I stayed up till 2am this morning. My mom and I started discussing our trip to Spain and my Grandma Emily's family history in Avila. So I tried again on the internet to find "something" about them via Avila. Well I hit the Catholic Church Bingo! I can now trace her father's family back to the 1500's and to the church built in the 1300's where they were all baptized till their move to the US in the 1900's is still standing. In the Fall, I will be standing on the land they are from and in that church. It's amazing and unreal to me. I love the show "Who Do You Think You Are." We watch it every Friday night and I sometimes close my eyes and dream of us having the experience those celebs do. I realize we do not have a team doing the research but this was small step in making this a reality. I cannot wait to get on the plane. It's hard to explain why it's so important to my mom and I but it is. I need that connection. I want to understand my history. We discovered that my Grandma Emily was correct when she'd tell my mom in her later years that her father used to always tell her we are from Avila, Santa Maria, Madrigal de las Altas Torres. That is exactly what is on the church records.
Madrigal de las Altas Torres -
Church where my ancestors were baptized -
http://www.aytomadrigaldelasaltastorres.com/turismo/visitar?id=3
CHURCH OF SAN NICOLAS DE BARI
In the main square of Madrigal de las Altas Torres, a beautiful front porch, is the parish church of St. Nicholas of Bari. This is a cross-shaped church in America, of different styles, whose beginnings date from the twelfth century with a number of reforms during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which was declared a National Monument in 1931. If something is known is primarily to conserve baptismal font where she was baptized Queen Isabella of Castile and for being the place where John II celebrated his second marriage to Isabella of Portugal. The uniqueness of St. Nicholas on the one hand lies in its splendid tower, the highest in the province, at to foot, and at its head formed by two apses very unequal, but also by the armor of the nave and Moorish remains of what was a choir stalls. In the nave, separated from the others by four pairs of pillars with pointed arches of triple archivolt we find the rococo altar-neoclassical late eighteenth century pattern images and reliefs with scenes from his life. At left is the alabaster tomb of marriage Castañeda, a work attributed to Basque Bush that was broken during the French invasion. And on the right, the alabaster tomb of Gonzalo Giral dated XVI century, on which stands an alabaster altarpiece with the image of St. John the Baptist in the center. Stresses the armor that covers the central nave: a Mudejar roof with Renaissance ornament which was built in the fourteenth century. The gilded and painted dome skylight has a star in the center. During the sixteenth century, undertook a complete remodeling of the church. Various chapels were added, including most notably the so-called Golden Chapel, rectangular cover with a stellar vault, endowed by Pedro de Ribera.Another chapel is founded by Francisco Ruiz de Medina, commander of Quiroga. In the chapel of Ruiz de Medina, there was a small altarpiece attributed to Alonso de Berruguete school which has been preserved only an image of San Juan Baptist. In 1977 appeared under some walnut boards Baroque period, who were ready as a backup in the choir stalls, others were painted with Gothic cardinas and skylights could be contracted to Mudejar. The stalls should be composed of 24 seats, 20 are preserved complete, the two ends with his overalls, and was hidden under a baroque choir came from the former Augustinian convent and had to move to this church in the nineteenth century.
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