Dear colleagues and co-workers on the Teves family project.
I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to seek your insights regarding a longstanding question in the genealogy of the TEVES-VILLAMIL family and its various branches. As you know, I have been researching the relationship between my great-great-grandfather, Manuel Pastor y Landero (Cádiz, 1829–Seville, 1889), https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Pastor_y_Landero , and Eugenia Teves Villamil (Dumaguete, 1827 or 1836–?), from whom two daughters were reportedly born.
Many genealogists include this relationship in their family trees, though there are discrepancies concerning the birth years and number of daughters. While studying Eugenia’s sisters, I discovered that another Spaniard from Cádiz, José Pastor (b. 1840), also emigrated to Dumaguete and married Estefania Teves Villamil, later remarrying her niece Fausta Teves Patrimonio. José Pastor’s father was Manuel Pastor Meléndez, also from Cádiz.
During my recent visit to Dumaguete, I noticed considerable confusion between Manuel Pastor y Landero and the family descending from José Pastor Meléndez. Their children were cousins, shared the same surnames (Pastor and Teves), and even lived close to each other. All my sources have stated that Eugenia Teves’s partner and the father of Carmen Leandra and Maria de la Concepción Pastor Teves was my ancestor, Manuel Pastor y Landero. However, the estimated timelines suggest that he would have had children with Eugenia at the same time as with my great-great-grandmother Fanny Mora Delauneux, or, if the daughters were born a decade earlier, Manuel would have been very young.
Recently, a source working with church archives has suggested that the father of Carmen and Concepción, and the husband of Eugenia, was Manuel Pastor Meléndez, not Pastor y Landero. If this interpretation is correct, it would mean my ancestor likely never lived in the Philippines and had no relationship or children there.
I would like to ask your opinion on this possibility. Do you have any documentary evidence (baptisms, marriages, deaths, censuses, etc.) confirming whether the Manuel Pastor who appears in Dumaguete in the mid-19th century was Manuel Pastor y Landero or Pastor Meléndez? How do you think we could continue investigating this matter?
Thank you very much for your time and any information you can share.
Best regards,
Xavier Matheu
