RE: [ranchos] Re: Padrinos?

[Irma GomezLucero <igomezlucero@...>]

A common tradition in my family is regarding the 1st & 2nd children of a couple.  The first born's godparents are often the maternal grandparents.  The 2nd born's godparents are often the paternal grandparents.  I see this quite often in my family research.  There are variations when a grandparent is deseased.  Being that my father's mother has already passed away when the second child was born, my parents substituted my mother's grandmother.  Therefore my brother's godparents were his paternal grandfather, and his maternal G Grandmother.

The other children were a free-for-all.  Only two out of six have baptismal godparents that are not relatives.

My father felt slighted when my oldest sister who had the first grandchild didn't follow this tradition.  She chose a sister and her husband's buddy.  Then she got chewed out for selecting a non-married couple!           Traditions...traditions.... 

 

Irma G.L. (Northern Calif.)

---

From: Arturo Ramos [mailto:arturo.ramos2@...]
Sent: Monday, July 25, 2005 10:12 AM
To: ranchos@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [ranchos] Re: Padrinos?

Joseph:

I don't think that Padrinos were necessarily blood 
relatives.  I know 
that in my family, neither of my parents' padrinos 
are close 
relatives.  This is purely based on anecdotal evidence, but I 
think 
padrinos were often childhood friends, with which the parents had a 
close comeraderie or even respected members of the community (since 
traditionally, these would take in the child should he or she be 
orphaned, etc. and one would want the child to be well raised).

Given 
the prevelance of clusters of names (due to surnames often 
being assigned to 
indigenous people, etc.) it is likely that two 
(unrelated) friends in a 
rancho would have the same surname.

--- In ranchos@yahoogroups.com, 
Joseph Puentes <makas@n...> wrote:
> 
> I know that in most 
cases the padrinos were members of the family. 
But 
> other than 
showing this is via examination of the records how do we 
> know? Were 
there many examples of non blood relatives being the 
> Padrinos? I guess 
I'm more interested in if  anyone has ever 
witnessed a 
> padrino 
with the same surname of one of the parents actually being 
a non 
> 
blood relative. Has anyone ever seen this?
> 
> Where can I go to 
read more information on how our relatives picked 
> Padrinos and the 
likely hood that they were blood relatives of some 
degree?
> 
> 
thanks again you guys are great,
> 
> joseph