CALENDAR OF PAST EVENTS

Our group met to celebrate Christmas and the holiday season. Rather than a typical meeting, everyone gathered for a holiday social, and year end event.

Elections were held at our November meeting, and nominating committee chairperson Carol Fernandez gave her report which outlined the slate of candidates for open positions. The candidates were all unopposed, and there were no nominations from the floor, so the nominees were then installed to their offices. They are as follows.

President - Chad J. LeBlanc; Secretary - Rose Marie Powell; Board Members - Taylor Fernandez, Alisa Janney, and Rogers Serpas.

Our speaker was Senor Antonio Matarredona, the new coordinator of the teachers exchange program in Louisiana. He was excited to learn of our group's existence, and looks forward to working together with us to help promote our Spanish ancestry and culture.

Our society held a celebration to commemorate our tenth year of existence. Click the banner below to see pictures from the event.

We met to discuss plans for our 10th anniversary celebration in October, and President Catherine Prokop spoke to group telling stories of her childhood, growing up on a sugarcane plantation.

Alisa Ramirez Janney and Chad LeBlanc presented a program on various methods of obtaining information for genealogy research and how best to organize that information. Alisa demonstrated charts that she had prepared and old photographs which she collected. Chad showed the program that he uses on his computer to organize his genealogy information and websites that he uses to do research and find information. It was very informative.

JULY 8, 2006 - 1:00 P.M.

LOUISIANA STATE ARCHIVES BUILDING, ESSEN LANE

BATON ROUGE, LA

Our speaker was Mr. Brandon Abadie, a supervisor in the East Baton Rouge Parish Clerk of Courts office Archives Dept. He discussed ways to access information about our ancestors whose legal documents have been on record for the past 200 years. He explained how the records are now in the process of being put onto the internet and also spoke about how the records are housed and what steps are taken to ensure that they are protected in the event of a natural disaster.

Our speaker was Mr. John Marchand, a native and resident of Donaldsonville. He spoke on the history of Donaldsonville, one of South Louisiana's most important sites, specifically on how it played a major part in the lives of our Canary Islander ancestors whose names appear in the sacramental records of the Ascension of Our Lord Catholic Church as well as in the civil records of Ascension Parish. The Canarian settlement of Valenzuela was located just a few miles south of Donaldsonville, on Bayou Lafourche. The close proximity of Valenzuela to Donaldsonville allowed our people access to the Mississippi River when they were no longer supported by the Spanish government. It was a very informative presentation.

Our meeting was held in the main exhibition building at Rural Life where Mr. David Floyd, Director of the Rural Life Museum and Mr. Will Mangham, Marketing Director presented the history and current status of the entire museum and the working plantation on which the many buildings stand.

A tour of the grounds followed. Owned by LSU, Rural Life houses a collection of artifacts which have been collected over many years from the agricultural days in Louisiana and is a jewel in our midst and a permanent reminder of the bravery and persistence of our ancestors.

Our meeting consisted of several short programs. Mr. Bill Hyland, representing Jr. Rodriguez, President of St. Bernard Parish, thanked us for our support during the Fiesta. Carol Fernandez brought us some general information about understanding grants. We received a wonderful folio of fabric samples of period dress with information about each of them from a friend in Tenerife. Several members demonstrated how easily a simple costume can be assembled.

This year's Fiesta was held on grounds behind the St. Bernard Parish Government Complex in Chalmette. Folkloric dance and music troop Los Artesanos, from Ingenio, Gran Canaria performed.

Our speaker was Mr. John C. Sykes III, the reference librarian for the Baton Rouge Advocate newspaper. Mr. Sykes is working on a book of the history and architecture of Spanish Town. At our meeting, Mr. Sykes discussed his on-going research of Baton Rouge's oldest neighborhood, Spanish Town, with special emphasis on the Canary Islander residents. His presentation was quite interesting.

Our speaker was Vice-President John Hickey, who spoke about his recently completed studies on Spanish Army detachments in the Mississippi Valley. His presentation was quite insightful, and included an outline of what the detachments consisted of, as well as where they were located in the Louisiana territory. Also, our two new board members, Alisa R. Janney and Janelle Hickey were sworn in.

Parliamentarian Dennis Bergeron swears in new board members Alisa Janney and Janelle Hickey.

Our speaker was Mr. William deMarginy Hyland, Historian of St. Bernard Parish, and an Honorary Member of the Canary Islander Heritage Society of Louisiana. Mr. Hyland spoke about current conditions in St. Bernard since the hurricanes, and showed photographs outlining the devastation..