Across the Water

On 9 January 1798, before the church court at Canelones, Sancho Llerena swore an oath and gave evidence that a man named Florentino Gómez was free to marry. He had known him, he said, in the years he himself had spent «en la línea de Vitoria». When the notary, José del Río, reached the end of the statement, the witness «dijo no saber escrivir», said he could not write, and the judge signed in his place. It is the one time the archive hears him speak.^doc

What the «línea de Vitoria» was, the archive does not know and does not guess. The deposition does not give his age either, though the one before it does. What it gives is smaller and sharper: a man who had spent years somewhere, who was trusted to swear to another man's freedom to marry, and who could not sign his own name.^doc

He is in the records earlier than that. On 30 June 1789, at the Iglesia Matriz of Montevideo, «Sancho Llerena y Juliana Josefa Cornejo» stood godparents to Juana, the daughter of Nicolás Benteno, «indio natural de la ciudad del Tucumán», and of Leonarda Correa of Buenos Aires. By the age the census later gave him, Sancho was about twenty-two.^inf

Eighteen months later he married at Canelones. His bride was María Fernández, «natural de las Asturias», the daughter of Rodrigo Fernández and Rosa Fernández, Asturians who were «vecinos de Santa Lucía». He came from the south of Spain and she from the north. The marriage was blessed at once: the margin of the register reads «Casados, y Velados», married and veiled, with the fees beside it, six to the priest and three to the church. The witnesses were Antonio Villegas and José del Río, the notary of 1798.^doc

She was young. The census of 1812 gives her thirty-six, which would make her about fifteen at the altar.^inf

A published genealogy, Juan Alejandro Apolant's study of the Operativo Patagonia, carries this marriage as its entry 355 and places the bride's family among the Asturian settlers of that enterprise, from the concejo of Morcín. The archive has the entry at second hand and has not seen the settlers' own lists. The marriage act itself calls her María Fernández; her daughter's marriage act of 1830 adds Tresguerras.^lore to be confirmed

In 1793, at the baptism of Pedro Antonio at Canelones, the priest wrote the father down as «el soldado dragón Sancho Lerena», a dragoon. The priest was himself the chaplain of the Regimiento de Infantería de Buenos Aires. No paper names Sancho's own regiment.^doc

The family lived at Canelones for at least eleven years, and the priests called Sancho and María «vecinos de esta Villa», residents and not visitors. The children are in the registers: Agustina Ramona in 1795, «de tres días nacida», with Don Fidel Rey of Montevideo as her godfather; Justa Pastora in 1800; Dominga Josefa in 1804; José Loreto in 1806.^doc

Sancho stood at other people's fonts too. At the Canelones confirmations of 1804 he was godfather to two enslaved men: José, «esclavo de Manuel López», and Joseph Jiménez, «esclavo de Don Luis Jiménez».^doc

By 1812 they had moved to Montevideo, to number 60 in the calle San Juan. The census of that year sets the house down under one bracket: Sancho, «andaluz», forty-five; María Fernández, thirty-six; the children Juan Agustín, Pedro Antonio, Fidel, Luis, Agustina, Justa and Dominga; four enslaved people, Antonio, José, Juana and Teresa; and María's father, Rodrigo Fernández, sixty-three, «asturiano».^doc

On 26 September 1812, at the cathedral of Montevideo, the priest baptised María Mercedes, born two days before, «hija de Juana, negra esclava de D.n Sancho Lerena y de D.a María Fernández». The act gives Juana no age, no origin and no surname. Nothing more is known of her, or of her daughter.^doc

The census is the last paper that needs Sancho to be alive. Later acts name him as a father or a grandfather until 1850, which shows only that he was remembered; no burial is known. The clerks could not agree on his first name either. Most wrote Sancho and a few wrote Francisco, and the archive's reading is that he carried both. Only his wife's name, María Fernández, is the same in every record.^inf

On 13 December 1831, in the church of Nuestra Señora del Carmen in the Cordón at Montevideo, a boy sixteen days old was baptised Juan Facundo Frutuoso. His mother was Sancho's daughter Justa Pastora, «natural de Canelones», married the year before to Manuel Zeferino Barros of Pernambuco. The priest wrote: «Fueron Padrinos Don Fructuoso Rivera, Presidente de la República, y su esposa Doña Bernardina Fragoso». His third name, Frutuoso, is the president's.^doc

Her brother Luis, baptised at the Iglesia Matriz in February 1811, married twice. In 1836 he petitioned, in his own hand, to marry a woman named Carolina; by March 1842 he was a widower, and married Justiniana Lenguas, a daughter of General Pedro Lenguas. The act of 1842 names his parents as Don Sancho and Doña María Fernández.^doc

Two of their sons carried the house into the next generation, and across the river. Luis Eugenio married Julia Juanicó in 1864 and died at Montevideo on 24 December 1901, a «hacendado», a landowner; his mother, then seventy-nine, was staying in the house. His brother Gilberto was one of the founders of the Argentine Stud Book, and a Group 1 race at Palermo in Buenos Aires has carried his name since 1914. Gilberto's household crossed to Buenos Aires between October 1886 and October 1890: the last of his children baptised at Montevideo, the first at Buenos Aires.^doc

Sancho's youngest, Avelino, born in 1815, married Ambrosia Traibel; their children are the Lerena Traibel. He died at Montevideo on 22 August 1890, and the registration of his death names his parents, Sancho and María Fernández.^doc

In February 1866 the family's name was written at a font in Argentina. At Rosario, on the Paraná, a daughter of Luis Lerena Lenguas and Julia Juanicó, born the October before, was baptised, and the priest wrote that both parents were «naturales del E. Oriental», natives of Uruguay. The godfather, Don Luis Lerena, her grandfather, was represented by another man. She is the only Lerena in the Rosario baptism index from 1731 to 1901. Twenty years later she married at Montevideo.^doc

This is the house the archive believes Pablo Armando Lerena came from, and it says plainly that it is a belief. The reading rests on a rare surname; on the River Plate, where the name is densest; on the act of 1866, which puts this family at Rosario; and on horses, Gilberto's at Palermo and, later, Pablo Armando's at the Cape. No paper names him in this house.^inf

And here the tree breaks. No record of Juan Carlos Lerena, the name the next chapter begins with, has been found in Argentina or Uruguay: not a baptism, not a marriage, not a burial. He is not among Gilberto's eight children. Everything above this point is documented, and everything below it. Nothing yet joins them.^doc

On Christmas Eve 1940 the Argentine consulate at Cape Town issued a passport to a man of fifty-eight. He was born, it says, at Rosario de Santa Fe on 22 February 1882, and Argentine by birth. He lived at Rugby, Cape Town, and was travelling to Portuguese East Africa. He was a widower. He stood 1.80 metres, with blue eyes, grey hair, a straight nose and a scar on his forehead. Under profession the clerk wrote, in English on a Spanish form, one word: Trainer.^doc

Pablo Armando Lerena signed it «P. A. Lerena», and it carries his right thumbprint. Under military service it records the Guardia Nacional, 6th Cavalry, 1915. It is the most personal document in the archive.^doc

Between his birth and the first sign of the family at the Cape there are twenty-three years with nothing in them. How he came, and when, no paper says.^doc

The family says he met Mary Septima Taylor aboard a ship bound for South Africa. No passenger list has yet been found to show it.^lore

She was born on 17 September 1884, her birth registered at Bideford in north Devon, and she was christened on 30 October at St Margaret's, Northam, in the Anglican church. Her father, William Taylor, born in Suffolk, was by 1891 a cab driver and a retired cavalry sergeant. When her mother died at Northam in April 1900, Mary Septima gave the information, «present at the death». That December, at sixteen, she won a diocesan prize as a monitor and pupil teacher.^doc

Their first son, Roque Luis Armando, was born at Cape Town in 1905: on 25 November by his baptism, on 6 December by his death notice. In February 1909 a «Mrs M T Lerena» landed at Southampton, and on the line below her a «Mast. L Lerena», a boy, almost certainly Roque, then three.^inf

In 1911, at Wynberg, three things happened within six months. On 12 June Roque, five and a half, was baptised at Corpus Christi as the son of Pablo Armando Lerena and «Mary Septima (olim Taylor)», formerly Taylor; his godparents, José and María Luisa Bretón, stood by proxy. On 3 September at St Dominic's, after banns, the same priest, Bertram W. Glynn, married «Pablo Armando Lerena», twenty-nine, bachelor, horse-dealer, of Diep River, and «Mary Septima Taylor», twenty-seven, spinster, of Diep River. Both signed their own names. On 16 December she was herself baptised a Catholic at Corpus Christi.^doc

Two more sons followed, Ricardo Juan Carlos in January 1920 and Nuno Fernando in October 1924; at Nuno's baptism the priest wrote against his mother «Mater Anglicana», the mother is Anglican, thirteen years after her own Catholic baptism. In 1931 plans were lodged with the Cape Town council for stables on the Koeberg Road at Rugby, in the name of R. P. Lerena.^doc

In May 1935 Mary Septima landed at Southampton, giving as her address in England her sister Isabella's house in Fore Street, Northam, and at the end of June she sailed for the Cape again. She died at Observatory on 15 November 1935, aged fifty-one, and was buried the next day in the Roman Catholic ground at Maitland, in grave 7719.^doc

He did not marry again. He died on 19 March 1950 at 7 Forth Road, Newlands, of coronary thrombosis. The registrar, given the facts by the undertaker, wrote him down as «Robert Paul Lerina», race horse owner, born in South America, aged seventy-six; he was sixty-eight. He was buried in his wife's grave, in a plot the cemetery register calls his own.^doc

His estate came to £15,527 15s. Among the debts, between a garage bill and an insurance premium, was a claim from W. C. Blake for £26 of carrots. His will left half a share to his eldest son, half a share to Rose Lilian Theys, a spinster of the same address and his executrix, and the rest in trust for Ricardo and Nuno.^doc

The family remembered four things about him. That he came from Rosario: his own passport says so. That he brought horses: he was a horse-dealer in 1911, a trainer in 1940 and a racehorse owner at his death, though organised racing at the Cape was older than he was. That he was Consul General: nothing supports it, and the consul's signature on his own passport is another man's. That he kept an ostrich farm: no land of his has been found.^lore

Nuno Fernando's daughter Cheryl Anne Lerena lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. She married first Lynn Derrick Luwinski, and then Ivan Defranceski. By this archive's rule the living are named with their relationships and their towns, and nothing more.^doc

Her marriage to Ivan Defranceski is the hinge between this archive and the Defranceski archive, whose line runs back to Gračišće in Istria. Their son David, for whom this archive was built, lives in Brisbane, Australia, and married into the Falco family of Arienzo in Campania. Three archives, from three continents of origin, meet in Brisbane.^doc

The papers have carried this family from Córdoba to Canelones, from Canelones to the Cordón, and, across a gap that nobody has yet closed, from Rosario to the Cape, the Rand and the far side of the Indian Ocean. The gap is the next thing to find.^inf