Origins of New Mexico Families: A Genealogy of the Spanish Colonial Period

by Angélico Chávez

Fray Angélico Chávez was an American Franciscan priest, historian, researcher, author, poet, and painter. As archivist for the Santa Fe Archdiocese, he undertook the cataloguing and translating of Spanish archives that allowed for a reevaluation of the history of New Mexico. His contributions to New Mexico history and literature earned him honorary degrees including Master of Arts and Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of New Mexico and New Mexico State University. Chavez’ definitive work Origins of New Mexico A Genealogy of the Spanish Colonial Period was originally published in 1954 and a revised and expanded edition was issued in 1992 by the Museum of New Mexico Press and has been continually in print since. Origins of New Mexico Families is the starting place for Nueveomexicanos exploring their ancestry and for anyone interested in New Mexico history during the 17th and 18th centuries.   

“The full stories behind each name and note, too lengthy to include here, have furnished me with a knowledge of Spanish [colonial] times that I could not have been acquired in any other way…. [The] compilation will also prove useful to others…working in any field of research having to do with the first two centuries of New Mexico’s existence as a Spanish colony…New Mexicans interested in their remote forebears will find it intriguing as well as revealing— Fray Angélico Chávez, from the Introduction

Genres: History

442 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1992

About the author

Fray Angélico Chávez (1910-1996) was an American Franciscan Priest, historian, author, poet and painter. Born the first of 10 children he attended public schools in Mora. At the age of 14, Chávez was admitted to St. Francis Seminary in Ohio.

While at the seminary, Chávez endeavored to improve his English (his second language) through a study of the classic literature of the language. He began writing fiction, essays, and other works at this time, several of which were published in the Brown and White, the student magazine he later edited.

In 1929, he officially became a novice and received the order's habit. Due to his promise as a visual artist, was given the religious name Frater Angélico after the Florentine painter Fra Angelico. He continued his studies in Detroit, graduating in 1933. He studied for four more years before being ordained at Saint Francis Cathedral in Santa Fe, the first native New Mexican Franciscan.

He was assigned to the parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Peña Blanca and its missions in Jémez Pueblo and Los Cerrillos.

After a career in the military during WWII and through the Korean War, Chávez was appointed archivist of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and undertook the cataloguing and translation of its Spanish archives. This work provided new primary sources that allowed for a reevaluation of the history of New Mexico. He wrote the definitive work on the families of New Mexico, as well as many other works of history, some of which is considered revisionist.

He also wrote poetry, short stories and novels, including his 1974 book “My Penitente Land: Reflections on Spanish New Mexico.” Since his fictional works center on the history and culture of the Hispanic people of New Mexico, he is sometimes regarded as "the father of Chicano literature".

Reviews

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I give this book five stars, not because it was mind blowing, but because it is probably the only book of its kind we will get detailing all possible families from the colonial period. It is a very useful resource for people looking into their family history, though you should be armed with maiden surnames as well as the paternal family names you're more likely to know. This book has also been used as a resource for other terrific histories, such as Stanley Hordes' "To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico". This book does mention a few families that may have been crypto-Jews, but is primarily concerned with hard facts rather than conjecture. However, after reading Stanley Hordes' book, I re-read this book and marked all of the families who were possibly Jewish, for my own edification.

If you have origins in this part of the country, you will likely have spent time in the cemeteries of northern New Mexico (or Southern CO in my case), so flipping through these pages may give you a sense of nostalgia when you see all the names from the headstones and get a chance to read a bit about them. However, the author does have several constraints. He often has to rely on lists of military personnel, which gives him only adult men's names (though he can often cross-reference names with church records or an occasional census). This often creates the problem of names suddenly appearing for the first time around the age of nineteen. There is also a gap in information between the time of the Pubelo Revolt (1680) and the Reconquest in 1692, when the colonial families fled back to El Paso. Some were part of the Reconquest, some stayed in El Paso, some migrated south, and it is sometimes an educated guess as to whose family line continued in the north.

If you think you'll be interested in this book, you probably will. I can't say that I pull it off the shelf even once a year, but it is well worth having around, now that the old people and most of my ties to that land are gone.

[Kimber · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must have once you have traced your New Mexico family back far enough.

[David Martinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great resource for me while i was building my family tree. Fray Chavez has researched New Mexico genealogy extensively for this book.

[Nicole Sanchez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent info about the original Spanish families in New Mexico.

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indispensable. I’m very thankful for Fray Chavez’s work.