HOUSTON – Every Friday night on NBC's "Who do you think you are?" interesting and surprising information turns up on a person's journey into their family's past.
The journeys are navigated by researchers at Ancestry.com, a Salt Lake City company that specializes in uncovering family stories. One of those researchers recently climbed Local 2 Anchor Bill Balleza's family tree and found some startling results.
The research focused on Bill's maternal grandfather, Francisco Ibarra, who was born in Monclova Mexico in 1894. Francisco died in 1970 and the only pictures that survive his 75 years show him late in life—exactly as Bill remembers him. But what Bill knew of him back then is quite different than what he knows now.
"He had good reason to be getting out of Mexico," Ancestry.com family historian Sherry Lindsay said.
Bill knew Francisco was nearly caught up in the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and escaped it only because his mother dressed him as a girl when the revolutionary Pancho Villa came calling, looking for recruits. That much he told his children, including Bill's mother.
A U.S. Labor Department border crossing document shows Francisco crossed the border into Eagle Pass, Texas in January of 1917, more than likely still trying to escape the fighting in Mexico. However, Bill soon discovered that his grandfather's worries about combat were far from over.
"Just five months later, he filled out this document for the American military," Lindsay said.
The document was a draft card, where the then-23-year-old Francisco noted that he should not be drafted to fight in World War I because he was the sole supporter of his wife, mother and two sisters. That wife was a big surprise to Bill.
"He had a first wife," Lindsay said. "It probably was a big family secret."
The draft card was from 1917, and Francisco didn't marry Bill's grandmother, Tomasa, until 1922—five years later. But other documents found show that, indeed, Francisco was married to a woman named Rebecca who crossed into Eagle Pass three months after he did.
Bill said his mother, now deceased, and his aunts and uncles, also now mostly deceased, never talked about Francisco's first marriage, if they even know about it.
By the 1920 Census, Francisco lists himself as single. So what happened to Rebecca?
"We're not 100 percent sure what happened to her," Lindsay said. "We don't know if she decided Texas wasn't for her and went back to Mexico or if she died?"
It's a mystery that may go unsolved, a surprise leaving a blurry snapshot to Francisco's early life. Later pictures show Francisco and Tomasa and their seven children, two sons-in-law and one daughter-in-law, circa 1947. Bill's mother is pregnant with Bill.
Bill's grandmother, Tomasa died in 1960 of breast cancer at the age of 67. Francisco ended up getting married a third time at age 70 to a woman named Maria, until his death from heart disease five years later.
Now, after a trip up Bill's family tree, Francisco's story, and Bill's family history is more clear and revealed a surprise branch no one ever talked about.
