On Saturday, July 29, the Bucks County Genealogical Society is participating in the 50th annual Puerto Rican Festival at the Bristol Wharf. Hosted by the Puerto Rican Cultural Association of Bucks County, the event also features cultural food, music, dancing, cooking demonstrations, children’s activities and vendors from noon to 8 p.m.
BCGS is offering free guidance and look-ups of their Puerto Rican roots (or anywhere in the world) to guests who may be unaware of the many options available to find free records, even online.
Family tree pedigree charts in English and Spanish, as well as handouts, will be available free to pick up at the table. Once you complete what you know, you can research several places to find your missing information. Civil and church records can provide birth, baptism, marriage and death information, as well as population and agricultural censuses. While ancestry.com is an important and helpful place to research these records, it can be costly. However, you can research on the website for free at local libraries. Other essential sites are MyHeritage.com and FamilySearch.org, a free site hosted by the Mormon Church, which has digitized records all over the world, including the archives at San Juan.
The complete genealogy and records of baseball legend Roberto Clemente will be on display for the enjoyment of guests, as well as other celebrities, musicians and athletes from around the world.
Genetic genealogist Cathy Ivins, director of publicity for BCGS, will be staffing the table along with several other experienced genealogists. Ivins visited family in Puerto Rico in 2022, after building her husband’s tree and finding family using online records and DNA. Guests can chat with Ivins to learn more about their Boricua genes, which can include Indigenous (Taíno) Puerto Rican, Mesoamerican, Iberian (Spain, Portugal) and African ancestry.
For more information, visit bucksgen.org or email publicity@bucksgen.org.
