El árbol familiar materno de Genie Milgrom,
cubanoamericana residente en Miami, con raíces en Fermoselle y la ciudad de
Zamora, ha sido certificado por el historiador Dr. Stanley M. Hordes, de la Universidad de Nuevo México, como
perteneciente a familias judío conversas de la provincia, al menos desde mediados del siglo XVI.
El profesor Hordes es un reconocido especialista con más de 37 años de trabajo en el tema de los cripto judíos en España, Portugal y las Américas.
Su libro más reciente se titula To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New
Mexico (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
El fallecimiento de la abuela materna de
Genie Milgrom en 1992 en Miami proveyó la información inicial, apoyada por
objetos familiares, del ancestro hebreo asentado en Fermoselle. Desde ese
momento y con la ayuda del genealogista madrileño Fernando González del Campo
Román, quien realizó la búsqueda en los archivos de la península, Genie pudo
reconstruir 15 generaciones con varios de sus miembros siendo procesados por
los tribunales de la inquisición en Valladolid bajo el cargo de judaizante.
La familia estudiada es la
Ramos Diez, con líneas, además de en Fermoselle, Zamora, Madrid y Miami, Cuba, a donde varios miembros
emigraron a principios del siglo XX, especialmente a Santiago de Cuba.
A continuación se ofrece la carta en inglés del profesor Hordes,
confirmando dicha genealogía materna y más abajo una lista de apellidos relacionados
con el árbol familiar en cuestión.
La inclusión de estos apellidos no significa
que los mismos sean hebreos per se,
sino que son comunes en los documentos oficiales - certificados de bautizos, de defusión, de matrimonio, testamentos- obtenidos en los archivos,
principalmente de España y la iglesia católica en Cuba, en relación con la familia Ramos Diez.
El Dr. Hordes confirma que la práctica de la endogamia era común entre las familias cripto judías de los pueblos pequeños, incluido Fermoselle, en la actual provincia de Zamora.
Stanley M. Hordes, Ph.D.
1830 Morningside Drive, NE
Albuquerque, NM 87110 USA email: Smhordes@aol.com
I am Dr. Stanley M. Hordes, Adjunct Research Professor at the
Latin American and Iberian Institute at the University of New Mexico. I hold a B.A. in History from the University
of Maryland (1971), M.A. in Latin American History from the University of New
Mexico (1973), and a Ph.D. in Colonial Mexican History from Tulane University
(1980). My doctoral dissertation, “The
Crypto-Jewish Community of New Spain, 1620-1649: A Collective Biography,” was directed by the
renown historian of the Mexican Inquisition, Professor Richard E.
Greenleaf. I am the author of several
articles and books on the topic of crypto-Judaism in Mexico and the United
States Southwest, including To the End of
the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2005). I have
thirty-seven years of experience working with primary documentation relating to
crypto-Jews and the Inquisition in the archives of Spain, Portugal, Mexico,
Peru, England, and Cuba. I am a
co-founder of the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies, formed in 1991.
I am also a member of the
Jewish community in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, whose maternal roots can be
traced to the Wasserman family of Jakobstadt, Latvia in the mid-nineteenth
century.
I was approached by Ms.Genie
Milgrom to verify the results of a study that she and a team of Spanish
researchers conducted to ascertain her direct matrilineal genealogy, which is
traceable as far back as the mid-sixteenth century. I was extremely impressed with the complete
and comprehensive nature of the documentation accumulated by the research team
that Ms. Milgrom engaged, comprising birth (baptismal), marriage and death
records maintained by the Catholic Church in Cuba and Spain, dowery agreements
and wills from regional and municipal archives in Spain, and Inquisition trial
records from the national archives of Spain and Portugal. I examined abstracts and transcriptions of
documents prepared by experts in Spain, as well as photocopies of the original
documents, themselves, from the above-cited archives and repositories extending
back to the mid-1500s.
Based on these records, I am
able to conclude that Ms. Milgrom’s maternal ancestors originated in the town
of Fermoselle, Zamora, Spain (on the border with Portugal), and remained there
until the mid-nineteenth century, when they migrated to Madrid, and thence to
Cuba, where Ms. Milgrom was born. I also
confirm Ms. Milgrom’s maternal descent from María Rodríguez (b. ca. 1575) and
her daughter, Catalina Rodríguez Rodríguez (b. 1605), both of Fermoselle. Moreover, many of the surnames found in Ms.
Milgrom’s maternal line were commonly found among those residents of Fermoselle
suspected of crypto-Judaism by officials of the Inquisition in both Spain and
Portugal. Furthermore, contemporary
records show that family members of María and Catalina Rodríguez were penanced
by the Inquisition of Valladolid for practicing secret Judaism.
In view of the above, and of
the fact that endogamy was practiced to a great degree among crypto-Jewish
families in small towns like Fermoselle, including among the ancestors in the
unbroken maternal line of Ms. Milgrom, I can conclude that it is almost certain
that the maternal ancestors of Ms. Milgrom were crypto-Jews living along the
Spanish-Portuguese border in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries, descendants of Iberian Jews who had been forced to convert from
Judaism to Catholicism in the fifteenth century.
If you have any questions,
please do not hesitate to contact me.
Sincerely,
Stanley M. Hordes, Ph.D.
Apellidos zamoranos comunes en la genealogía Ramos Díez. Ello no significa que sean hebreos per se puesto que no todos fueron hallados en tribunales inquisitoriales:
Acebedo, Acevedo,
Almendral, Álvarez, Andrés, Asencio, Barbero, Bartholome, Barrueco, Bernardo,
Carbajal, Carvajal, Castro, Clemente, Conde, Croquete, Cuvillos, De Castro, De
Cuvillos, De la Torre, De la Torre Villar, De la Peña, De la Puente, De Velasco,
Del Seco, Diez, Diez-Regojo, Fariza, Farizo, Farmoselle, Fernández, Fernando,
Flores, Funcia, Garabato, García, Garrido, González, Gonzáles, Gordo, Goveia,
Guerra, Juárez, Losado, Maior, Maior-Valero, Maldonado, Manzana, Manzano,
Margarita, Martín, Martín de la Torre, Martín de Ledesma, Martín Peños, Mayor,
Montaña, Montaño, Montes, Peños, Pérez, Puente, Rámires, Rámirez, Ramos,
Ramos-Almendral, Ramos de la Puente, Ramos de la Torre, Ramos-Ramos, Recojo,
Robledo, Robles, Rodrígues, Rodríguez, Piriz, Santos, Seisdedos, Serrana,
Velasco, Villar, Villarino.
Más en Viaje a las semillas de Sefarad.
