Baudilia left Federico Lithgow Alonzo for a Spanish doctor

This separation/divorce is not visible in the GEDCOM/Ancestry tree (S-004), which records only their marriage and shared children. The Spanish doctor's identity is not yet recorded in family memory; whether Baudilia formally divorced (legally difficult in DR pre-1937 — civil divorce was effectively unavailable) or simply separated is also unclear.

The five Lithgow Ceara children (Federico W b.1902, Elsie b.1905, Arturo b.1907, Enrique b.1911, Ana Luisa b.1913) were already born before any separation; the youngest, Ana Luisa Lithgow Ceara — Miguel's grandmother — was at least a small child by then.

Implications and questions:

• Where did Baudilia live after leaving Federico? Did she remain in La Vega (where she ultimately died in 1976) or move with the Spanish doctor elsewhere?
• Did the Spanish doctor practice in La Vega specifically? La Vega had a small but visible European-expatriate medical community in the early 20th c.
• Was the separation a known fact in the family at the time, or suppressed? Annie's having heard it suggests it survived family memory but may not appear in formal records.
• Federico W Lithgow Alonzo's later life — death date not recorded in S-004 — may have been affected by the separation. He could have remained in Puerto Plata, or returned there from La Vega after she left.
• Federico W Lithgow Ceara (the photographer, eldest son, b. 1902) was ~13 or older at the time of likely separation. His later mountaineering and photographic work could reflect a more mobile, less stable family context than the GEDCOM suggests.

Status: lore — single-narrator family oral tradition. Plausible and internally consistent with DR social history (early-20th-c. La Vega had European-expatriate professionals; informal separations were common in the absence of civil divorce). Primary records — Listín Diario social columns, parish records of children's confirmations + marriages naming parents, La Vega notarial protocolos for any property transactions — could corroborate.

Research handle: worth a JCE La Vega search for any later civil- record mention of Baudilia under a different surname. Also worth searching DR medical registers / colegios médicos for early-20th-c. Spanish doctors in La Vega.