WikiTree 15 Nations Global Tour: ARGENTINA (Stop #2)

Question

ARGENTINA

Join us now as we travel across to South America and the amazing nation of Argentina! Located in the southernmost portion of South America and sharing the bulk of the southern cone with Chile, Argentina is home to 43 million people. After only the United States, Argentina has received more immigrants from around the world than any other country in modern history. As a result, 97% of Argentina's residents can trace at least some of their roots back to Europe (especially Spain and Italy). Argentina's official language is Spanish language, although the nation has experienced so much immigration that Arabic, Italian, German, English, and French are also spoken in pockets throughout the country. There are also over one million speakers of various tribal languages, including Quecha and Guaraní.  

To learn more about Argentina and discover which 15 Argentine notables we'll be meeting while there, simply head over to the 15 Nations: Argentina page by clicking the link here, or by stopping first at the 15 Nations Global Tour page and clicking on the link in the table. Then be sure to return here to share whatever discoveries you make. Buena suerte everybody!

Comments

At least one of my grandmother’s brothers, Leo Rasmus Holm Hansen,  born 1889 in Copenhagen, emigrated to Buenos Aires from Denmark.  I haven’t yet set up his profile, as so far I have only found his Danish records.  His granddaughter saw my great grandmother’s profile on WikiTree and contacted me last year. He married in Argentina to a woman who was also from Denmark. She sent me his photo. We do our best to communicate using google translate, as she communicates in Spanish.

---

I was doing research on Mercedes Sosa's grandfather, Miguel Sosa and I discovered that in his marriage certificate with Mercedes Ruiz it was consummated in "La Capilla de los Posse de esta Parroquia" below the parish priest names the parents and witnesses of Miguel Sosa As "Neighbors of Cruz Alta" this place is a department of the Province of Tucumán and the place of many sugar mills, founded by Wenceslao Posse, hence the commune that bears his name. The cane fields of the sugar mill reached almost from the Salí River to the border with the province of Santiago del Estero. In his son's birth certificate, Miguel Sosa is mentioned as a neighbor of "El Paraíso" in Cruz Alta and these were small towns formed around this other Sugar Mill, all these harvest lands reached the neighboring province of Santiago del Estero " The singer always recognized her deep mestizo roots, her A-Indian features as an inheritance from her grandparents born in Matará province of Santiago del Estero, Quechuistas, and her white skin inherited from her French Basque grandfather, a grandfather she had not met” my research does not coincide with what is on this page. Estuve investigando sobre el abuelo de Mercedes Sosa, Miguel Sosa y descubrí que en su acta de matrimonio con Mercedes Ruiz fue consumado en "La Capilla de los Posse de esta Parroquia" debajo el párroco nombra a los padres y testigos de Miguel Sosa As" Vecinos de Cruz Alta” este lugar es un departamento de la Provincia de Tucumán y lugar de muchos ingenios azucareros, fundado por Wenceslao Posse, de ahí la comuna que lleva su nombre. Los cañaverales del ingenio azucarero llegaban casi desde el río Salí hasta el límite con la provincia de Santiago del Estero. En el acta de nacimiento de su hijo se menciona a Miguel Sosa como vecino de “El Paraíso” en Cruz Alta y estos eran pueblitos formados alrededor de este otro Ingenio Azucarero, todas estas tierras de zafra llegaban hasta la vecina provincia de Santiago del Estero”, reconoció siempre el cantante. sus profundas raíces mestizas, sus rasgos A-indios como herencia de sus abuelos nacidos en Matará provincia de Santiago del Estero, quechuistas, y su piel blanca heredada de su abuelo vasco-francés, abuelo que no había conocido” mi investigación no coincide con lo que está en esta página.

WikiTree profile: Miguel Sosa

 

---

Esto es muy interesante para mi. Como estudiante he visitado la Provincia de Tucumán y he visto algo de la industria azucarera. (This is very interesting to me. As a student I have visited the Province of Tucumán and seen some of the sugar industry).

---

Hello Sandra,  Wikitree is collaborative and contributed to by people just like you and me. The profile does not have a Profile Manager and as such, please feel free to take ownership of the profile, or just contri ute information you may have as I am sure everyone will welcome any additions you may have.  I am by no means an administrator but like yourself contribute when  I can if profiles take my interest or I find information that may be of value.

Answer 1

I'm excited about this one! I hope to see what I can add to Violet Jessup's family tree.

Comments

Just managed to connect her to the global tree via the father-in-law of one of her brothers. Three brothers emigrated to Australia.

---

Awesome!!!

---

Well done that is very cool :)

Answer 2

Just tried the link to the 15 Nations Global Tour: Argentina (Stop #2) Resources page and got an Error 404 message.

Maybe I tried to get there before the page was set up?  Excited to see if I can add to the find further information to build the profiles.

Comments

I am not having a problem with the link. Let me know if the trouble continues or if anyone else is having a similar problem. As an alternate route, you can go to the India page and replace "India" with "Argentina" in your address bar.

---

The link in Sandra's answer gives 404 for me too, David.

What is the link of the India page you mention?

---

Ok, I found the India link and did the replacement. The following works:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:15_Nations_Argentina

The link in Sandra's answer does not work. It was

https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Space:15_Nations_Argentina_Resources

---

Ok, I think I may have misunderstood the initial issue. The link to the Argentina Resources page should now be working. Be aware that there is nothing there yet. I'll get a few resources up soon, but I also look to members to help me locate lesser known resources.

---

This will be fun!

In Wikitree, Argentina has a small sub-project which is coordinated under the broader umbrella Latin America Project. Argentina does not have its own resources listed, but there are different resources listed under:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Latin_American_Resources

---

Fantastic Steve.This will make a great start. I'll try to get something up tonight.

Answer 3

I'm interested to learn more about Argentina - in March 1907 a distant cousin, Elwin Williams, seems to have jumped ship in Canada and then made his way to Buenos Aires. He died there in April 1907 aged 35.

Meanwhile back in Bristol, England his baby son was born in December 1907. How strange!

Comments

Hopefully this project will be able to provide you with some hints in how to uncover your own ancestor's story. Keep us posted on what you find out.

---

Wow! What a story Rob! I hope you find more information on the family.

Answer 4

Here's a point of interest. Prior to this project Argentina had just 500 profiles on Wikitree. With a population of over 45 million, they are they 32nd most populous nation in the world. Yet, on WikiTree they rank 70th. Lets see how far we can move them up in the rankings!

Comments

Good point of interest. I think the stage is set for a major of expansion of interest in Wikitree.

One of the obvious challenges is language. I am sure that many people do not feel confident writing in English. I would like to see more profiles and pages written firstly in Spanish, then English translations added later.

---

I think the biggest dilemma regarding the use of non-English languages (and even more challengingly, non-Roman alphabets) is this:

If we create profiles completely in English, we do risk keeping away non-English speakers from around the world. However, if we create profiles only in the subject's native language, we risk locking out the vast majority of our current membership from working on, connecting to, or otherwise utilizing the profile. This is a dilemma without an easy solution. For now, it is recommended that profiles be written in both English, and when possible, a translation in the subject's native language as well.

---

I think it's a combination of the language barrier plus the lack of the kind of sources Wikitree requires. There're some, but there're big gaps also.

---

I would agree. However, please note that WikiTree's policy for sourcing individuals born after 1700 is pretty lenient. Although primary sources are always preferred, sources like WikiTree and Find-a-Grave are acceptable if that's all you've got. The key is that you must provide a full source citation making it clear where your information came from. With many of the countries we will be visiting, we will have very limited access to the kinds of sources we might think of as ideal.

---

@David about using non-English languages.

I might have been misunderstood. I did not want to suggest that profiles should be monolingual. To encourage users that do not speak English as a native language, I encourage creating profiles in their language.

I imagine that there are enough English speakers to come along later and add a translation.

---

Goodness, no wonder there isn't a category for my family in Benito Juarez, Buenos Aires, Argentina, who emigrated from Italy. I'm on the trail to find any relatives of the Di Ciancio / a and Apella families.

I was amazed to find SO many Apella names in Potenza, and have a lot of sorting out to do. I have found some birth / baptism and marriage records online, and am glad for my spanish language lessons that help a bit.

---

Deborah, Best wishes for finding the family in Argentina!

The current advice is to find as much information as you can from Family Search. It often identifies sources.
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Argentina_Project

Answer 5

I still don't know much about Argentinian resources, but I will try to connect some of their unconnected profiles.

Comments

Great Jelena,

And remember, its not just about connecting. We need bio writers, sourcerers, formatters, typo finders, etc. Afterall, our  visit to India was a huge success, despite the fact that we made zero connections to the Global Tree.

---

Hi Jelena,

There are two main genealogy web sites in Argentina,Genealogia Familiar and Familias Argentinas. For example, the ancestry of
Carlos Saavedra Lamas, Victoria Ocampo and others may be found at both, but better sourced at Genealogia Familiar.
https://www.genealogiafamiliar.net/getperson.php?personID=I79627&tree=BVCZ

Genealogia Familiar also provides access to hundreds of key genealogy documents
https://www.genealogiafamiliar.net/browsemedia.php?mediatypeID=documents

The web site for Familias Argentinas is
http://www.familias-argentinas.com.ar

I am from Argentina and my family tree may be found in WikeTree at: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/De_Zuviria-1

One branch of my family (Gowland) has British connections: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Gowland-321

Warm regards, Martin

Answer 6

Hi David! Greetings from Buenos Aires! Thanks so much for showcasing my country! 

First two quick fixes: 1) our neigbourgh is Chile (no Chili) 2) Argentina does have an official language which is Spanish - all official documents were always and are produced in Spanish. The latest upgrade of our local magna carta recognizes though other locally spoken languages: 

• Guaraní in Corrientes^[3]
• Quechua in Santiago del Estero^[4]
• Qom, Mocoví, and Wichí in Chaco^[5]
• Welsh in Chubut^[6]

These were included to allow bilingual education rights in certain places.

As for genealogical sources, they haven't been massively digitalized so they're difficult to access. Civil records across the nation were introduced as far as 1880 but they were never centralized. Some provinces are digitalizing their databases through FamilySearch, but sadly the 2 bigger ones (Buenos Aires Province and City of Buenos Aires) are not so far. There's are some church records though in FS, that go back to colonial times. 

A quick 3rd note: Buenos Aires was a single entity until about 1880, when the growth in population, the expansion of the colonized territory and geopolitical strategy coalesced in the separation of it in 2 entities: a) City of Buenos Aires, which became the political capital (name: Ciudad de Buenos Aires/Capital Federal) with no elected authorities until 1996 in which it became an autonomous city (current name: Ciudad Autonoma de Buenos Aires shortened as CABA - great article showing the evolution of the city here: https://www.geografiainfinita.com/2018/06/la-evolucion-de-buenos-aires-a-traves-de-los-mapas/) and b) Buenos Aires Province, for which a new capital city was founded and built from scratch: La Plata (about 50km from Buenos Aires city) .

 For immigrating people, there're several databases that can be accessed:

- http://www.entradadepasajeros.com.ar/ for 19th century immigration

- https://cemla.com/ for the main immigration period, about 1880 to 1945, in which european immigration was favored. 

After around 1945/50 we also received big waves of immigrants from our neighboughring countries (Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru mainly), some asian (from Japan after WWII, later from China and Corea after 1980') and the latest to arrive are a lot of exiles from Venezuela. 

I hope this helps. Thank you again!

Comments

Your first note is particularly embarrassing as I have family from Chile and should have known better. I guess being from Texas, a simply had Chili on my mind.

I also did a little more research on the language matter and made some changes accordingly. Let me know if it still isn't accurate.

I love having native/resident Argentines on board (or do you prefer Argentinians?) Your expertise will be immeasurable to this project. Please keep the posts coming.

---

Thanks Cristina,

I am sure that all of this information is helpful.

I am interested in 19th century migration and particularly like your note about databases for that era. Wikitree works well with collaboration between different countries. If the country of emigration is known, then it sparks more interest from those countries.

I am very interested that Welsh is the second official language of the Province of Chubut. Who could have guessed?

---

I'm sure it was a just a typo David! 

According to Merriam-Webster, Argentine is a person native to Argentina and Argentinean (e.g. Argentinean people, capital etc.) is the adjective for anything about Argentina. I personally don't care much about how its spelled as long as they know where to look for us (yes, down here, about to fall out of the map ) .

Steve, Welsh is not an official language (in the sense that is not used in official documents) but I understand that the Welsh settlement in Chubut is the largest comunity of Welsh speaking folks outside Wales itself. There're several schools with Welsh as second languange and many cultural events along the year.  

Answer 7

I'm so excited about this stop David! I've already worked on a few profiles.

Comments

Thanks Mindy, I thought you might be particularly fond of this particular tour.

Answer 8

Also for UK connections check out agribrit.org . I have a large family in Argentina, mostly Buenos Aries, Cordoba, Venado Tuerto and Maggiolo with some in Mendoza. Happy to help where I can.

Comments

Thanks for the suggestion. As with any trip the first day can be a little hectic, but things are beginning to slow down and I should be able to start pulling together a resources page very soon.

Answer 9

At least one of my grandmother’s brothers, Leo Rasmus Holm Hansen,  born 1889 in Copenhagen, emigrated to Buenos Aires from Denmark.  I haven’t yet set up his profile, as so far I have only found his Danish records.  His granddaughter saw my great grandmother’s profile on WikiTree and contacted me last year. He married in Argentina to a woman who was also from Denmark. She sent me his photo. We do our best to communicate using google translate, as she communicates in Spanish.

Comments

It looks like Leo migrated in 1906. Are you hoping to find his death and other records first?

Answer 10

Dear WikiTree members, first of all thank you for taking care of Argentina, my country. He never participated in a Tour of Nations since the language limits me a bit, but I would like to contribute to the cause. Please excuse my English.

Thank God Argentina has many notable people and I know it is very difficult to choose only 15. As an Argentine I add some here other candidates for future biographies:

- Eva Perón - Papa Francisco - Carlos Gardel - Luis Federico Leloir - Jorge Luis Borges - Ástor Piazzolla - Ernesto "Che" Guevara - Juan Domingo Perón - Hipólito Yrigoyen - Atahualpa Yupanqui - Alfonsina Storni - José de San Martín - Manuel Belgrano - Julio Cortázar - Lionel Messi

The idea of the Tour seems excellent to me to know other places, other worlds.

As source I found the FamilySearch pages for my family tree very useful. FS made an agreement whit the Church Catholic to digitize ecclesiastical records, especially those prior to the creation of the Civil Registry (1880s).

Also the already named CEMLA, for the entry of inmigrants: https://cemla.com/

As a first collaboration I will contribute about our beloved singer Mercedes Sosa.

Thank you for your attention and success!

Comments

Welcome aboard! Its terrific to know we have some actual Argentines here. Be sure to check in to G2G regularly, as I'm sure people will have lots of questions you can help answer.

---

Hola, bienvenida! Dentro del Project Latin_America tenemos un pequeño rincón argentino si querés arrimarte...

---

Thank you very much for the invitation! I will participate.

Answer 11

One of the profiles is just been connected. Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín has been connected to his 5th great grand father and 5th great grandmother. 

Comments

Fantastic! We had zero connections in India so this is literally the very first connection of our global tour. President Alfonsin and I are just 31 degrees. Congratulations to all who participated in making this connection!

---

Wonderful! Many, many thanks! A true democrat, he gave us hope after a very dark period of our history. The events in the recently Oscar nominated movie "Argentina, 1985" took place under his presidency.

Answer 12

Wow, you people are amazing! Just calculated some stats. Only two days into our tour and we have created at least 94 new profiles! India took us a full week to reach 100 so we are doing amazing. Can't wait to see what we're able to accomplish in three weeks!

Answer 13

Enjoying the new destination. One of my 1st cousins 4 times removed, Henry Arthur Mainwaring (1852-1877), died in Argentina.

I have managed to connect Violet Jessop to the main tree. 

Comments

Congratulations on connecting Violet Jessop!
 
¡En el futuro espero ver muchas fiestas para celebrar los perfiles conectados! (In the future I expect to see many parties to celebrate connected profiles!)

---

Wow, second connection in two days! If you haven't read Violet's story you should. She was a nurse who survived the sinking of three ships, including the Titanic. I'm so glad to hear she is now connected.

Answer 14

I have just added some resources to the Argentina Resources Page. You can find a link to the resources page on the main Argentine page, just above the table of notables. More resources will be coming soon.

Answer 15

I'll be working on adding some new Argentinian notables and exploring African diaspora in the country thanks to the resources given to me by one of our Argentinian WT members.

Answer 16

FYI: If you are new to this group and haven't added your name to the tour manifest, drop me a note here and I'll add you. Also, if haven't yet picked up your passport sticker, simply go to the main 15 Nations Global Tour page and look for the passport section. There you'll find instructions on how to cut and paste it to your personal profile page.

Comments

Que! I am a happy fellow member of this tourist group. I am sorry but I remained confused by your post.

---

Our "manifest" is simply our list of tour participants.

Our "passport" is a sticker you can post to your personal profile to let visitors know that you participated in the project

Links to both can be found on the main 15 Nations Global Tour free space page.

---

I’m a bit late, but I’d like to join - I’ve added almost 15 new profiles in Argentina so far, and I’ll backtrack to work on some Indian profiles once I’m done.

---

Welcome aboard Gael. We can use your help in both Argentina and India. As much as we accomplished in India I still think there is some low-hanging fruit we missed. A fresh set of eyes could very well catch some things we missed. And while Argentina is moving forward amazingly, we still have a couple of notables who remain unconnected to any relatives. So much done, but so much more to do!

---

Dear David Randall. I am a building the profile of another notable Argentine, Atahualpa Yupanqui, who I would like to include in the 15 Nations Global Tour of 2023, if possible. And I would like to add my name to the tour manifest.

Thank you very much.

---

Hello "M" and welcome to the tour! The question of adding additional notables has come up a few times. Because this tour it technically a "challenge," we don't add notables to our original list of 15 midway through the project. However, that doesn't mean that tour members like yourself can't identify additional notables in need of attention and present them to the group here on G2G.

Atahualpa Yapanqui was one of Argentina's greatest folk musicians, and in fact, Mercedes Sosa actually recorded some of his songs. He certainly deserves a proper WikiTree profile, and by all means we should try to get him connected.

Have you started a profile page for him? If so, let us know his WikiTree ID number. If not, and you need help, just let us know.

---

Thank you very much David for the answer.

The Atahualpa profile I started is Chavero-2.

Mercedes Sosa and Atahualpa Yupanqui are the two greatest representatives of our Argentine folklore. As a mini-presentation we can say that Don Ata, as we call him around here, was very prolific in his work, he renewed Argentine music and was an outstanding guitarist who sang in favor of indigenous peoples and the working class.

Cordial greetings from distant Buenos Aires.

Answer 17

Good morning everyone,

I am Argentinean and I have loaded to WikiTree my ancestry. For anyone interested the link is: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/De_Zuviria-1

There are two main genealogy web sites in Argentina, Genealogia Familiar and Familias Argentinas. For example, the ancestry of Carlos Saavedra Lamas, Victoria Ocampo and others may be found at both, but better sourced almost always at Genealogia Familiar.
https://www.genealogiafamiliar.net/getperson.php?personID=I79627&tree=BVCZ

Genealogia Familiar also provides access to hundreds of key genealogy documents
https://www.genealogiafamiliar.net/browsemedia.php?mediatypeID=documents

The web site for Familias Argentinas is
http://www.familias-argentinas.com.ar

Good luck to anyone interested in Argentina and please let me know if I could be of any use!

Cheers, Martin

Comments

Thank you very much for your contribution Martin!

---

Hi Martin! Thank you for your answer. For me the some of the lines were too long to read easily, so to help other people here is your message again, reformatted:

I am Argentinean and I have loaded to WikiTree my ancestry. For anyone interested the link is:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/De_Zuviria-1

There are two main genealogy web sites in Argentina, Genealogia Familiar and Familias Argentinas. For example, the ancestry of Carlos Saavedra Lamas, Victoria Ocampo and others may be found at both, but better sourced almost always at Genealogia Familiar.

https://www.genealogiafamiliar.net/getperson.php?personID=I79627&tree=BVCZ

Genealogia Familiar also provides access to hundreds of key genealogy documents

https://www.genealogiafamiliar.net/browsemedia.php?mediatypeID=documents

The web site for Familias Argentinas is

http://www.familias-argentinas.com.ar

Good luck to anyone interested in Argentina and please let me know if I could be of any use!

---

Thanks a lot Jim for your interest and for taking the time to

adjust the format! Also, the next time I will consider what

you mentioned about the length of the lines.

Cheers,

Martin

---

You're welcome, Martin! As long as you use the default font (as you did in your latest comment), you can just type a paragraph as one very long line, without using the RETURN or ENTER key. That way it shows up as one block, without blank lines in between. What I've typed here is an example.

---

Thanks again Jim! and have a great weekend

Martin

---

You have done a beautiful job with your family Martin. Thanks for joining in this event.

---

Thanks a lot Mindy!!

Answer 18

I need to enter the following names as ancestors of one of our notables. Any suggestions on the best way to do this (i.e. first, middle, last name)?

1) Demento del Corazón de Jesús Carranza Acosta

2) José León de la Cámera Romero

Comments

This discussion is a Work In Progress. My only comment is DO NOT USE MIDDLE NAME FIELD in Wikitree.

Answer 19

I have added several profiles to President Alberto Fernandez's family tree, including his parents, grandparents and all eight great-grandparents. However, they are all quite lacking in biographical information if anyone wants to help me flesh them out. I've also connected several family members to Vice President Christine Fernandez de Kirchner, if anyone want to assist with her family.

Answer 20

Looks like Nobel Peace Prize winner Carlos Saavedra Lamas is our third connected Notable. Congratulations team! On top of that, we have well topped the 100 mark for new profiles over all. Keep up the great work everyone!

Comments

Just a question - how do you identify new profiles as Argentinian or are you counting profiles connected to the nominated profiles at the start of the tour?

Thanks

---

The more the merrier.

I only look at David's selection of 15 profiles as a good launch pad. Whatever start point, you will see good opportunities to grow the global Wikitree community.

---

It's a good question. We begin with 15 Argentina-born notables. Although there have been a few exceptions, most start the tour with no connected family members. When I state how many new profiles we've added, they are not necessarily Argentina-born. They are simply profiles that are connected to the original 15 or their extended families, regardless of where they may have been born.

Note that once the notable is connected to the Global Tree, I am no longer able to determine when new family members are added to their tree as the entire Global Tree is now their family tree.