Edgar L. Peguero y Heredia

Edgar L. Peguero y Heredia was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1969 to immigrant parents from Baní, Dominican Republic. He is an amateur genealogist and historian who offers lectures at local schools in the Boston area, where he lives, on the illustrious Heredia family, which has included a number of writers, scientists, and politicians.

Peguero y Heredia is a descendant of Manuel de Regla Mota y Álvarez, former president of the Dominican Republic, and of the Dominican-born Cuban writer Nicolás Heredia y Mota, who was Peguero y Heredia’s great-granduncle. Other notable members of the Heredia family include José María Heredia y Heredia, regarded as the first poet of American Romanticism; José María Heredia y Girard, who was elected to the Académie française in 1894; Severiano de Heredia, a naturalized French citizen born in Cuba, who became the first Black mayor of Paris; the French novelist and poet Marie de Heredia Regnier; and French neurophysiologist Marcelle de Heredia Lapicque, who earned the Légion d’Honneur for her research on nerve impulses and the effects of poisons. The Heredias intermarried with Christopher Columbus’s family, with the aristocratic House of Ponce de León, and with the Campuzano-Polanco family, who were prominent in the colony of Santo Domingo. 

Peguero y Heredia, who has worked in information technology and real estate, is currently compiling an anthology that will highlight his favorite works from his vast family of writers.