Antonina LERENA (b. c.1862, dau. of Bernabe; m. Serapio Fernandez 1885)

A DAUGHTER OF BERNABE LERENA AND CASIMIRA PELAEZ, named as such in her son's birth act of 1897. She is given there as 'Dona ANTONINA LERENA, Oriental, de treinta y cinco anos' - born about 1862. Married SERAPIO FERNANDEZ on 26 June 1885 under a dispensation of the second grade of consanguinity. SHE IS NOT THE OTHER ANTONINA LERENA OF TRINIDAD, who was already the mother of a thirty-year-old in 1880 and so born about 1830. Two women of one name in one small town, and this archive nearly had one. AND SHE WAS BRIEFLY IN THIS REGISTER TWICE. A row was created for her yesterday from the dispensation ledger alone - 'Antonina LERENA (of Trinidad, m. Serapio Fernandez 1885)' - and a second today from the birth act that named her parents. Merged 9 October 2026, and the duplicate was caught by tools/check-duplicates.py rather than noticed - which is the gate doing in one build what this archive once took three weeks to do by hand. 26 JUNE 1885: dispensed the SECOND GRADE of consanguinity by the EQUAL lateral line to marry DON SERAPIO FERNANDEZ (hijo). EQUAL SECOND DEGREE IS FIRST COUSINS - she and her husband shared a grandparent. AND THE GROOM IS A FERNANDEZ, which is the surname of Sancho Llerena's wife Maria Fernandez and of Avelino Lerena Fernandez. A CONSANGUINITY DISPENSATION IS A STATEMENT ABOUT ANCESTRY. The Church computed the degree before it would dispense, so the entry constrains a pedigree even though it names no parent. The register itself names NO PARENTS - it is the Vicar General's summary ledger, not the expediente. NO BIRTH YEAR IS RECORDED HERE, and one was briefly invented. This row first carried a year reached by assuming an ordinary age at marriage. That is a guess wearing the clothes of a fact, it is what this archive did to William John Taylor on 8 October, and tools/check-duplicates.py caught it the same way - by matching the invented year against real namesakes. The dispensation register gives no age and no birth. AND HER WEDDING DAY MAY NOW BE KNOWN: 15 JULY 1885, three weeks after the dispensation of 26 June. A parish index row carries a marriage of that date at Santisima Trinidad between a SERAPIO FERNANDEZ, thirty, soltero, born 1855 - which fits Serapio hijo - and a Lerena bride the index names SOCORRO, giving her every one of the groom's own attributes. SOCORRO LERENA IS THE GROOM'S MOTHER, NOT HIS BRIDE, so the likeliest reading is that this is THIS woman's marriage with the wrong Lerena in the bride's place. NOT PROVED: the plate has not been opened, and the index gives the bride an age of thirty where this woman would have been about twenty-three. Recorded as a probable date and not as a fact.