Uruguay

This was the question worth asking, because if the two houses were one the Uruguayan picture would close. They are not, and the answer did not come from arithmetic in the end. It came from a sentence.

On 15 November 1812, at the Iglesia Matriz of Montevideo, Don Juan Lloberas baptised Manuel Lorenzo, born the day before, and wrote down where the parents came from:

…hijo legítimo de RAMON SERENA natural de VALDEMORO en CASTILLA LA NUEVA, y de María Josefa González natural de la Ysla de Canarias, LANZAROTE. Abuelos paternos Salvador Serena y Ana de Cubas; id. maternos Marcial de León González è Ysavel Lorenza.

Valdemoro is twenty-seven kilometres south of Madrid. Sancho was natural de Córdova la Llana, in Andalusia, five hundred kilometres away. Two separate Spanish emigrations, two separate arrivals, one rare surname. Read the act →

The arithmetic had already said they could not be father and son — Alejandro married in 1825 so Ramón was born about 1775–85, while Sancho married in 1791 and had his first child in 1793 — and their fathers were different men, Félix and Salvador. The act closes what the arithmetic left open.

At Trinidad, the small inland capital of Flores, six or seven Lerena men were fathering children between 1871 and 1895 — Bernabé, Vitalino, Ysaac, Cipriano, Fermín, Florencio. Two of them are now placed: Bernabé is Alejandro’s son and Cipriano is Mauricio’s, which makes them first cousins.

The mothers are the other finding, and they are Basque — Beloqui, Echeverry, Pelaez, Gazo, Barragán. A Lerena kindred marrying Basque women in one small town speaks to the open question of where the surname comes from; it is evidence about the community they married into, not about the etymology, and it is recorded as that and nothing more.

And they married each other. Lerenas and Pelaezes at Trinidad intermarried across at least forty years, until by 1885 the church required a dispensation for consanguinity to let them do it again — twice in the third degree, once in the second and third accumulated. These are not two families who happened to meet. They are one intermarried kindred in a small inland town.

The houses will not be joined. That question is closed: Córdoba and Valdemoro are five hundred kilometres apart and the act is explicit. What is now open instead is Valdemoro, which is a finite and searchable place. Salvador Serena and Ana de Cubas were married in Spain, and that marriage is findable; so is Ramón’s own baptism, about 1775–85. The archive has a hard Spanish place-name for this family where an hour ago it had none.

And a second stream opens with it that nobody suspected: María Josefa González was a canaria, from Lanzarote. The Canary Islands fed their own migration into the River Plate, and no part of this archive has ever looked at it.

And now the thing this page must not be allowed to obscure. Neither house reaches Pablo Armando. There is no Juan Carlos Lerena in either family, in any generation, in any of the searches that built this page. He was born at Rosario de Santa Fe in Argentina in 1882, and the Argentine end says the same thing from three directions: the cathedral baptism index holds no Lerena for 1881–83, the 1895 census holds no Lerena or Lerina household anywhere in Santa Fe province, and his own parents are named on exactly one document — his enrolment card — and nowhere else on earth.

So these two families are being built in parallel, and in hope. The hope is reasonable: the surname is rare, the River Plate is one world with a river through the middle of it, and the DNA says the Argentine and Uruguayan hypotheses are genetically the same hypothesis. The hope is not evidence, and nothing here is written as though it were.

Coverage is not the same as discovery. What the four departments hold, and what searching them further would and would not buy.

A union recorded in Canelones, and the godparents who come with it.

Documented The count of Sancho’s children has moved twice, and the file that held it was once called complete. An earlier list held four children under that name; the reconciled list supersedes it and names eight, born between 1793 and 1815. The padrón of 1812 returns six in the household, which is not a contradiction: two were born after it, and José Loreto, born 1806, is in no tree and no census and was found only because the surname was searched as LORENA. The likeliest reading of his absence from the padrón is that he died before 1812 — but no burial has been looked for, and none is claimed.

Documented They lived at Canelones; they did not visit it. José Loreto’s baptism of 11 December 1806 calls Sancho and María “vecinos de esta Villa” — residents. That joins Agustina’s baptism there in 1795, Dominga’s in 1804, and Justa Pastora being called natural de Canelones in 1831. The family lived at Canelones for at least eleven years, and had moved to Montevideo, calle San Juan Nº 60, by the padrón of 1812. The godfather was fetched from Montevideo, which is the other direction.

Inferred And the household explains a name. The act of 30 August 1795 at Canelones reads “bautize, puse el Santo Oleo y Crisma a AGUSTINA RAMONA, DE TRES DIAS NACIDA, hija legitima de D.ⁿ Sancho Lerena y de D.^a Maria Fernandez, vecinos de la Villa” — which confirms the birth of 27 August 1795 that this register had carried from a tree and a census, and gives her a second forename. Her godfather was Don Fidel Rey, vecino de Montevideo. Four years later her younger brother was christened FIDEL — a forename that appears nowhere else in this family. This family names children for whoever stands at the font, five times over in the acts read here, so the likeliest source of the Lerena Fidel is that man. It is an inference from a pattern and not from a record.

Documented It also settles nothing about the other Fidel. A Montevideo death registration of 1889 names “Abuelos paternos FIDEL LERENA y MARIA RUEDAS”, and that plate was opened on 21 September. Whether that Fidel is Sancho’s son remains unestablished, and nothing on the plate bears on it. The tree’s death of 1822 — the one thing that would have kept them apart — is not in the record either. The two are still not merged: an unevidenced death is not evidence of survival.

Documented The same opening carries a trap this archive walked past. The act immediately before hers baptises another María Mercedes, on 25 September 1812 — “hija de TERESA ABELLEYRA, negra esclava de D.ⁿ RAMON ABELLEYRA”. Two enslaved girls of the same name, in two households, on consecutive days, on one page. And this register also holds a Teresa enslaved in Sancho’s household, from the padrón — a different woman, from a different document. The two must not be run together.

One of these was found while running a control rather than while looking for it: the 1877 marriage of Gilberto Lerena and Julia Salvañach may move his parentage from tree to documented. It is not being claimed yet, and the reason is in the last row — one half of that same index entry is visibly wrong, which is the whole argument for opening the image before trusting the other half.

Documented Four do, and the latest is 1812. He is godfather at the Iglesia Matriz in 1789; a sworn witness at Canelones in 1798, where he took an oath and could not sign it; a padrino at the Canelones confirmations in 1804; and returned in the padrón of 1812 at calle San Juan No 60 — Sancho, andaluz, 45 — and a census enumerates the living.

The other ten name him without requiring him. Fathers are named on their children’s baptisms whether present or not. Grandfathers are named on grandchildren’s. A marriage act names the bride’s parents living or dead — his daughter Justa Pastora’s of 1830 does not write him difunto, which is suggestive and is not evidence. He is named as an ancestor as late as 1850, sixty-one years after that first christening.

So 1812 is a floor and the trees’ 1832 is not a fact. This is the same test the whole register is now held to: being named in a later record is not evidence of being alive for it, and of 293 people here only twenty are known to have died at all.

On 16 September a sweep of Sancho’s children forward turned up a branch this archive had never named: children indexed under the compound LERENA VILLADEMOROS, and an Avelino Eduardo Lerena married to Celedonia Villademoros.

It set out two readings and deliberately chose neither. Either Avelino Lerena Fernández, born 1815, married twice — Ambrosia Traibel and then Celedonia — or Avelino Eduardo was a son of his, which would make the Villademoros children Sancho’s great-grandchildren rather than his grandchildren. The note said the two-Avelino problem had been suspected before, and left it.

Documented It is the son. Two parish acts give Avelino Eduardo’s own father as Avelino Serena/Lerena, with Ambrosia Traibel named on the record. So he belongs beside Alejandro, Josefa, Ana Rosario, Alfredo Justiniano and Mercedes as a child of that marriage, and Celedonia is a daughter-in-law.

The acts, and where they put this family: Avelino Pedro Joaquín Silvestre, born December 1865, christened at Unión, Montevideo on 5 March 1866; and Pedro Gualberto, born 19 October 1869, christened at the Iglesia del Cordón on 15 January 1870. Celedonia is a daughter of Pedro Villademoros and Angélica Méndez.

A sentence has been removed from the paragraph above. It said the Unión was “the same parish where his cousins the Moratorio girls were baptised fourteen years later”. On 21 September 2026 that plate was opened and the 1880 acts read “de esta Basílica menor y Catedral de Montevideo … bauticé solemnemente en ella”. The Moratorio girls were baptised in the Catedral, not at the Unión — the Unión was the index’s place field, copied here as though it were testimony. The two christenings are not in the same parish and never were.

And then a second Lerena married a second Villademoros

Documented The same sweep of the Cordón turned up Alejandro Joaquín Narciso Lerena, born 29 October 1872 and christened there on 29 May 1873 — son of Alejandro Lerena and Elisa Villardemoros. So in one decade, at Montevideo, two Lerena men married two women of that surname.

Inferred Three things tie the two baptisms together. The surname on both mothers. A Joaquín standing godfather at each — indexed “Joaquín Requena” on one and “Joaquín Regusa y García” on the other, which is one name and a machine mangling it. And the godmother in 1873 is Angélica Villademoros, while Celedonia’s mother is Angélica Méndez — a daughter named for her.

The reading is that two brothers married two sisters, which is the same shape as the two Lerena siblings who married two Cardozo siblings and whose children then petitioned to marry each other in 1911. It is not proved. The 1873 act does not name Alejandro’s own parents, so he is not joined here to Alejandro Lerena Traibel — Avelino and Ambrosia’s eldest, born 1843 or 1845, who would be twenty-seven or twenty-nine in 1872 and fits perfectly. A surname and an age are not an identification. The test is the marriage act, or any record giving this Alejandro a father.

Documented That test was run the same evening and came back empty. Lerena with spouse surname Villademoros in Uruguay returns 6,352 records and not one marriage act — every hit is a parent entry on somebody else’s baptism. The control worked two hours earlier: the same query shape on Lerena with spouse Juanico puts the marriage act of 19 December 1864 at rank one. So the shape finds a marriage when there is one to find. Neither Villademoros marriage is in the indexed record, and the reading stays an inference. What would settle it is the parish marriage books of the Cordón and Unión, which have not been walked.

Index-level, and said so. Both acts are machine-indexed and neither image has been opened here. What decides the branch is that two independent entries agree on the grandparents — not that either has been read off the page. And the reason the fork existed at all is worth keeping: three Avelinos in three generations, which is how a grandson gets mistaken for a second marriage.

On 14 September this archive tested Zelmira Carlota Lerena Larriera, born in the Departamento de San José on 4 November 1880, and concluded: “Tested and placed — and she is not ours.”

The same note did something better than its own verdict. It named the one thing that would overturn it — who her father Alberto Lerena was — offered Alberto Octavio Lerena Lenguas as a candidate, and then refused to draw the line: “Nothing joins them but a forename and an age, which is precisely the evidence that produced the two Arturos.”

Documented She is ours, and the candidate was the wrong man. Alberto Lerena’s own Montevideo death registration of 2 March 1921, certificate 246, names his wife María Inés Larriera and his parents Avelino Lerena and Ambrosia Treibel. So her father is Pedro Alberto Ysabelino Lerena Traibel, baptised at the Aguada on 21 November 1852 — and Zelmira is a great-granddaughter of Sancho, by the other grandfather.

And she is one of eight. Asking for Alberto and María Inés as a pair returns sixteen Uruguayan records and a whole household, born in the Departamento de San José between 1879 and 1898.

Inferred Three of the eight carry names out of the household at the Aguada — María Adelina for his sister, Carlos Ambrosio for his brother, and Ángel Miguel Avelino for his father. That is corroboration and it is not evidence. These are common names, and this archive has been burned by exactly this reasoning before. The death registration is the evidence; the names are why one believes it.

Documented The weak link was named and then closed the same day. That 1921 registration had been read at index level only, so the image was opened — film 008165205, image 01604. It reads: “Que el finado era hijo de Avelino Lerena, fallecido, y de Ambrosia Treibel, fallecida.” The chain now rests on an image at every step that matters.

And the act does something the index could not. It counts them: “era casado con María Inés Larriera, de cuya unión quedan nueve hijos llamados: María Adelina, Zelmira, Eleiza, Alberto, Carlos, María Inés, María Consuelo, María Antonieta y Miguel Avelino.” Eight of those nine are the eight above. The third is a daughter no index here has matched, and her name is not securely read — it is Eleiza or Eloiza, read at three times magnification, and this archive cannot choose between them.

Which is also the point about eight index entries. They look like eight independent confirmations. They are one indexing project reading one set of registers. This single act, written from the declarations of two men who knew the household, is a different occasion and a different mouth — and it both confirms the eight and corrects the count.

The act adds what no index carried: he was born at Montevideo, not in San José where his children were; he was a rentista; he died at six in the morning at the calle Juan Paullier, of a carcinoma certified by a Dr. Lussich; and the two declarants were neighbours, not kin — which is why the act makes him sixty-nine fifteen days before he would have been.

What it moves, beyond one woman’s parents. This register has carried a San José de Mayo cluster since its first fortnight — Echeverry, an Alejandro Lerena, a Bárbara Lerena, and the Mauricio Lerena who married Casimira Montaño there in 1837 — all unattached, in a department the Montevideo trunk never reached. This is the first documented Lerena of that trunk living in San José, from 1879 to 1898. It joins nothing. It puts a known man in the room where that cluster lives, which is a smaller thing and a reason to look again.

This one exists because of a mistake. A full-text search for Juan Carlos Lerena matched across the compound surname Juan Carlos González Lerena and was written off as a false positive — and the variant that produced it turned out to hide a whole family of fifty-two records that no sweep here had ever counted.

At the head of it is Estefanía Lerena, who married Servando González, with at least six children across San José, Montevideo and Colonia between 1854 and 1931. She is attached to nothing and is recorded unplaced.

Colonia was carried here for days as the one Uruguayan department still unaccounted for. It was never unaccounted for — it is where they came from. The marriage of 3 February 1837 at San José de Mayo gives Mauricio Lerena's birthplace as Colla, the old name of Rosario, Colonia, and names his parents.

What was genuinely missing is that none of them were people here. Mauricio is the man on whom the whole finding rests — his children account for San José, Flores and Florida, with Salto and Montevideo besides — and he was the patriarch this archive had researched but never made a person, living here only inside other people's notes until 20 September 2026.

Don Luis Lerena, his wife and six children sit on one census page taken about December 1858, and no search here had ever returned them — because the index files the family under Serena, the S-for-L variant this archive already documents. (On household 229 below, the clerk writes Lerena plainly while the index still says Serena, so the substitution may be the indexer's hand rather than the enumerator's. Either way, search this collection under Serena or nothing comes back.)

The proof of the household is the wife: she is entered not as Serena but under her own surname, Justiniana Lenguas. Two readings fall out cleanly. “Erna” is Ema — María Ema, christened 7 October 1857 — and at a year and a half she dates the whole page. “Gualberto”, aged four, is Gilberto, born 1854, whose parentage was documented from the 1877 marriage act this same week.

It also leaves two daughters this archive does not hold, one age that will not reconcile, and a Lenguas living in the house.

The same sweep turned up a second household: Pedro Antonio Lerena, son of Sancho, with Doña Vicenta Vega — the wife this archive already holds — and three children it did not.

His age dates the page. Born 31 July 1793 and entered at forty, this census is about 1833, not 1858. That is the check that makes the whole reading hold: the couple's one previously known child, Leonarda Margarita, was born in 1837 and is correctly absent. Three elder children in 1833, a fourth four years later.

This archive keeps seven spellings of the surname. All seven have now been put to Uruguay, Census Records, 1726–1858. Serena alone returned two complete households, and Sancho is not among the Lerena results at all — he is indexed Llerena. That is the whole argument for sweeping spellings rather than searching a name.

Three of the seven returned nothing, and they are tested nulls rather than silences: Serena returns ten and Llerena three on the identical query, so the form works.

Sancho's youngest child was Dominga, aged seven in the 1812 padrón, and this archive has never followed her past that page. The seven-spelling sweep turned up a Dominga of the right generation in the 1836 census of Montevideo — and the page puts her in a household.

She is the wife of D. Antonio R. Carballo, a hacendado; both are entered casado; and the two unmarried daughters of the house are Lucinda and Dominga Carballo — a daughter named for her mother, which is the naming discipline this family keeps.

She was never a candidate, and saying so was my error. This archive proved her on 14 September: Dominga Josefa Llerena, born 13 May 1804 at Canelones, daughter of Sancho, married Capitán Antonio Ruiz de Carvallo — the Catedral act of 12 May 1827 names her outright as Doña Dominga Llerena de Carvallo, and the Lucinda of this census is the Lucinda Gregoria baptised that very day. I added a duplicate of her to the register before checking; it has been removed and its evidence folded into the woman already here.

What the census and the 1862 act do add is real: the household, his trade, a second daughter named for her mother — and Josefa Carballo, born in Rio de Janeiro. Brazil is the one genuinely new country in any of it.

The third Llerena in the census collection had an index entry giving a name, a sex, and nothing else. The page turned out not to be a census at all: it is a padrón of the owners of handcarts, wagons and coaches in a Montevideo district, and Luis Llerena is entry 10, with entry 11 marked ídem — which is how these lists repeat an owner for a second vehicle.

That is worth knowing about the collection as much as about the man. A collection called Census Records holds property registers too, and the index does not say which is which — so an entry here is not evidence of residence, only of owning something.

The year is not secure and is not being guessed: the heading ends “de 18__”, and the last two digits read as 1841, 1842 or 1846. Nor is the man identified — this archive has two candidate Luises and the page offers no age, no household and no parents to choose between them.

The last of the three Llerenas in the census collection, and the one worth the most. She is the first name on her page — “Casa 2. María Llerena — 60 años — Española” — heading her own household, with Manuel, 20, “Africana” and Rosa, 12, “Oriental” under her.

Sancho was andaluz and forty-five in 1812. Depending on this census's date, a Spanish-born Llerena woman of sixty stands in his generation or the one above it — which is exactly the generation this archive cannot get past. She is attached to him by nothing, and the census year is not established, so her sixty cannot yet be turned into a birth year. That date, at the top of her own page, is the next step.

Everything above came off six images of a reel of three thousand two hundred. The reel is the Archivo General de la Nación's Padrones de Montevideo y Extramuros, and until today nobody here knew where one volume ended and the next began.

It is mapped now, and not by looking. Each thumbnail was drawn to a small canvas and its mean brightness measured: filming target boards read 16–30, ordinary pages 140–156, with nothing in between. Eighteen dark-frame clusters, 1,604 thumbnails, three calls, no session and no screenshots — and then every one of them checked. The reel holds fifteen volumes, each opening with a title board and closing with a fin del ítem card. Twelve further dark frames turned out to be book covers, spines and blanks, which is why a dark frame could not simply be called a boundary.

Documented The route matters more than the answer. It was not found by looking for his parents, which had been tried for thirteen days. It was found by looking for his first wife — he is viudo on both acts of 1886 and 1888, so one had to exist. And the record was indexed under “Alejandro M. Serena”, with the grandmother as “Ambrosia Trecibel”. A search under LERENA would never have returned it. The plate says LERENA and TRAIBEL in the priest’s hand.

Documented And the widowhood is dated. Elisa is hoy finada — dead that day — on 26 December 1877, and her daughter was born 19 September 1876. She died inside those fifteen months, nine years before the act that calls him a widower.

Inferred What is left is a merge, not a question. This register still holds Alejandro Lerena Traibel, baptised at La Mauricia on 7 January 1846 — a son of the same couple, with the same forename, whose birth the act puts at 29 May 1843 or 1845 against the 1844 his own stated ages give. Nothing separates them but the possibility of two sons sharing a name, which happens when the first dies, and nothing here shows the 1846 infant died. They are almost certainly one man, and they are not yet merged — because this archive has merged on less and been wrong.

The eldest known child of Avelino Lerena and Ambrosia Traibel was baptised Alejandro at La Mauricia on 7 January 1846. Somewhere in Argentina, on the enrolment cards of army drawer Cajón 985, a father is named Alejandro M. Lerena. This archive has asked since 14 September whether they are one man, and has always answered inconclusive.

Documented The answer stayed inconclusive for a reason that turned out to be false. The working log held the two apart on a six-year gap — a baptism pointing at 1843 or 1845, against a stated “born Uruguay 1839”. That 1839 was graded PRIMARY (indexed) and sourced to the Capital Federal parish records. On 22 September all four of those records were opened, and every one of them leaves the father’s age blank — while giving the mother’s. The 1839 came from a family tree, and was re-graded as a record on the way in. It was also printed on this page, in the descent above, as a plain fact.

Documented Then he told us himself, twice. Two Montevideo birth acts of his own children were read off the plate — film 004596830, images 01806 and 02145. He stood in front of the officer and gave his age: “don Alejandro M. Lerena, de cuarenta y dos años de edad, viudo, escribano, oriental, domiciliado en la calle San José N 17” on 6 November 1886, and “don Alejandro M. Lerena de 43 años de edad de estado viudo de nacionalidad Oriental” on 16 March 1888. Sixteen months apart, and consistent with each other. That puts his birth between 17 March and 6 November 1844.

Inferred The gap is now one year, and it still cannot choose. Against a birth of 29 May 1843 he should have said 43 and 44; against 29 May 1845, 41 and 42. He said 42 and 43. The stated ages miss both candidate dates by exactly one year, in opposite directions — they sit precisely between them. A man consistently one year off a baptism act is the ordinary case and this archive sees it weekly. A man five years off, twice, is a different man or a bad number. So 1839 is gone, the mid-1840s are in, and that is the first thing that has ever pointed these two rows at each other. It is circumstantial, and they remain separate rows.

Documented The form asked this archive’s exact question and nobody wrote the answer on it. The 1888 act is a printed sheet with a ruled line reading “Que es nieta por línea paterna de ______”. It is blank, and so is the maternal one. That is common on these forms and is not evidence that he could not have answered.

Documented What the two acts did give is a route. He is viudo on both — a widower at forty-two, while Julia Bassani is twenty-two and soltera, living at a different address, where both children were born. So there is an earlier marriage and an earlier death in Montevideo, and a marriage act names the groom’s parents. He is also an escribano, a notary, and notaries leave protocolos filed under their own names. Those are the two things left to try.

Documented And one row on this site was two men. The register carried a bare “Hector Lerena” of Buenos Aires who married Amalia Pacheco. His marriage act of 25 February 1911 at San Carlos was opened: “hijo legítimo de D. Alejandro Máximo … y de doña Julia Ba[ssani], natural de Italia … con doña Amalia Pa[checo]”, the groom “de la Rep. Oriental, de veinte y cuatro”. The wife matches, the parents match, and twenty-four in February 1911 fits a birth on 29 October 1886 at Montevideo exactly. They are one man, and the two rows are now one. The index had him born 1887 at Almagro, Buenos Aires; the act says Oriental, and the indexer had defaulted the birthplace to the place of the wedding.

Documented That act also spells out a letter. On the two Montevideo acts he is only ever Alejandro M. Lerena, and on the enrolment cards of Cajón 985 he is only ever Alejandro M. Lerena. In the priest’s hand at San Carlos in 1911 the initial is written out: Máximo. So the expansion of that M. is now on a plate rather than in a tree, and the Alejandro M. Lerena of Cajón 985 carries the same one. It is worth being exact about what that does and does not do: it joins the cards to the Montevideo acts, which were never in doubt — the same wife and the same children stand on both. It does not join either of them to Avelino’s son.

Documented And on 27 September a fourth Alejandro walked into the middle of it. Hunting the first marriage — he is a widower in 1886, so one must exist — this archive opened a Montevideo christening the index dates to 1919. The act is 1872. The 1919 is the certificate: “expido la presente … en Montevideo a veintiocho de Septiembre de mil novecientos diez y nueve”, signed Ramón Howard at the Basílica Metropolitana. Forty-seven years between the two dates the index could have taken, and it took the wrong one.

What the act says matters more. A daughter of Avelino Lerena — called argentino, with his wife Celedonia Villademoros argentina — is baptised at the Iglesia Matriz on 29 September 1872, and her paternal grandparents are written out: “Abuelos paternos Avelino y Ambrosia Traibel”. That puts Avelino Eduardo’s descent on a parish act instead of an index, adds a third child — Angélica María, born 8 April 1872 — and tells us this branch of the Lerena Traibel was Argentine-born.

Inferred And it names the godparents: “Fueron padrinos ALEJANDRO M. LERENA y ELISA VILLADEMOROS, a quienes instruyó.” This register holds a separate Alejandro Lerena who married Elisa Villardemoros and had a son christened at the Cordón in May 1873. On 22 September this archive declared those two men different, and gave as its reason that one of them was a widower. That is backwards. A widower in 1886 is a man whose earlier wife has died — the strongest link in the evidence had been written down as the objection to it. The M. is carried by no other Alejandro here.

Documented And a third record pairs him with Elisa, in Argentina. Their son Alejandro Joaquín — christened at the Cordón in May 1873 — married Amalia Casas at the Inmaculada Concepción, Bell Ville, Córdoba, in 1907, and that act names his parents “Alejandro M Lerena” and “Elisa Villademoras”. A Montevideo font in 1872, a Cordón christening in 1877 and a Córdoba marriage in 1907 all carry the same couple and the same initial. That Córdoba plate was then opened, and it gives what the index could not. The act of 20 June 1907 at the Parroquia de San Jerónimo reads: “Alejandro Joaquín Lerena, de treinta y cuatro años de edad, natural de MONTEVIDEO, República Oriental … hijo legítimo de Alejandro M. [Lerena] y Elisa Villademoras (FINADOS)”.

Documented “Finados” is the first evidence from any record that Alejandro M. Lerena was dead. He appeared in person at Montevideo in March 1888 to register Emilia Alberta; by June 1907 he was gone. His death falls in that bracket — and the family tree’s “1903”, which this archive has never been able to test, now at least sits inside a ceiling a record provides.

The plate corrects the index three times over. The index gives only 1907; the act says 20 June. The index names the parish Inmaculada Concepción, Bell Ville; the act says San Jerónimo. And the index reads the surname Serena — where the plate has a plain L, sitting on the same opening as the scribe’s own S in San Jerónimo. That is the sixth S-for-L this archive has caught, and the second in one day.

Inferred Two details on that act are not explained here. The printed word Iglesia is struck through and casa particular de la novia written over it, and the banns were dispensed. A wedding in the bride’s own house with the proclamations waived is what haste or illness looks like on a parish form. The bride is Amalia Casas, daughter of Cornelio Casas and Raimunda Pereda. So the son of the first marriage crossed too — his half-brothers and half-sisters by Julia Bassani went to Misiones and Buenos Aires; he went to Córdoba. Index only

Documented They are still not merged. An initial and a wife is not proof, and this archive has merged on less and been wrong. The Cordón plate of 1873 was opened the same day in the hope of grandparents and gives none — that parish’s form does not recite them — though it does call him oriental, as the 1886 and 1888 acts do. Two records would settle it: the marriage of Alejandro Lerena and Elisa Villademoros, before October 1872, or her death, between 1873 and 1886. Either names him; and a marriage act names his parents.

Inferred Which makes the family’s road visible. Héctor born Montevideo 1886, Emilia Alberta Montevideo 1888, Roberto Juan in Misiones 1891, Rómer Rosario in Buenos Aires 1895, then Elisa Cornelia 1898, Carmen Romualda 1901 and María Luisa 1903 — the last three baptised together late, in 1905, 1907 and 1908. They left Montevideo between 1888 and 1891 and crossed the country before settling in the capital. Julia is italiana in 1886 and austriaca in 1888, aged 22 and then 24 — both written in front of her, and this archive records both rather than picking.

Documented On 27 September 2026 this archive opened all thirty-three findmypast transcripts for Uruguayan Lerena baptisms, which gave twenty children across fourteen households. A single FamilySearch search on the same place then returned a generation findmypast does not hold at all — the children of those children. One index is not another index, and neither is the parish book.

Documented And it closed a story this archive has carried open since it found the diagrams. In 1911 the Cura Vicario of Montevideo drew two kinship charts for Custodio Lerena and Ema Cardozo, double first cousins, seeking dispensation to marry. Whether it was granted has never been known here. Their daughter Violeta Blanca was born on 29 October 1915 and christened at Trinidad the following September. It was granted, and they married.

Index only Not one image was opened for that table, and several names in it are visibly mangled — “Min Levena Fer” is FERMÍN LERENA, “Capas-Ra Pelaes” is CASIMIRA PELAEZ, and “Juan Bernardo Serena” is the S-for-L this archive has now met five times. It is a pointer to plates, not a finding. And the 1726 artefact is there too: Lauriana Lerena, christened 1891, is indexed with a birth of 12 September 1726 — the collection’s first year standing in for a date it does not have.