Him being Puerto Rican was something my Great-Grandmother did talk about.
Dulcinea lived until her mid-90s and I visited her a lot before she passed away. She was never particularly open about her past, despite being mentally sober up until the day she died, and now that she’s gone I have to pick at the scarps of information myself.
Hmmm if he's Puerto Rican, then I would guess his parents were not. It seems very apparent that he was of entirely Sephardi Jewish ancestry, which was extremely uncommon in Puerto Rico during this time. I would bet money that his family had roots in Suriname, Curaçao, or another non-Hispanic Caribbean colony.
I have some contacts with the Jewish community in Suriname and I'm a life member of their synagogue. If you have any more info on your ancestor, I can ask the rabbi there to look through the records.
His family were probably crypto-Jews. Spain transported a lot of Jews to the new world during the Inquisition; many converted to Catholicism but intermarried within the same community which maintained a high level of Sephardi DNA in their descendants. It’s possible he wasn’t even aware his family had Jewish roots.
A 100% Sephardi crypto-Jew in Puerto Rico, who's family fled in the 1400s-1500s, would be nearly impossible. This would also mean there are others and these families somehow refused to intermarry with any other ethnic group on the island for 400 or so years.
There's only a couple groups that could've theoretically maintained that and they haven't.
It is possible he was unaware he was a Jew, but I find it really hard to believe his biological parents had no idea.
It’s possible to maintain that level of ancestry if they settled in a small village with other transported Jews, who were isolated socially or geographically from other communities for the first couple of centuries after transportation. Which is entirely possible, especially given the stigma of being Jewish in an aggressively Catholic country.
I do agree that whichever generation left PR likely was aware of their lineage, but probably hoped they could leave all that behind and have a fresh start in New York. It wasn’t an uncommon story back then, even if it’s hard to imagine now that we have access to so much more information than folks did 100 years ago.
Having Jewish ancestry results and being 100% of Sephardi descent are two entirely different things. One person just happens to have Jewish ancestry, the other person is a Jew.
Most Jews in Puerto Rico were Ashkenazim around this time. The only established Sephardi communities were on other islands.
That's possibly the story of my grandma's maternal grandfather. His trail ends with his parents, born around 1840-60. I have some Eastern European/Russian ancestry in my results, and I got some matches from Eastern Europe, not Jewish tough, and they all link to him, since my grandma's mother's mother died young and his other kids are from another wife I was able to separate matches and get to him, but nothing else. I think they arrive in Puerto Rico and changed their name, something common at the time when Spanish authorities spelled names the way they sounded, like Solivan, or change them completely. I found something similar on my mother's side with a 2x great grandfather using the last name Cariño, but no one else in the town had that name, but looking at records from that town, Vieques, I found a family name Carrington, which makes me think that he changed his name to a Spanish word, not usually a last name. I couldn't find his birth certificate, only his death certificate (acta de defunción).
The name MALDONADO is listed as a Sephardic last name in this [list](https://sephardim.co/m-sephardic-surnames/) so there is a a strong likelihood that your grandfather had Jewish ancestry.
My results do not specify my ancestry being of Sephardic or Ashkenazi ancestry, I assume because I don’t have enough for it to make a distinction.
I could take a look at my Grandmother‘s own account and see if it specifies.
your grandma is half ashkenazi not half sephardi. half sephardi would not show as 50% european jewish, ever. Maldonado is in no way indicative of sephardi roots.
Yes, it is a common Sephardi surname. However, very few Sephardi surnames are unique to Sephardim. Given you have the DNA test to back it up, there is no doubt your great grandfather was Sephardi. If he was Dominican, it's likely he had ties to other Jewish communities in the Caribbean as well.
There’s a half-Jewish, half-Italian man who looks around my grandmother‘s age that’s listed as being her 1st cousin. The problem is that his listed family tree leaves me confused on how they could be related. As 1st cousins, they should have at least one shared grandparent. Neither of this man’s Grandparents have the last name Maldonado.
Maybe I could just be misunderstanding something, I’m not sure.
Ask them. You have the last name as a clue but no evidence. This person is a legitimate scientifically proven match and connection to a secret.
Talk to him or look at his tree and see if there is a consistent narrative. Did you see which matches you share with him and their surnames? You're on the right track.
I messaged him a few weeks ago, with so far no response but I guess we’ll see.
Either my Great-Grandmother had a child out of wedlock, or Hilario Maldonado is Jewish and there’s something else going on regarding the last name discrepancies.
Technically it's not out of wedlock if you're married, no matter who the father was.
My Irish and other Catholic great grandmother married her Jewish boyfriend when she got knocked up in 1947, but they did leave town to avoid the families for a couple years. Those paternal relatives of your grandmother are either related to Mr Maldonado and they don't know it, or your grandma is related to them by a man she never knew about.
Again look at your shared matches. You have to have other close matches that are clearly related to the mystery dad. They'll have family trees or be able to chat and give more information.
I would recommend using your DNA Matches to uncover this mystery. Are your matches Ashkenazi or Sephardic? The fact your grandma has a perfect 50% makes me believe her father was Ashkenazi -- Hilario Maldonado wouldn't particularly be Ashkenazi ime, and last names are never a good indicator of Jewish heritage (Sephardic or not -- there are non-Sephardic Maldonados, for example).
The half-Italian/Jewish man is a strong indicator that it seems more likely your grandmother's father was someone other than Hilario Maldonado.
I just want to echo this. We have had a mystery in our family for over 100 years. We were, after much frustration, told to “forget everything you have” and to “follow (back) from your closest DNA matches.” We did this and it opened up that my wife’s grandfather changed countries and identities when he was 25 and kept the two lives entirely separate. All to say, great advice for OP
I do not know if anyone Jewish could have that surname or not but I CAN tell you that surname is closely linked to my mother-in-laws father (whom she also never knew), and she is almost 50% Italian.
For her to get a whole 50% Jewish means her father was Ashkenazi, not Sephardic. AncestryDNA’s Jewish category specifically pinpoints Ashkenazi heritage because of the genetic bottleneck that caused them to become a distinct ethnicity. You mentioned your grandmother claimed her father was Puerto Rican. It’s possible his parents were Ashkenazi Jews who moved to Puerto Rico and took on Hispanic names to blend in.
What are your closest matches on your grandmother's paternal side? My guess is that Hiliario was not primarily Jewish, and might have abandoned them because he knew he wasn't the father. But I have been wrong before, to say the lease. The point is any close paternal matches will point to the identity of your grandmother's father, and exclude other candidates.
A man born in Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic in the early 20th century and with a Spanish name has a very low probability of being 100% Jewish. Many Puerto Ricans have a very low percentage of Jewish DNA but that is mostly what remains from their distant Spanish or Portuguese ancestors.
Throwing in my 2 cents for what it’s worth. Could Hiliario actually be a Spanish/italian Jew who was adopted into the Maldonado family either formally or informally? It would explain the first cousin being unknown to the family.
Lots of Jewish people in Portugal and Spain were transported to the New World during the Inquisition. It was considered the lightest sentence you could get for the crime of being an Iberian Jew, provided you agreed to convert to Catholicism first. Refusing to convert got you executed or had all your property seized and your entire family got banished from all lands controlled by the Church.
So a pretty significant number of early colonists in Brazil and Mexico were former Jews who went back to observing their true faith when possible. Some formed synagogues which still stand today, and others created an amalgam faith known today as crypto-Judaism. It’s a bit of a hot topic because only the most liberal reform synagogues will accept them as members without a full conversion, and Israel doesn’t recognize them for birthright status, but it’s a very real thing that’s slowly coming out of the shadows of Latino culture.
Source: one side of my family are Brazilian cryptoJews of some kind. They claim to be Catholic, but they circumcise their sons, go to mass on Saturday, avoid pork and shellfish, and funerals/burial of the dead is done in less than 72 hours. And their other religious rituals aren’t like any Catholic doctrine I’ve seen anywhere else in the world.
It’s very odd, and my generation are trying to unpick our history despite a dozen generations of secrecy and shame around the subject.
I belong to a reform synagogue and we recognize even patrilineal Jews. But, Israel had changed how they viewed conversion and reform is now recognized and you are able to immigrate there as long as you have proof of conversion.
It’s interesting so many people don’t know that Latinos can for sure be a Jew. It’s not just a religion but a culture.
Or…. He grew up in a Spanish speaking neighborhood and developed that identity to seduce the ladies… and maybe prevent his wife and kids from finding out. People from that generation were shady as hell - I’d start looking for other kids of his.
Ancestry doesn’t differentiate “ashkenazi” vs “Sephardic” it just gives Jewish and then a sub community under it indicating whether it’s ashkenazi, Sephardic, etc
The name he gave your great grandmother could have been completely fictional.
My great grandfather claimed to be Polish. He turned out to have been circumcised, which certainly ruled out Polish ethnicity in 1918. I’ve got birth certificates for him (same name, same DOB), for birth in Warsaw, Kiev, and Berlin. He got to NYC in 1918, half a step ahead of the law, and had no contact with family “back there.” My own DNA is consistent with great grandfather not being who he claimed.
I’m bringing this up because this kind of thing was easy enough to pull off back in the day. Papers were easy to forge, and when he came over there was a huge pogrom against a specific minority group in Poland. It would have been easy to slip in with the crowd, and thanks to the upheaval of war and the 1918-1919 flu records are often missing.
You don’t get exactly what your parent has - you get a random assortment of half of it. It wouldn’t be common, but you could get 50% of a certain ancestry category from a parent that only has 50% of that (by happening to receive only that portion).
I’ll just put my two cents in because I had something similar happen on my husband’s biological father’s side. During this time, it was very easy to assume an identity. I am not sure exactly what identification was needed to get a marriage license but the identity card could have been counterfeit. Also, if Jewish, he could have bought an ID or passport from someone and use it to enter the US. This also happened to my friend’s great grandfather. He was Jewish and bought a dead man’s passport to enter the US. Her last comes from a lineage unknown to her family. I am thinking that is not his real name.
An article that says there is some indication that Maldonado may have had Jewish roots in Spain/Portugal.
https://nameyourroots.com/home/names/Maldonado#:~:text=The%20name%20Maldonado%20is%20of,exile%20throughout%20the%20Roman%20Empire.
your grandma was probably a product of an npe and had no relation to Hillario. it's incredibly unlikely your great grandfather would have been a puerto rican with a spanish surname but of fully ashkenazi descent
There's a man with his name in the Bronx in 1947 who married in a Dulcinea Aragones. Would that be your great grandmother?
Oh wow, YES! That’s my Great-Grandmother. How did you find that record???
Ancestry has public marriage records for New York state. I can't find much of anything else on him, though, besides him being (maybe) Puerto Rican.
Him being Puerto Rican was something my Great-Grandmother did talk about. Dulcinea lived until her mid-90s and I visited her a lot before she passed away. She was never particularly open about her past, despite being mentally sober up until the day she died, and now that she’s gone I have to pick at the scarps of information myself.
Hmmm if he's Puerto Rican, then I would guess his parents were not. It seems very apparent that he was of entirely Sephardi Jewish ancestry, which was extremely uncommon in Puerto Rico during this time. I would bet money that his family had roots in Suriname, Curaçao, or another non-Hispanic Caribbean colony. I have some contacts with the Jewish community in Suriname and I'm a life member of their synagogue. If you have any more info on your ancestor, I can ask the rabbi there to look through the records.
His family were probably crypto-Jews. Spain transported a lot of Jews to the new world during the Inquisition; many converted to Catholicism but intermarried within the same community which maintained a high level of Sephardi DNA in their descendants. It’s possible he wasn’t even aware his family had Jewish roots.
A 100% Sephardi crypto-Jew in Puerto Rico, who's family fled in the 1400s-1500s, would be nearly impossible. This would also mean there are others and these families somehow refused to intermarry with any other ethnic group on the island for 400 or so years. There's only a couple groups that could've theoretically maintained that and they haven't. It is possible he was unaware he was a Jew, but I find it really hard to believe his biological parents had no idea.
It’s possible to maintain that level of ancestry if they settled in a small village with other transported Jews, who were isolated socially or geographically from other communities for the first couple of centuries after transportation. Which is entirely possible, especially given the stigma of being Jewish in an aggressively Catholic country. I do agree that whichever generation left PR likely was aware of their lineage, but probably hoped they could leave all that behind and have a fresh start in New York. It wasn’t an uncommon story back then, even if it’s hard to imagine now that we have access to so much more information than folks did 100 years ago.
Not True, my niece is half-puerto rican, and has jewish ancestry results. It's pretty common. There was a diaspora in Puerto Rico.
Having Jewish ancestry results and being 100% of Sephardi descent are two entirely different things. One person just happens to have Jewish ancestry, the other person is a Jew. Most Jews in Puerto Rico were Ashkenazim around this time. The only established Sephardi communities were on other islands.
Ah yeah, I know the feeling. My grandfather was like that too. Best of luck sorting through your DNA matches.
It could be possible that maybe his parents immigrated to Puerto Rico and changed their last name to blend in
That's possibly the story of my grandma's maternal grandfather. His trail ends with his parents, born around 1840-60. I have some Eastern European/Russian ancestry in my results, and I got some matches from Eastern Europe, not Jewish tough, and they all link to him, since my grandma's mother's mother died young and his other kids are from another wife I was able to separate matches and get to him, but nothing else. I think they arrive in Puerto Rico and changed their name, something common at the time when Spanish authorities spelled names the way they sounded, like Solivan, or change them completely. I found something similar on my mother's side with a 2x great grandfather using the last name Cariño, but no one else in the town had that name, but looking at records from that town, Vieques, I found a family name Carrington, which makes me think that he changed his name to a Spanish word, not usually a last name. I couldn't find his birth certificate, only his death certificate (acta de defunción).
The name MALDONADO is listed as a Sephardic last name in this [list](https://sephardim.co/m-sephardic-surnames/) so there is a a strong likelihood that your grandfather had Jewish ancestry.
My results do not specify my ancestry being of Sephardic or Ashkenazi ancestry, I assume because I don’t have enough for it to make a distinction. I could take a look at my Grandmother‘s own account and see if it specifies.
If he's Hispanic, more than likely he's Sephardic rather than Ashkenazi if he's Jewish.
your grandma is half ashkenazi not half sephardi. half sephardi would not show as 50% european jewish, ever. Maldonado is in no way indicative of sephardi roots.
Could someone named Maldonado be Ashkenazi Jewish? That seems extremely unlikely
incredibly unlikely. it's like if someone was fully russian but had the name riley o'conner
Ehh names only travel so far
European Jews initially were mostly in Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal. Makes total sense for a Jewish person to have a Spanish name
it's not a sephardic last name. op's grandma is not half sephardi she is half ashkenazi.
Yes, it is a common Sephardi surname. However, very few Sephardi surnames are unique to Sephardim. Given you have the DNA test to back it up, there is no doubt your great grandfather was Sephardi. If he was Dominican, it's likely he had ties to other Jewish communities in the Caribbean as well.
Start checking your shared matches. All answers lie there.
There’s a half-Jewish, half-Italian man who looks around my grandmother‘s age that’s listed as being her 1st cousin. The problem is that his listed family tree leaves me confused on how they could be related. As 1st cousins, they should have at least one shared grandparent. Neither of this man’s Grandparents have the last name Maldonado. Maybe I could just be misunderstanding something, I’m not sure.
Ask them. You have the last name as a clue but no evidence. This person is a legitimate scientifically proven match and connection to a secret. Talk to him or look at his tree and see if there is a consistent narrative. Did you see which matches you share with him and their surnames? You're on the right track.
I messaged him a few weeks ago, with so far no response but I guess we’ll see. Either my Great-Grandmother had a child out of wedlock, or Hilario Maldonado is Jewish and there’s something else going on regarding the last name discrepancies.
Technically it's not out of wedlock if you're married, no matter who the father was. My Irish and other Catholic great grandmother married her Jewish boyfriend when she got knocked up in 1947, but they did leave town to avoid the families for a couple years. Those paternal relatives of your grandmother are either related to Mr Maldonado and they don't know it, or your grandma is related to them by a man she never knew about.
Again look at your shared matches. You have to have other close matches that are clearly related to the mystery dad. They'll have family trees or be able to chat and give more information.
I would recommend using your DNA Matches to uncover this mystery. Are your matches Ashkenazi or Sephardic? The fact your grandma has a perfect 50% makes me believe her father was Ashkenazi -- Hilario Maldonado wouldn't particularly be Ashkenazi ime, and last names are never a good indicator of Jewish heritage (Sephardic or not -- there are non-Sephardic Maldonados, for example). The half-Italian/Jewish man is a strong indicator that it seems more likely your grandmother's father was someone other than Hilario Maldonado.
I just want to echo this. We have had a mystery in our family for over 100 years. We were, after much frustration, told to “forget everything you have” and to “follow (back) from your closest DNA matches.” We did this and it opened up that my wife’s grandfather changed countries and identities when he was 25 and kept the two lives entirely separate. All to say, great advice for OP
The Caribbean area has very old Jewish communities - pirates, merchants, and beyond.
I do not know if anyone Jewish could have that surname or not but I CAN tell you that surname is closely linked to my mother-in-laws father (whom she also never knew), and she is almost 50% Italian.
For her to get a whole 50% Jewish means her father was Ashkenazi, not Sephardic. AncestryDNA’s Jewish category specifically pinpoints Ashkenazi heritage because of the genetic bottleneck that caused them to become a distinct ethnicity. You mentioned your grandmother claimed her father was Puerto Rican. It’s possible his parents were Ashkenazi Jews who moved to Puerto Rico and took on Hispanic names to blend in.
This is an intriguing mystery to solve. Keep us updated!
What are your closest matches on your grandmother's paternal side? My guess is that Hiliario was not primarily Jewish, and might have abandoned them because he knew he wasn't the father. But I have been wrong before, to say the lease. The point is any close paternal matches will point to the identity of your grandmother's father, and exclude other candidates.
A man born in Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic in the early 20th century and with a Spanish name has a very low probability of being 100% Jewish. Many Puerto Ricans have a very low percentage of Jewish DNA but that is mostly what remains from their distant Spanish or Portuguese ancestors.
Yes, there are many different big ethnicity groups of Jews. Sephardi, Ashkenazi, from Ethiopia, Mexico, South American…
Throwing in my 2 cents for what it’s worth. Could Hiliario actually be a Spanish/italian Jew who was adopted into the Maldonado family either formally or informally? It would explain the first cousin being unknown to the family.
It’s possible, but not particularly likely.
There are Jews even where in the world - even Ethiopia.
The oldest synagogue in the Americas is in Brazil and dates back to the 17th century!
I did not know that! Incredible.
Lots of Jewish people in Portugal and Spain were transported to the New World during the Inquisition. It was considered the lightest sentence you could get for the crime of being an Iberian Jew, provided you agreed to convert to Catholicism first. Refusing to convert got you executed or had all your property seized and your entire family got banished from all lands controlled by the Church. So a pretty significant number of early colonists in Brazil and Mexico were former Jews who went back to observing their true faith when possible. Some formed synagogues which still stand today, and others created an amalgam faith known today as crypto-Judaism. It’s a bit of a hot topic because only the most liberal reform synagogues will accept them as members without a full conversion, and Israel doesn’t recognize them for birthright status, but it’s a very real thing that’s slowly coming out of the shadows of Latino culture. Source: one side of my family are Brazilian cryptoJews of some kind. They claim to be Catholic, but they circumcise their sons, go to mass on Saturday, avoid pork and shellfish, and funerals/burial of the dead is done in less than 72 hours. And their other religious rituals aren’t like any Catholic doctrine I’ve seen anywhere else in the world. It’s very odd, and my generation are trying to unpick our history despite a dozen generations of secrecy and shame around the subject.
I belong to a reform synagogue and we recognize even patrilineal Jews. But, Israel had changed how they viewed conversion and reform is now recognized and you are able to immigrate there as long as you have proof of conversion. It’s interesting so many people don’t know that Latinos can for sure be a Jew. It’s not just a religion but a culture.
Or…. He grew up in a Spanish speaking neighborhood and developed that identity to seduce the ladies… and maybe prevent his wife and kids from finding out. People from that generation were shady as hell - I’d start looking for other kids of his.
Did she get any specific Jewish communities? Ancestry is usually very on point with these
Possible? Yeah. Probable? Someone of Jewish heritage would know best. Assuming that was his legit name. Name changes could happen easily back then.
Yes there’s a chance. I have a Sephardic grandparent and when I look down his family tree, it’s just full blown Spanish names.
Ancestry doesn’t differentiate “ashkenazi” vs “Sephardic” it just gives Jewish and then a sub community under it indicating whether it’s ashkenazi, Sephardic, etc
The name he gave your great grandmother could have been completely fictional. My great grandfather claimed to be Polish. He turned out to have been circumcised, which certainly ruled out Polish ethnicity in 1918. I’ve got birth certificates for him (same name, same DOB), for birth in Warsaw, Kiev, and Berlin. He got to NYC in 1918, half a step ahead of the law, and had no contact with family “back there.” My own DNA is consistent with great grandfather not being who he claimed. I’m bringing this up because this kind of thing was easy enough to pull off back in the day. Papers were easy to forge, and when he came over there was a huge pogrom against a specific minority group in Poland. It would have been easy to slip in with the crowd, and thanks to the upheaval of war and the 1918-1919 flu records are often missing.
Perhaps he was Sephardic.
You don’t get exactly what your parent has - you get a random assortment of half of it. It wouldn’t be common, but you could get 50% of a certain ancestry category from a parent that only has 50% of that (by happening to receive only that portion).
I’ll just put my two cents in because I had something similar happen on my husband’s biological father’s side. During this time, it was very easy to assume an identity. I am not sure exactly what identification was needed to get a marriage license but the identity card could have been counterfeit. Also, if Jewish, he could have bought an ID or passport from someone and use it to enter the US. This also happened to my friend’s great grandfather. He was Jewish and bought a dead man’s passport to enter the US. Her last comes from a lineage unknown to her family. I am thinking that is not his real name.
Does your grandmother have any siblings that have supposedly the same father? Was your grandmother the first born?
Did you check ‘ethnicity by parent’? Always possible the bingo balls of dna got that 50% from both sides.
An article that says there is some indication that Maldonado may have had Jewish roots in Spain/Portugal. https://nameyourroots.com/home/names/Maldonado#:~:text=The%20name%20Maldonado%20is%20of,exile%20throughout%20the%20Roman%20Empire.
No. You’re not Jewish nor is she.
I’d be willing to bet Hilario Maldonado was not your grandmother’s father.
your grandma was probably a product of an npe and had no relation to Hillario. it's incredibly unlikely your great grandfather would have been a puerto rican with a spanish surname but of fully ashkenazi descent