Margarita FERNANDEZ ALVAREZ (wife of Alejandro LERENA the elder)

THE MOTHER OF THE TRINIDAD KINDRED, and the reason its first two marriages needed dispensing. Named in the expedientes of 1855, 1854 and 1858 as the wife of Alejandro Lerena and the mother of SOCORRO, ALEJANDRO the younger and BERNABE. The 1854 document gives her compound surname in full: FERNANDEZ ALVAREZ. THAT IS WHY SOCORRO MARRIED A FERNANDEZ IN THE SECOND DEGREE: her husband's father is MANUEL FERNANDEZ ALVAREZ, so Margarita and Manuel are almost certainly brother and sister - which is what a second grade in the transverse line requires, and it is an inference from the degree and the compound surname, not a statement in either act. NATURAL DE SAN JOSE, resident at Trinidad, alive in August 1855. HER PARENTS, AND THEY TURN AN INFERENCE INTO A DOCUMENT. The act of 16 September 1825 calls her 'MARGARITA FERNANDEZ ALVAREZ, Natural de esta Villa, hija legitima de JUAN FERNANDEZ ALVAREZ y de BARBARA SOTURA'. THIS ROW GUESSED THIS MORNING THAT SHE AND MANUEL FERNANDEZ ALVAREZ WERE BROTHER AND SISTER and said so was 'required by the degree and not written down in either act'. IT IS WRITTEN DOWN NOW, IN A THIRD ACT: the 1855 expediente gives Serapio Fernandez's grandparents as 'Don JUAN y Dona BARBARA SOTURA', and those are her parents. SO MANUEL IS HER BROTHER, AND SOCORRO AND SERAPIO ARE FIRST COUSINS BY A DOCUMENTED PATH - exactly the second grade dispensed in 1855. AND HER SISTER MARIA FERNANDEZ ALVAREZ WAS GODMOTHER AT HER WEDDING.