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LESSON 1 OF 8

Lesson 1: Lesson 1 · Begin with the people

Bnei Anusim concerns descendants of people forced to convert. Iberian records also use categories such as converso and New Christian. These terms overlap in some settings but do not describe every person's life in the same way. A baptism record may tell us a conversion happened. It may not tell us whether it was free, forced or inwardly accepted.

Begin with the known members of your family. Record names, dates and places. Keep family stories because they can preserve useful leads, but mark them as stories until records connect them with events. Your dignity does not depend on a website assigning you an ancestry label. H06

Consider this

Which family fact can you connect to an actual document?

Check your understanding

Does a surname alone establish descent from conversos?

Your learning progress

Completing this lesson means you studied it, not that you accepted a particular interpretation.

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