Roadmap
The question this archive was built to answer has been answered. This page says what replaced it, ranks the ways at the new one, and marks plainly which routes are finished, which are live, and which need a person rather than a search.
The question that started it, and its answer
Who were Pablo Armando Lerena’s parents? For most of this archive’s life that was the whole of it. The line below him was closed and documented; above him there was nothing at all, and the Argentine record refused three times over.
It was answered by a document he filled in himself. His 1908 Argentine army enrolment card names them: Juan Carlos Lerena and María Lerena. Corroborated by his eldest son being christened Ricardo Juan Carlos, and independently by a granddaughter’s DNA, which carries a Río de la Plata genetic group that can only have come through him.
It is also the archive’s worst near-miss. The card was written off for a month on four objections, three of which turned out to be artefacts of a machine index. Opening the image took two minutes. The correction → · The card →
Who were Juan Carlos and María Lerena, and where did they come from?
Two names on a card, and nothing behind them. No baptism, no marriage, no census entry, no death for either of them has been found anywhere. And the reason that mattered so much on 13 September is that the last place they could plausibly have hidden was checked, and they are not in it.
The Rosario baptism index, 1879–1901. End to end. No Lerena in any spelling, and no Pablo Armando under any surname in 1881, 1882 or 1883.
The Rosario baptism index, 1731–1879. Eighty openings. The surname occurs once, and she is Uruguayan.
The Rosario marriage index, 1867–1885. No Lerena. They did not marry in that parish.
They were not a Rosario family — and the one Lerena in that parish was Uruguayan
Strong lead, no link proved — 13 September 2026
The single Lerena baptism in the whole index, folio 229, February 1866, was opened the same day it was found. The act says of both parents: “naturales del E. Oriental” — natives of Uruguay. The father is a Lerena Lenguas, the mother a Juanicó, and the godfather — another Don Luis Lerena — stood by proxy, which is what one does from the other side of the river.
And the family that produces is one this archive had been circling from the opposite direction for four days: the sons of Luis Lerena y Fernández and Justiniana Lenguas González of Montevideo, one of whom is Gilberto Justiniano Lerena Lenguas, co-founder of the Argentine Stud Book — already in the register, marked high interest, because Pablo Armando trained and owned racehorses.
Nothing links Juan Carlos Lerena to that house. But it explains four separate refusals at once, and it says where to look. Hypothesis 1c → · What was read → · The horses →
1 · Montevideo the household is open; he is not in it
Worked hard on 13 September, and it produced more than it was asked for. The one documented Lerena household of that generation in the River Plate is now open from the marriage act to the last burial, every member on a primary record:
- The marriage — San Francisco de Asís, Ciudad Vieja, act nº 258, 19 December 1864. Don Luis Lerena y Lenguas, hijo legítimo de Don Luis y de Doña Justiniana Lenguas, with Doña Julia Juanicó, hija legítima del Sr. Don Cándido y de Doña Juliana González. The join the whole argument rested on, and it had rested on a tree.
- Seven children, not five — María Julia (b. Rosario 1865, m. Jaime Herrera 1886); Laura Adela (b. 1868); Luis (d. 1897, aged 25); Enrique (d. 1914); Ema Sixta (b. 21 Nov 1876, m. José Pedro Massera 1913); José Julio (b. 15 Mar 1879); and Cándido Jaime (b. 13 Sep 1884, m. María Concepción Magariños Pittaluga 1922). The last two were found on the evening of 13 September. The five had been built outward from Julia’s death certificate — and a death certificate names the children who mattered to whoever registered the death, not the children a woman bore.
- Cándido Jaime’s baptism, act nº 1720, names four grandparents in one line — paternal Don Luis and Doña Justiniana Lenguas, maternal Don Cándido and Doña Juliana González — and his godparents are his own eldest sister María and Don Jaime Herrera, whom she married in this same parish four months later. They stood at the font betrothed.
- Laura Adela’s baptism names every grandparent independently of the marriage act and agreeing with it exactly — and gives his full name, Luis Eugenio.
- Julia’s baptism — born 23 November 1842, christened 4 October 1843, San Francisco de Asís. Her mother in full: Juliana Joaquina González.
- Luis Eugenio’s death — 24 December 1901, seven in the morning, calle Suárez nº 25, el Paso del Molino, act nº 216. “De nacionalidad oriental, nacido en Montevideo, de cincuenta y seis de edad, de estado casado, y de profesión hacendado.” A landowner — the first statement of this family’s standing anywhere in the archive. His mother Justiniana Lenguas was alive at 79 and in the house.
- Julia’s death — 11 July 1910, calle Constituyente 992, Montevideo, a widow, which his 1901 act now explains exactly.
And Juan Carlos Lerena is still not among them. Seven children and five siblings now named in those two generations, and he is in none of them. He is not in the indexed Uruguayan record either — no Juan Carlos Lerena born there 1830–1870 in the church records, the civil registration or the baptism index; no Lerena groom marrying a María 1865–1885; and exactly two full-text hits for the phrase in the whole corpus, both twentieth-century.
What is still open here. Cándido Juanicó’s first marriage to Juliana Joaquina González as a document — though the two-wives inference is now confirmed from the children themselves, Julia born 1842 to Juliana against Sara, Zara and Celia born 1866–69 to Sixta Lenguas. The images behind Gilberto’s parentage and behind José Julio’s birth. And the reading that full text cannot do for you: the Montevideo marriage registers of the 1870s, turned page by page, for a Juan Carlos marrying a María.
2 · The consulate that issued the passport letter sent, 9 Sep 2026 — no reply yet
To be issued an Argentine passport in 1940 he had to prove nationality, so the Cape Town consulate held a matrícula consular on him, and those files went home to the Archivo Histórico de Cancillería. Sent to archivo@cancilleria.gob.ar, an address taken from the Cancillería’s own contact page rather than guessed. It asks whether the matrícula survives, whether the 1940 passport file survives and whether it names his parents, and — flagged as minor — whether he ever held a consular appointment, which puts the family’s Consul General tradition to the only body that could settle it.
3 · The rest of his own army file letter sent, with the card attached
The 1908 enrolment card is an index card. Behind it sits a legajo — the service file — which would carry his birthplace, his parents’ details in full, and quite possibly his parents’ own origins. Written to the Archivo General del Ejército with the card itself attached, so they have the reference number rather than a description of it.
4 · He came with the horses untried, and still the biggest idea here
We have been hunting a passenger. He may never have been one. The South African War shipped some 360,000 horses into the country, Argentina among the main sources. He was seventeen when it began and twenty when it ended, a horseman by trade and a horse-dealer at the Cape by 1911. Horses travel with conductors, grooms and muleteers, engaged at the port of loading, and those men are written down in military remount paperwork, not civilian passenger lists — which would explain why he is invisible in every passenger index searched.
Where: The National Archives, Kew — WO 108 and related Remount Department series; the Cape remount depots, chiefly Stellenbosch; and the British purchasing commissions at Buenos Aires. None of it has been touched.
5 · The 1935 mission census needs a person in Brisbane
Both younger sons appear in an LDS South African Mission census of 1935, each indexed as “Son” — which means a head of household stands on that page, and it should be Pablo Armando, giving his own birthplace five years before the passport and independent of it. The image is not online; it needs a reader at an affiliate library. Why two Catholic boys of eleven and fifteen are in a Mormon mission census in the year their mother died is a question in itself.
6 · The Ley 4144 expulsion files needs David, and a passport
The family tradition is that he left Argentina as a political refugee. The Ley 4144 of 1902 deported foreigners, which is the flaw in the story and also the test of it. The Archivo General de la Nación portal needs an account; the Spanish text is written and ready to paste. The errands →
7 · Rosario, again closed — do not reopen without a new reason
Both volumes of the baptism index read end to end. 1881, 1882 and 1883 read across all twenty-six letter sections for a Pablo Armando under any surname whatsoever — roughly two hundred image-reads, more than twenty near misses logged and excluded, including the only two Armandos in three years. The marriage index read at full resolution. The 1895 national census: not one Lerena in Santa Fe.
And on 13 September the index itself was put on trial. Every Rosario null here rests on a typescript compiled in 1945, and whether that typescript is complete had never been tested. So the register was read act by act, from the margins at full resolution: acts 113 to 862, 1 February to 22 July 1882, seven hundred and fifty baptisms. Everywhere the index says there is no Lerena, the register says the same. The index and the register agree — so he is not there, and the index is not the reason. The sweep →
This route is exhausted, not merely unsuccessful.
Five reels, named — the 1791 marriage is filmed after all
For weeks this archive recorded Sancho’s marriage as unreachable. That verdict came from a full-text search, and full text covers a fraction of what is filmed.
The index entry has now been read. Canelones, índice de matrimonios 1776–1947, DGS 8166578, image 2531, under Letra L and the sub-heading Libro I: “Llerena Sancho con María Fernández, 1791”, with the year column beside it running 1777, 1778, 1780, 1781, 1783, 1785, 1786, 1787, 1788, 1789, 1790, 1791, 1792 in order. Until that morning the date came from Apolant’s ficha 355 and the venue came from nowhere — this archive supplied the word “Canelones” itself.
The act is on the same reel — and on 15 September 2026 it was read. Matrimonios, Libros 1–3, 1776–1854 (items 11–13) opens at
image 2590 behind a target board at 2586. The marriage of Sancho Llerena and
María Fernández, 8 January 1791, is at image 2687, left-hand
page, second act: “En ocho días del Mes de Enero de 1791
años… Sancho Llerena, nat[ura]l de Córdova la Llana, hijo
legítimo de Félix Llerena y de Rosalía
Aguilar…” The year is in arabic numerals. It was found by reading dated
anchors rather than by arithmetic — 2670 is 12 February 1789 and 2700 is 16 June
1792, about nine images to the year. See the
hypotheses page and data/1791-marriage-act.tsv.
The five books that cover January 1791
| Book | DGS | Where it came from |
|---|---|---|
| Canelones — Índice de matrimonios 1776–1947 the entry is here | 8166578 | Catalogue koha:1294117 |
| Canelones — Matrimonios, Libros 1–3, 1776–1854 the act — FOUND, image 2687 | 8166578 | |
| Canelones — Informaciones matrimoniales, Carpetas 1–6, 1776–1806 walked — does not cover January 1791 | 8166573 | |
| Montevideo — Libros Castrenses: “del Regimiento de Infantería de Buenos Ayres”, 1781–1814 opened — item 5, from image 623; 1791 is at image 660 | 7713373 | Catalogue koha:961086 |
| Montevideo — Índices de bautismos, matrimonios y defunciones, 1726–1800 attribution NOT confirmed — images 300 and 1500 are 1887 and 1905 burials | 7713386 |
The informaciones matrimoniales, walked — and the answer is no
A pre-marriage investigation was the best remaining hope for Sancho’s parents: it routinely gives a Spanish groom’s parents, his birthplace and how long he had been in the country, on oath. On 15 September 2026 the reel was read by image number rather than through the viewer, and the result is a clean negative.
The series does not cover January 1791. Its filming targets divide it into volumes: Volumen 6 runs 1776 to November 1790 and ends at image 1459; Volumen 7 opens at image 1460 and its first dated expediente is March 1791. Sancho married on 8 January 1791. The whole of 1791 in this series is a single expediente belonging to somebody else — Juan Manuel Sánchez, an Andalusian marrying María Medina, images 1462–1464 — and by image 1464 the archivist’s pencil already reads “Marzo 1792”.
So his own información is not there. That is a seam in the filing, not a failed search, which is worth stating precisely because the two look identical from a distance. One caveat is real: the filming card at image 1461 reads “HOJAS SUELTAS” — loose leaves. The order is whatever order somebody filed them in, so a stray 1791 sheet elsewhere in Volumen 7 is not impossible. It is simply not where it should be.
Which is why the castrense books now go first.
A serving soldier’s marriage needed his commander’s licence and frequently ran through
the military chaplaincy rather than the parish vicaría. That would explain, with no
appeal to loss or accident, why Sancho appears in this series as a witness and never as a
petitioner. The full walk, image by image, is in
data/informaciones-1791-walk.tsv.
The castrense books, opened — one attribution held, one did not
DGS 7713373 is not what this archive called it, and is nonetheless the right film. Its own boards read “Uruguay, Archivo de la Curia” and “Montevideo, Archivos Parroquiales, P. Inmac. Concepción (Catedral)”, project URUG 1000A, roll 84. The military material is item 5, titled “Catálogo y Libros Militares”, beginning at image 623.
The regiment is named in the priest’s own hand, at image 655: “yo Don Juan Miguel de Berroeta, Capellán del Regimiento Infantería de Buenos Ayres, en esta Iglesia Matriz de Montevideo…” Neighbouring entries name the Dragones de Buenos Ayres — and Sancho is “el soldado dragón” in 1793, so his attested unit is inside this book’s scope rather than adjacent to it.
And the book covers the month he married. Image 656 is headed Año 1790; image 660 is headed Año de 1791 and carries an entry of 30 January 1791; image 661 carries 27–28 March 1791. The book runs from about image 652 to about 950 and ends in 1814. Nothing named Llerena was found in the five images read — and five images is not a search of the book. Reading it properly is about three hundred images, and it is the next job.
The 1789–1791 window has since been read continuously — images 652 to 662, eleven openings without a gap, covering December 1787 to July 1791 and so the month Sancho married. No Llerena, Lerena or Lorena in any of them. The families in the book in these years are Menchero, Arias, Illescas, Lamas, Sánchez, Martínez, Coronel, Villar and Juárez — Manchegan, Galician, Andalusian and porteño soldiers, and a great many baptisms of enslaved children belonging to the regiment’s officers.
That is a negative over eleven images, not over the book, and it is a scan rather than a transcription. Images 663–950 are unread. This hand was misread at fit-width three times in one sitting — the chaplain as “Mendoza” when he is Berroeta, a slave-owner as “Llerena” when he is Francisco Juárez, and a mother as “Rosalía Illera” when she is Petrona Illescas. Every candidate beginning with L was magnified before being dismissed, but a name buried mid-sentence in an unzoomed line could have been missed. Not found and not there are different statements.
How the catalogue was reached at all. Its search box returned “Something Went Wrong” for every query for a whole day. A direct catalogue ID still worked — and better, any image’s Information tab prints the catalogue link and that reel’s item-by-item contents. That is how both record numbers above were recovered without the search box. One warning for whoever goes next: image 2631 of the Canelones reel opens under the page title “Colombia, Catholic Church Records” and cites the Archdiocese of Cartagena. The image is Canelones; its own Information panel says so.
What would close it fastest
Route 1, as soon as FamilySearch lets this session back in. It costs nothing but time, it is the first place the evidence now points, and it is the only route that could name Juan Carlos Lerena’s own parents rather than merely confirm his existence.
Routes 2 and 3 are already out and can only be waited on. If both come back empty, route 4 is where the real thinking has to go — because if he came to Africa with a cargo of horses rather than a ticket, then no passenger list will ever have him, and we have been looking in the wrong archive from the beginning.
And a Rosario target this archive had never named, published 20 September 2026
Everything at the Rosario end has been aimed at Pablo Armando’s baptism — the register David was going to read page by page, film 1093094, DGS 4098791, which covers his birth of 22 February 1882. It would give his parents’ names, which the enrolment card already gives.
His parents’ own marriage would give four more. The Índice de Matrimonios 1731–1761, 1860–1921 for the Rosario Catedral is filmed — 1091466, DGS 4531036 — and a marriage act of that period names all four grandparents. For a man who appears in no indexed record anywhere, a marriage act would be the first document to name Juan Carlos Lerena and say who his father was — which is the whole question this archive exists to answer.
It is arguably a better target than the baptism, and it was sitting in a film list rather than in the plan. The index is the cheap part: it points at a folio, so the volume never has to be read page by page. Recorded here because a route nobody has written down is a route nobody walks.
14 September 2026 — and one route away from Pablo Armando is now precisely specified
Everything above is about the Argentine end. The Uruguayan end has a single document that would answer more questions than any other, and it has never been opened: Sancho’s own marriage, 8 January 1791. It would settle whether he was Sancho or Francisco, give his parents and his Spanish birthplace in his own generation’s words, and test both Aguilar and Córdoba at once.
The date has a source and the place never did. The 8 January 1791 comes from Apolant, Operativo Patagonia (Montevideo, 1970), ficha 355. The word Canelones comes from nowhere — this archive supplied it. So the question is not “find the Canelones act” but which surviving books could hold a marriage on that day. The Instituto de Estudios Genealógicos del Uruguay publishes a holdings list, and it gives four answers:
- Canelones, Catedral de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe — marriages from 1775, and informaciones matrimoniales from 1776. Still the leading candidate: the 1812 padrón makes all six children “naturales del Canelón”, the eldest born about 1791. And Sancho has already been found inside that investigation series, giving sworn evidence at somebody else’s marriage.
- Montevideo, Iglesia Matriz — ordinary books from 1727, and three Libros Castrenses covering 1781–1814. Sancho was a soldado, recorded so since the first day, from the Uruguayan census. A soldier marrying in the Banda Oriental in 1791 has an obvious second home for his act, in books kept by the chaplaincy rather than the parish — and nobody has ever looked in them.
- The Curia, Arzobispado de Montevideo — expedientes de información matrimonial from 1727. This is the document worth most: a pre-marriage investigation routinely gives a Spanish groom’s parents, birthplace and time in the country, which is more than the marriage act itself usually carries.
- San José de Mayo — raised and eliminated the same day. The Operativo Patagonia convoy’s 41 Asturian founder families — seven of them from Morcín, the concejo where the bride was born in 1778 — founded San José on 1 June 1783, so her family plausibly landed there. But its marriage books begin in 1799, eight years too late. Its baptisms run from 1783 and are worth asking about for the family’s arrival.
A caution on the date itself: the bride is given as born 1778, which would make her twelve, while the 1812 padrón implies about fifteen. Whoever searches should be asked to look a year either side. A published source can still be wrong.