9/24 Program is Ceasar Castro on Mexican-American War - Part 2

WEDNESDAY, September 24 th PROGRAM MEETING

from 12 noon to 2 p.m.

At Chula Vista Civic Center Branch Library Auditorium

Ceasar Castro – “California and the Mexican-American War

from a Genealogical Point of View– Part 2”

Ceasar Castro is a local boy. He graduated from Hilltop High School and San Diego State with a degree in Electrical Engineering.  He worked at the Navy R&D Laboratory on Point Loma for 36 years before retiring.

Ceasar started working on his genealogy in 2008 when his sister, who had started earlier, asked him for help. However, slowly he took over the research. He joined the San Diego Genealogy Society and the Chula Vista Genealogy Society to learn more about genealogy. All of his ancestors come from Baja California. In researching his Castro ancestors, he discovered that two of his great-grandaunts married Irishmen in Baja. This puzzled him - how did the Irishmen end up in Baja around 1850? This started him delving into the history of Baja and resulted in his research on the Mexican-American War.

When historians write about history, they are interested in who made decisions and the result of those decisions. If an army is involved, they may give the names of some of the officers but not of the common soldiers. They usually only give the number of soldiers. But we are  genealogists; we seek the names of all the soldiers. That is because we are usually looking for a particular person(s). This presentation on the Mexican-American War is from that perspective; what were the names of all the people involved in the Mexican-American War in California.

This presentation is a continuation from the February 2014 presentation.