Justa Arias × Baudilia Ceara — best friends
Baudilia Rosalía Ceara Díaz** (b. 1880 Gurabo, Santiago — Miguel's maternal great-grandmother, mother of grandmother Ana Luisa Lithgow Ceara) and **Justa Arias Arias** ("Mamá Justa" — Miguel's paternal great-grandmother, mother of grandfather Anselmo Muñiz Arias "Cheche") were **best friends.
This is a remarkable cross-line family connection. Two women whose descendants would marry into each other two generations later (Annie's side ← Pezzotti Tejada ← Lithgow Ceara ← Baudilia; Nelson's side ← Muñiz Arias ← Justa) were already close in their own generation, decades before that union.
The friendship implies geographic + social proximity: both families likely moved in the same DR social circle (Cibao / La Vega region) in the early 20th century — Baudilia in La Vega via the Lithgow line, Justa via the Muñiz/Arias side. Mapping out where they overlapped chronologically and physically is an open thread.
Status: lore — confirmed family oral tradition. Not yet documented via primary records (photographs, letters, social-column mentions in Listín Diario or regional newspapers, etc.), but the relationship is attested by two living grandchildren-tier sources.
Research handle: if either family kept letters, photographs, or any correspondence from the other, those documents are the highest-yield primary evidence. Worth asking living relatives on both sides.