The Panamanian Catholic Church records available at FamilySearch.org continue to yield more members of my grandparents’ generation. Most recently, I found a 1918 baptism record for a Julio Vallee born to “Josefina Cadignan y Simon Valet.” My mom said that 1918 would have been around the time her Tio Sylvester was born. But as far as we knew, none of the Vallee Cadignans were officially named Julio; it was a nickname that came later in life. However, it was not far-fetched to wonder if this was in fact a record for Sylvester because although he was mainly known as Sylvester and Achilo, Julio was also one of his nicknames. I checked the one source of birth information I had for Sylvester, an online transcription of key data regarding his death at Gorgas Hospital, and it gave 1917 as the estimated year; unfortunately, there was no month or date given.
Was this even our baby?
The names of the parents in the record, “Josefina Cadignan y Simon Valet,” confirmed this baby was definitely ours. That exact combination of names, particularly the French surnames, in a Spanish-speaking country is unique to our family. We know the oldest Vallee Cadignan sibling, Simona, was born in 1914, and the youngest, Claire, was born in 1931, meaning this 1918 baptism occurred within the period my great-grandparents were growing their family.
Was there a dating error in the record?
Is it possible that this Julio was really Sylvester? And that Sylvester was really born in July 1917, not 1918? By September, the month this Julio was baptized, most of the babies the church were christening were born earlier that same year. Perhaps the recorder had written the baptism year to match the birth year out of habit? To speculate a bit further, does that mean that he was actually 36, not the cursed age of 37, when he died in a work accident?
I think it’s very unlikely my great-grandparents would have waited until September 2018 to baptize a child born in 2017. According to the Vallee Cadignan baby baptism records I have obtained, my great-grandparents baptized all of the children I have records for (Simona, Louis, Julio, Edemon, twins Hilarion & Ursula, Homero, and Alfonso) in a timely fashion – the period in between birth and baptism ranged from 10 days to just under 3 months. Unfortunately, I have not yet found a baptism record for a Sylvester Vallee born in 2017, but based on the pattern shown with the other children it seems unlikely Simon and Josephine would have departed from this pattern with Sylvester.
Are we focusing on the correct Vallee brother?
You see, my grandfather Hilarion was also known by the nickname Julio in Spanish, Jil (sp?) in French patois. That’s right, not only did these two brothers have multiple nicknames, they shared one of these nicknames. This could get messy, but thankfully I already had the 1921 baptism record for my grandfather, which appeared under his twin sister’s baptism entry. This 1918 Julio was not my grandfather.
Maybe Harrieth Can Help?
My mom suggested we call Sylvester’s daughter Harrieth. When I told Harrieth I had a baptism record for a Julio Vallee, her first assumption was that it was in reference to my grandfather. I explained that we already had a baptism record for him along with his twin, Ursula, that matched their known birthdate of October 21, 1921. The Julio in this record was born July 19, 1918. Harrieth said that was definitely not her father, either; Sylvester’s birthdate was December 31, 1917. However, she remembers being told when she was younger that Simon and Josephine did lose another baby besides Ursula and that this Julio must have been that baby did not survive. This made sense to me and my mom.
Why so many Julios?
Harrieth said that both her father Sylvester and my grandfather Hilarion had been given the nickname Julio by coworkers at Lavanderia Gambotti y Perez. Sylvester worked there first and my grandfather came on board a few years later. Objectively this did not make sense to me, but I have come to accept that West Indian and Panamanian naming customs are complicated and varied. (Harrieth also mentioned that Simona had been named after her father, Simon.) One also can not help but notice that this Julio was born in Julio.
But wait, there’s more…
After we hung up with Harrieth I took another look at the dates and noted that this new narrative could only be possible with an incredibly tight timeline for the two pregnancies. Assuming Josephine got pregnant immediately after giving birth to Sylvester on December 31, 1917, Julio’s July 19, 2018 birth would have occurred at around 30 weeks of gestation. I pointed this out to my mom, stating that the timeline was not impossible but definitely raised questions. Since we suspect this to be a Vallee Cadignan baby that did not live long enough to be known by living Vallees, we can reason that Julio did not survive infancy/childhood because of complications from being premature. But his September 1, 2018 baptism date tells us he lived for at least six weeks. Again, not impossible, but I find it surprising that an infant that premature could survive that long in 1918 without the medical interventions that are available today. But who knows?
So what’s the verdict?
The verdict is that the theory that these were two different babies is plausible, but additional evidence is needed to feel more confident in that story. Ideally, further research will uncover (1) a separate baptism record for a Vallee Cadignan boy born in December 2017 (preferably under the name Sylvester, but hey, you never know with these people!) and (2) uncover information that can give me a date range to search for Julio’s death and/or burial record. I’ve already searched for both using the little bit of information I have and have come up with nothing.
I Am the Diaspora 
Good job. Keep up the good work.
Anulkah, thank you very much for taking the time too figure all this out. I find it fascinating.
Awesome work thanks for your commitment to unravel the mystery.