Orrantia ended up reuniting his grandmother with a brother she never knew existed in Delicias, Mexico. He learned that his mom's relatives were Toltec Indians from the Monte Alban ruins area near Oaxaca. And he found out that his 10th great-grandfather on his dad's side was in the Spanish army and his surname comes from the name of a town in Spanish.
Orrantia, who moved from Mexico to Utah 10 years ago, said the thousands of hours of going through paperwork, microfilms and the Internet was worth every minute.
"Everyone hits a wall here and there, but ... you'll do it to know where you came from," he said.
This weekend, Orrantia will be teaching classes about how to navigate resources to help people find their family histories during the 10th annual Hispanic Family History Conference.
The two-day event is free and open to the public at the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Family History Library. No pre-registration is required and the some 25 classes in English and Spanish are on a come-first, first-served basis.
The purpose for the conference - which is open to LDS and non-LDS alike - is to get Latinos started in researching their genealogy, said library spokeswoman Karen Jepson. In recognition of Hispanic Heritage Month, she said the event was started 10 years ago in Provo but was later moved to Salt Lake City to draw more of the growing Latino community along the Wasatch Front. Last year, some 250 people attended the conference.
Organizers said more and more records from Mexico and Spain are becoming more readily available, and they hope to teach folks how to use them. Some of the class topics include how to use online resources and how to investigate parish and civil records in Mexico, Spain and Latin America.
Orrantia, a 36-year-old businessman, hopes he can get more Latinos to investigate their past and not to give up when it gets difficult.
After finding a box with his great-grandparents passports and birth certificates as a teenager, Orrantia started researching his genealogy at the LDS family resource center in Juarez, Mexico, but he wasn't able to find much.
Then he started again in 2001 at the family library in Salt Lake City.
With all the connections he made, he organized a family reunion two years ago at a gym in Delicias, Mexico. Some 6,000 people, from newborns to grandparents, attended the event.
Eventually, Orrantia said he and his wife, Veronica, want to compile their research into a book for their 12-year-old daughter, Andrea, and future generations.
They still work on their family trees at least once a month.
"Most of it is [out of] love for your family," he said.
