Sometime in 1868, Nicholas Carreras left his home city of Girona to sail for the Caribbean. The Redhead, as he was called, to our knowledge, never returned; he died young of tuberculosis, leaving a young wife (also from a Catalan family) and a young son, my grandfather.
The Redhead planted our branch of the Carreras family in the New World. Where do I want to go? To our family’s root city, Girona. I’ve been told that Carreras are common there and that I’d just be one of the brood, if a long-lost one.
Just so you know, in my immediate family, all of us males are Nicholas – middle or first name. The joke is that if we went to Girona, and someone hollered out for Nicholas Carreras, we’d all start looking around.
There is a current family discussion about a visit to Catalonia, and the rest of Spain next year. It will be interesting.
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I think the Ncholas thing is an old Catholic tradition. There were five generations of Elizabeths, Johns, and Josephs in my ex-husbands family and they were German.
That would be very cool. I have visited one of my ancestral homelands several times — most of them without knowing about the family connection. I discovered it in a restaurant in Appenzell, Switzerland where I ate my grandmother’s macaroni and cheese — recipe, she didn’t actually make it 😉
I hope you make it, and find a cousin there. It would feel so good to find family – even if distant. <3
It would be fun just to be there.
I hope you meet a wonderful person named Nicolas Carreras and become great friends when you go.