Jacinta Modesta Trascasas Marzo

In the span of twelve days I have met and lost Jacinta from our family.  Meticulously deciphering the birth document, we learned she was born February 25, 1884 to Manuel Trascasas and Manuela Marzo in the village of Toro, Spain.  We learned that both sets of grandparents were also from Toro and she joined a big sister, Eustoquia Rita Trascasas Marzo, who was three and a half years old at the time of Jacinta's birth.

Adding another family member was very exciting and learning from the documents --- the streets where the Trascasas family and their parents lived  --- and finding those streets on the Toro plano (street map) made it so real that I was hard pressed to wonder if I had walked by their home while in Toro last month without realizing it?!

As we progressed through the birth document, we were sad to learn this little sister to our great grandmother died on August 8, 1891.  She was six and a half years old.  I felt such sadness to learn of their loss as I, too, lost a child and my brain went into overdrive, wondering at similarities.

Jacinta was born February 25.
My Christina died February 25.
When Chrissy was born with the dreaded disease, Cystic Fibrosis, I was asked if this disease had touched anyone else in our family?  To our knowledge, the answer was 'no'.  Both parents must carry the recessive gene for a child to contract this disease so the doctors assured me it must be in my family somewhere or it started with me?  Could Jacinta have died from this disease?  I'm stretching here, I realize that, but I always keep looking for the CF 'beginning.'   Although this question won't get answered through Jacinta, I will still wonder...

AND I am not ready to lose Jacinta completely!  So I will weave her into my story, Manuela's Footsteps, to honor her existence.  Despite losing her as quickly as I found her,  I am so thankful to learn where they lived, so thankful I walked the same streets that little girl played with her sister and perhaps ran to hug her grandparents.  I felt her parents delight in her birth and grieved with their loss in her death.  I smiled as my finger followed the street map to see where the families lived and smiled again when I imagined I may have walked near their homes in Toro.  Jacinta Modesta.  And I believe with the loss of this child, her sister, eleven-year old Eustoquia Rita, grieved for her little sister and probably helped her mother cope as my children did for me...   So much information, so many feelings, so much excitement and such sadness --- all in the words on one Spanish document.