Hello everybody I am Jarrett Ross the
Geneavlogger and on today's vlog I will be
discussing the Nunes Vaz, family a
Sephardic Jewish family. Before we get
started I just want to remind everyone
to please give this video a thumbs up if
you enjoy, it really helps me out and
also be sure to click Subscribe as well
click that Bell so that you can get
notifications for more videos. I am
descended from the Nunes Vaz family
through my mother who was actually born
a Nunes Vaz and that part of my family
has always been really intriguing to me
and it actually traces back to my first
interest in genealogy which started when
I went to my cousin's Bar Mitzvah and at
that Bar Mitzvah his dad, my uncle, had
actually put out these different papers
that had shown the family being traced
back to the 17th century and that just
blew me away. I'd never even thought
about any of this! I was only nine years
old when I went to that Bar Mitzvah but
in the following years I would get into
genealogy and every once in a while I
would kind of look online for Nunes Vaz
when I was on myspace I looked up anyone
with the name Nunes Vaz. When I was on
Facebook I kind of did the same. I was
always really intrigued and just started
to research the family and when I got
really into genealogy back in 2009 the
Nunes Vaz family was really the fuel to
my fire that really got me going. Now my
own family line actually traces from
Boston to London to Amsterdam and then
back to Livorno, Italy. Before Livorno
WeÕre not quite sure where the family
came from. It's possible that the family
came from Cadiz as there are documents
for Nunes Vaz family members in
Amsterdam coming from Cadiz but being
that my family was traced back to
Livorno was very interesting because
there was another family the Nunes Vais
family which is spelled N U N E S
V A I S
So they have an i in the vaz where my
side doesn't but they come from Livorno
and trace back to right around the same
period so it's always been thought by
members on both sides that they are of
the same family, but there's just never
been proof. So when I started doing all
of my research I not only researched the
Nunes Vaz family in Amsterdam but I also
researched the Nunes Vais family in
Livorno and I soon found that there were
also families that had shown up in
Jamaica and there were families that had
shown up in Suriname. So this has broken
it down into the four main sections of
the Nunes Vaz family. There's my family
which is the Dutch family and that side
descends from Jacob Nunes Vaz who is the
son of an Abraham Nunes Vaz. For the
Italian family there are actually a
couple of different branches that aren't
known how they are connected but there's
two main branches within that one which
descends from a David Nunes Vais and
another which descends from a doctor
Abram Nunes Vais. For the Jamaican
branches there are a few different ones
but two main branches one which descends
from a Jacob Nunes Vaz and another which
descends from a Phineas Nunes Vaz who
actually married a Leah Nunes Vaz who is
the daughter of an Aron Nunes Vaz.
So there was a lot of different stuff
going on in Jamaica. For the Suriname
family they descend from an Isaac Nunes
Vaz, so basically we have six completely
separate family trees where there's no
known connection but they all share the
Nunes Vaz family name, they all trace
back to right out around the same periods,
they're all connected within the Western
Sephardi communities, and they are all
known Sephardi Jewish families. So my basic
hypothesis in researching all of this
was that they were all the same family,
we just didn't know how they were
Connected. Of course the main part of my
research really dealt with the paper
Trail, I was trying to find any sorts of
documents I could to trace the family
back further or just find little new
tidbits of information
from my research I was able to find out
a lot of really interesting things for
one in my own branch it traced back to
Jacob Nunes Vaz who was the son of
Abraham
we had his marriage record in Amsterdam
but he wasn't showing up in Amsterdam
being buried there or having any sort of
death record and the community had a lot
of records around that time so it would
have most likely been recorded and in my
research I actually found that Jacob had
died in Livorno and in the death records
from Livorno which are actually
digitized and up online thanks to
Barbara Martinelli I found Jacob had
died in Livorno while on a trip and
using a lot of the information I
received in working with Matteo Giunti
I was able to make the hypothesis that
Dr. Abram Nunes Vais from Livorno is
likely the father of Jacob Nunes Vaz who
lived in Amsterdam but died in Livorno.
Through a lot of this information I
realized it was also possible that a lot
of the families in Jamaica and possibly
even Suriname may have actually come
directly from Livorno. The only
actual record we have of any Dutch
member of the family going out to the
Caribbean is an Aaron Nunes Vaz who was
in a Despacho record and shown as
going to Suriname. The only problem is
he does not fit into the idea of the
Suriname family. It's very possible that
Aaron Nunes Vaz is the father of Leah
Nunes Vaz who married Phineas Nunes Vaz,
but when it comes to all of this paper
trail work it's a lot of hypothesizing
and very very very rare moments of
actually getting something to confirm or
disprove a hypothesis and most of the
time it's just going to push a little
bit in one direction. So one of the main
things that I wanted to focus on was DNA.
When I did my first DNA test it was
actually funded by members of my Nunes
Vaz family so I really have the Nunes
Vaz family and not only thanked me for a
lot of the interest I've had in
genealogy but also the beginnings of my
working in DNA. Eventually I also had my
mom test, my uncle
Tested, a lot of cousins tested, and at
this point I have family members on
every single database. And just in terms
of matching my mom, who is the oldest
Nunes Vaz family member in my line of
Ancestry, she is matching over 50 known
Nunes Vaz cousins from the Dutch
family tree, so this has helped in terms
of confirming all sorts of different
generations of my family; confirming my
Grandparents, confirming my
great-grandparents, my second
great-grandparents, third
great-grandparents, fourth
great-grandparents, and even technically
fifth great-grandparents although I
should note that once you're
starting to get back that far you're
looking at usually very small amounts of
shared DNA and even though you may
actually be related through that one
Line, the DNA you share may actually be
coming from somewhere else,
especially in an endogamous family such
as mine. Now this all proves the Dutch
family tree, which is awesome! I mean
that's definitely something we wanted to
doÉ but we want to figure out are these
other families elsewhere in the world
the same family and to do that we need Y
DNA. Now luckily in my research one of my
focuses has been to find my relatives.
Ever since I was little I've always had
an interest in that idea because I knew
there were so many Nunes Vaz cousins
out there. I had heard of distant cousins
but I wanted to find them all and I
started doing that when I first got on a
Geni.com because that was one of the
focuses with collaboration and there had
already been a few cousins on Geni who
had built family trees, so I was able to
quickly get in touch and it just
spiraled from there and when I started
working on the Jamaican families and the
Suriname family and the Italian family
trees I started trying to contact the
living descendants of those families as
well and I have been successful with all
of them except for the Suriname branch
and in contacting all of those cousins I
found lots of possible candidates to do
Y DNA testing. I also came across the
Avotaynu DNA project which was
focusing on finding the Y DNA
of well-researched Sephardi families and
the Nunes Vaz family was the perfect
Candidate, with six separate big branches
all across the world with all of these
families tracing back into at least the
18th century and some tracing back into
the 17th century as well as tons of
eligible candidates to do the DNA
Testing. So now the Nunes Vaz family is
also part of this even larger project
which looks to focus on an even bigger
question and they may be able to take
the research in a place that I just
won't be able to but they are also
helping me in the research that I'm
doing into the family as well and so far
we've gotten to Dutch Nunes Vaz
descendants to do the Y DNA test and
we've gotten one of the Jamaican Nunes
Vaz descendants from Jacob and one of
the Jamaican own as far as descendants
from Phineas to do the DNA test as well
and the results were conclusive that
they were all coming from the same
patrilineal line so this proves without
a doubt that the Jamaican families were
the same family from Amsterdam. Though we
don't know if they came directly from
amsterdam or if they'd come from Livorno
before or possibly somewhere else even
before that that we might not even know
About. There's a lot of possibilities! I
still need to get some of the Italian
Nunes Vais cousins to do this test as
Well. I'm in touch with a few but we
haven't gotten to be able to go through
with it yet and as I said with the
Suriname family I wasn't able to find
any eligible candidates there are living
descendants but none that are purely
patrilineal descended so we have some
that maybe we can get them to do an
autosomal test but the distance could be
so far that they're just not gonna match
anyone from the Dutch families, the
Jamaican families, or the Italian
Families. Thank you so much for checking
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