Your portal to Puerto Rico Genealogy!
     
 

Giving Our Past a Future

 
     
Step into our time machine and see Puerto Rico as it used to be and how it is now through our collection of images from the past.

Documents/Autographs/Paper Trail - Today, in our computerized world, we all leave a wide paper trail, there are lots and lots of documents involving our births, marriages (if we tie the knot) and eventually our burials. But our ancestors lived in far different times and we have to accept that as we build our trees not everyone left an easily followed paper trail. Many of them were people struggling to make a subsistence living and they weren't as concerned with leaving a good paper trail as we would have liked them to be.

What I want to leave you with is the idea that to trace your ancestors you have to go back and search through every possible document that you come across. You need to understand the times in which they lived, the attitudes they brought with them, the geography around them, the legal and religious systems which affected their lives and so on. Bottom line leave no stone unturned check EVERYTHING you come across.

Just to give you an idea, here is a sampling of possible documents that you may come across. Please do have in mind that I cannot help you located these documents and that it is entirely up to you to search for them. Who said genealogy was easy. But if it were easy, would genealogy be as much fun? ;o)
 

 

Photographs - Discover and explore everyday life and places with this collection of photographs of Puerto Rico from early 1900's to the present day.  

 

Postcards - The beginnings of the postcard were simple and modest. The early cards, in use from the 1860s, were created to answer the need to mail brief messages inexpensively, without the use of an envelope.  

Stereoview Cards - Stereoscope view cards were very popular at the turn of the century-an early attempt to create "virtual reality" from photographs. The third dimension brings into focus aspects of the image previously unnoticed.

From 1850 until World War I, the stereoscope allowed our forefathers to view many scenes and places of Puerto Rico and the world. And to our delight, it provides us with a three dimensional historical record of those 70 years.

Stereo pictures are taken by means of a camera with two lenses. This provides two separate pictures 2.5 inches apart, about the distance between the eyes. Although the pictures appear the same, they are not. When looked at in a viewer, which has prismatic lenses, your eyes will blend the two views into one and the brain perceives it in three dimensions the same as normal vision.

Rapid transportation, radio, movies and other forms of entertainment created the demise of the stereoscope and by 1920 only one company survived.
 

Artists and Entertainers - See how many of our Artists & Entertainers you recognize. I am sure that some of them will bring back pleasant memories of times past.

 

 

Books/Magazines  -  

Mystery Photographs - Can you identify these photographs?

Every once in a while someone turns up a wonderful old photograph with no identification on it!

We are sure all the photos shown here are connected to the person who submitted the photo in one way or another--we just don't know which way. We hope that by sharing them here, someone will recognizing a face or a location.  Also, occasionally someone else has a copy of the same picture with a name or note written on the back and this will certainly help identify the picture.  And who know, maybe find a long lost cousin in the process.

So, get your detective hat on and browse through the pictures. Any help you can give us in identifying any of them will be greatly appreciated.
 

We hope you enjoy being transported back in history! And don't forget to share with us any old or new images that you may have for this section. Please email them as attachments with a brief description to priscolon@gmail.com

Last Update February 15, 2010
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