A research tool for Sephardic genealogy
Most people looking for Sephardic ancestry will never find a document.
That is not a failure of your research. The records were destroyed on purpose, five centuries ago, by people who intended exactly this result. This site tells you what the surviving evidence can and cannot support — and hands you a testable next step either way.
- 3,246
- Catalogued pages
- 476
- Archival units
- 9
- Archives
- 1476–1836
- Years covered
Paths through the archive
Begin with a name, an archive, or a method.
Names & variations
Search the register by surname, across Spanish, Portuguese and French archives. A hit is a lead, not a verdict — and the page says which.
ArchivesRegisters & holdings
Browse by archive: Inquisition trials at the Torre do Tombo, Chancillería ejecutorias, the Bordeaux Jewish registers, the 1784 Alsace census.
MethodHow to research
The order of operations: civil registration, parish registers, notarial records, Inquisition files — and only then a DNA test, aimed at a real question.
A documented descent
The Arias Dávila family
Converso descent that is documented rather than inferred — and documented only because the family was prosecuted. The ones who blended in left no trial record at all.
Read their story →From the blog
All posts →"My haplogroup has no Jewish matches, so I'm not Jewish" — why that's wrong
Two men murdered in the 1348 massacre of Tàrrega's Jews carry Y-lines with no modern Jewish matches. An empty match list is not a negative result.
There is no Jewish haplogroup — but there are Jewish branches
'Is J a Jewish haplogroup?' is the wrong question. The right one is which SNP — and how recently your branch meets a Jewish one.
Why your "Sephardic %" is probably wrong
Consumer tests detect Ashkenazi ancestry very well and Sephardic ancestry badly. Below about 2%, the number is noise.