The Luján Project Moves Forward

The Luján Project is utilizing social media as a medium for collectively conducting genealogical research into the early roots of the Luján family of 17th and early 18th-century New Mexico. This currently includes the Facbook page of the New Mexico Genealogical Society, the Web blog of Henrietta Martinez Christmas, and this Goodreads blog.

The findings of The Luján Project will be compiled and organized to present a well-documented, comprehensive history and geneaolgy of the Luján family of 17th and early 18th-century New Mexico.

In addition to clarifying and verifying the genealogy of the early Luján family of New Mexico, the project is also intended to instruct people in methods and sources for conducting 17th and 18th-century New Mexico genealogy. The steps that are being taken for The Luján Project can be used for researching other families.

To date, The Luján Project has extracted information on Luján people from the 1692/83 census of families willing to re-settle northern New Mexico (Kessell, Hendricks, and Dodge, "To the Royal Crown Restored, pages 33-65), also from the 1697 list of livestock distributed to settlers (Kessell, Hendricks, and Dodge, "Blood on the Boulder," pages 1138-1158), and from the records of the Vargas trial of 1697-98 (Spanish Archives of New Mexico, Series II, no. 71 (Reel 3).

If you are interested in being part of The Luján Project

Here are the instructions posted on the Facebook page of the New Mexico Genealogical Society:

Our next step requires a number of volunteers. The task is to search for Luján individuals listed in the extracted diligencias matrimoniales for the years 1679 through 1750 in the 11 volumes of “New Mexico Roots, Ltd.” This can be accomplished using the PDF versions available online. Each volume is searchable by going to the Edit menu tab of the PDF file and click on Find to pull up the search box. Simply enter the surname ‘Lujan” in the search box to locate the Lujan entries. With 4-6 volunteers, we can divide up the volumes.

The current volunteers are myself, Henrietta, Marilyn Herrera Britton, Stan Lucero, and Pauline Sanchez Montano. Anita Gómez can help beginning in the late summer/early fall, and Robert Orlando Blea submitted some lineages. Anyone else care to join in the fun?

I will take Vol. 6: Lucero to Martinez which contains the Luján section, and get this material organized. I can also search Vol. 5: Griego to Lucero and Vol. 7: Martinez to Ojeda.

Henrietta, Marilyn, Stan and Pauline: If each of you can search two volumes of New Mexico Roots, we will have this part of the project covered. Let me know if you can help at this time.

We are looking for anyone with the surname of Luján mentioned in Fray Angélico’s summaries for entries from the late 1670s to 1750 –grooms, brides, parents, deceased spouses, witnesses, sponsors, etc.— and will need to document the citation for each record that is located.

For entries of brides, parents, deceased spouses, we need the full DM summary extracted (DM entry date and number, name of groom, grooms parents, name of bride, brides parents, witnesses, sponsors (if given) and date of marriage (if given) and the page number. You can try to copy the entry from the PDF version and paste it into a Word document, but I’ve found that it doesn’t always work well.. If there is a long narrative summary, only relevant info about Luján individuals needs to be extracted.

Example—

DM 1689, Jan. (no. 5), El Paso del Norte. Pedro Madrid (20), n. of Santa Fe,
soldier of this Presidio, son of Sargento Mayor Roque de Madrid and
Juana de Arbizu y Gamboa, and Isabel Lujan (16), n. of El Rio Arriba in New Mexico, d. of Alferez Felipe Serna and Isabel Lujan. Witnesses: Francisco Gómez Robledo, 62, former Maese de Campo of the Kingdom; Don Fernando de Chaves, 44, former Capt. Of the Kingdom; Luis Martín, 60 former Capt. Of the Kingdom who knew pair both at Santa Fe and ion El Paso; Antonio Martín, 42, first cousin of the bride. Pair married, Jan. 10, 1689, with witnesses Andrés Hurtado and Josefa de Hinojos. (NMR, 1037-1038)


For Luján individuals who were witnesses, simply record the name, age, place of origin (if given), occupation (if given), and marriage status (if given), and number of years the person knew the bride or groom (if given), and any other testimony that Fray Angélico extracted.

Example:

Witness: Juan Luján, age 36, native of New Mexico, new bride for 20 years (NMR, 766, DM 1699, April 3, no. 2, Santa Fe for Diego Lucero and Ana Archuleta).

If there are any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.