Back from Peru

Last week was busy, here is a recap of my week:

• I attended the genealogy and heraldry congreso presented by the Instituto Peruano de Investigaciones Genealogicas
• Met with adiministrators from the Archivo General de Peru
• Presented a class at the Seminario Internacional - Implementacion de technologia avanzada en los archivos. Presented by the Archivo General de Peru

People keep asking how I liked Peru, I tell them I loved it, even though I didn't make it outside of Lima the entire week. Here is a quick review of my trip.

1) XIV Reunion Americana de Genealogia - Congreso Iberoamericano de Ciencias Genealogicas y Heraldicas (sorry, I'm on my laptop and can't get the accent marks to work) - This was an interesting conference. I have never attended one like it before. The presenters were mainly academics from all over Latin America and Spain, and their presentations were mainly on pre 1650 research. The ponencias were only 15 minutes long followed by 5-10 minutes of questions. I found a handful of them to be very interesting, especially the one that asked the question: "Why do we do genealogy?" It was an interesting perspective, and the presenter actually ended by asking the question to the audience. The answers varied, but were very interesting. I could write for days about this conference, but will only say that it was an interesting experience. It looks like the next one will be in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (2009)...nothing is final, so stay tuned if you are interested in attending.

2) Meetings with the AGN - I learned a lot about Peru civil registration, some of which is not found in any books that I have read on the topic of Hispanic genealogy. Lima (the city of, and it's districts) have civil registration records dating back to 1857. The same should hold true for any municipios that existed in 1857. You can find these records in the municipio where your ancestor was born, married, or died. Starting in 1875 copies of the civil registration books were sent to each regional archive. The AGN (Archivo General de la Nacion) has civil registration books for Lima city beginning with this date. The records from 1875 to 1900 can be found in the Archivo Historico (branch of the AGN), and those after 1900 are located in the AGN itself (all the way to the present). Outside of Lima, for example in the region of Cuzco (regions are equivalent to U.S. States) all civil registration records after 1875 should be in the regional archive of Cuzco, because that's when the duplication of the records began. Before that date you will need to check with each municipio.

I also learned a little more about the marriage petitions or expedientes matrimoniales created by the civil government. Each couple getting married had to present a couple of records in order to get married. These expediente packets include: baptisms (or birth certificate), death record of previous spouse (if anyone was previously married), and other notarized material ensuring that the couple had met all the prerequisites to marry. These records are great supplements to the actual marriage records. The AGN had some of these records, but you may also want to contact the municipio where your ancestors married.

3) Seminario Internacional - The AGN asked FamilySearch to do a two evening conference at the Archivo Historico. We talked about the different technologies that FamilySearch uses to digitize record collections. It was a fun conference and full of people. The first night we estimated 250+ people attended the conference. As you can see by the picture there was standing room only.