PreviousA single photograph prompted my online family search
What first stirred my imagination was a single photograph.
It was a captivating image in black and white, but just one of many my brother had found in an old family photo album. He decided to digitize it, then put it in a frame and gave it to me as a birthday gift. This photograph sat in my dining room for years, and I noticed it often.
In the photo was my grandfather, René de Zaldo, standing by an old Indian motorcycle.
You can see René surrounded by a small group of bystanders and fitted in the race gear of motorcycling’s early days — circa 1915.
I knew little about the photograph, and I had so many questions
The image itself gave few clues to help understand it. And nothing was written on the back of the print. So, just imagine the questions I had.
What was the story of that scene?
How did René De Zaldo get started with motorcycles?
And was it really a race? Did he win?
Who could I ask to learn more about my grandfather René?
I tried asking my mother about that photograph of her father, René De Zaldo y Parra.
But by the time I really wanted to know more about my grandfather, my mother could hardly answer where René was born.
I assumed he was born in Cuba. However, she would often say her father was born in Mexico City, but occasionally would think it was in San Antonio, Texas.
Where, then, was that photograph taken? Was it in Cuba? Mexico? Or somewhere in the US?
There were few other people in my family I could ask to get a reliable answer.
And I could not have asked my grandfather myself. I had only known him for about a year when I was six years old and circumstances had brought us together in Lisbon, Portugal. He passed away in Lisbon a few years later, and I never saw him again.
There were no photographs of my grandparents or other relatives around the house when I was growing up, and we rarely saw family.
So after several years of noticing my grandfather looking out to me from that framed and compelling photograph I just had to find some answers. That image of him and his Indian motorcycle kept calling to me…
It was 2011 I decided to simply google “René De Zaldo”.
It took me a while to finally find the full story behind the intriguing photo of René and his 1915 Indian. The story is amazing, and so was my adventure of putting it all together.
Along the way, however, my Google searches online continually uncovered more extraordinary stories than I ever could have imagined – about René, and about other near relatives I had never even heard of.
I think I’ve been very lucky.
How many more hidden gems of family information will I be able to find?
Finding lost family stories because I could just “Google it”
When I started my Google research, I wasn’t really expecting to find much. Maybe I would learn some simple dates of major life events – like birth, marriage, or death.
As it turned out, I have discovered wonderful tales about my close and more distant family, with adventures occurring in world locations I did not consider.
And I’m finding these specific events and pieces of stories documented in books, magazines, letters, and official records that were published across centuries and continents.
What made possible my thrilling, and relatively easy, success in family history research?
It’s all thanks to the advent, and continuing process, of digitization. We can now simply “Google” keywords and find related digitized copies of printed information and images online.
The DeZaldo y Moré family – so much more than I expected
I had sensed that the De Zaldo y Moré stories (my mother’s side of my family) would be fascinating. And it’s true — with René and the De Zaldo side of the family traveling often across the Atlantic, and the Moré family side well-established in Cuba for centuries.
How would I have ever discovered it all before?
Now, here I am finding details, or new clues, about René’s motorcycle and so much more, just sitting at my laptop or searching from anywhere on my phone.
What more will I discover today?