Combing New Mexico History Books To Glean Genoligical Information.

It is always rewarding and interesting. Hardly any book that does not have at least a name or two that fit into my "tree", or database of relatives, distant and close, whatever the case. Our database now contains names approaching 17,000. Very, very interesting stuff.

New Mexico was as close to a closed society 1598 - 1810 as it gets. It was very isolated, not only from the capitol of Mexico City, but from the rest of the world. It opened up a bit between 1810 - 1846 when it became a province/state of the new nation of Mexico. Then the Americans invaded the area and annexed it to the United States. After that it took no time at all before New Mexico Hispanics along with the Native American groups were a minority in their own country.

The history written by historians who did not know the culture or hated the  Hispanos and their culture or the Catholic Church can be horribly distorted. These "historians" were in the majority so it behooves folks reading that history to look at it carefully.

But New Mexicans, especially the civil authorities and the churches and their priests kept excellent notes and documented what was going on. And now that people are taking time to translate the documents from Spanish to English a different picture is emerging. A clearer picture, a more honest dissertation.