Adele Cadignan’s Birth Record

For the 4.5 of you that follow my blog, by now you’ve become familiar with my pattern. I have little bursts of productivity lasting anywhere from a few days to a few months and then things die down, life or fatigue step in, and I disappear from the blogosphere for a while. Various things have roused me out of my previous genealogy hibernations, usually family trips and/or overwhelming, crippling, self-inflicted guilt. This time it’s different.

Another genealogist on the other side of the country came across my blog when he was researching his own ancestral ties to Martinique (you can see the comments from Luis here and here).  Luckily for me, genealogists, like all researchers (and like all humans, really) are curious people. He did a little hunting around to see if he could track down my great-grandmother Adele “Josephine” Cadignan…and he did!

No Jumping, Please

Addendum to report #4 on my 2011 genealogy research trip to Panama

I have to say, things have really been moving on the Cadignan end of things. I also have to admit that I may have gotten so excited about the progress I was making I jumped ahead of myself and went running full steam ahead towards a conclusion based on shaky evidence.  I’ll explain.

Francois and Adele

Report #3 on my 2011 genealogy research trip to Panama

Nearly two years ago Alfonso Vallee Cadignan, one of my grandfather Hilarion’s brothers, passed away. This led relatives to go through his old documents and make an interesting discovery.  Though we had always known his parents’ names to be Simon and Josephine, they were listed as Francois Vallee and Adele Cadignan on Alfonso’s birth certificate. This lead to an automatic reaction of “Who the heck are they?” from the members of my mother’s generation who had never heard their grandparents referred to as such.  In a fairly offhand manner their last living child, Tia Claire, confirmed that these were her parents’ real names.  It was quite a shocking paradigm shift for those of us who marveled over this discovery at the time.