverio? If they both did, this tells us that Maria Jesus’s family probably moved away from Yturbide sometime after her baptism [since brides usually married in their home parish, where baptized]. Identifying the names of any siblings for Maria Jesus, and then locating a baptism record for each of them (as well as Maria Jesus) should help me plot where the family lived at various times prior to Maria Jesus’s marriage.
• What was the relationship of the padrinos Reynaldo Robledo and Adelaida Robledo to the couple? Robledo is the groom’s paternal surname, so they are likely related to the groom Silverio. If this were a U.S. Marriage record, one would assume that Reynaldo and Adelaida were spouses because they are noted with the same surname. However Mexican women did not take on the husband’s surname after marriage. So we should work off the premise that Robledo is Adelaida’s paternal surname. I will need to identify the names of Silverio’s siblings and his father’s siblings.

Sources