About Your Host:
José Antonio Esquibel
CURRENT PROJECTS ½ BIBLIOGRAPHY
(Updated 7/8/05) (Updated 7/8/05)
One of the early lessons
I learned when I began to conduct my family genealogy research was the
importance of sharing information. I was fortunate to develop an extremely
valuable correspondence with a distant cousin, Amanda "Mandy" Maestas
Frieberg. Mandy had been involved in genealogical research for many years before
I began. She graciously shared a considerable amount of the information she had
collected on our common family lineages. I was able to take the information and
extend the family lines for which she had reached roadblocks. With each bit of
new information, we were able to work together and uncover plenty of additional
historical and genealogical records relating to our ancestors.
My paternal
ancestry is from New Mexico while my maternal ancestry is from the area of
Laredo, Texas and northeastern Mexico, principally the colonial provinces of
Nuevo Santander, Nuevo León, and Coahuila. Over the years I have conducted
research and written articles concerning ancestral families from these
different frontier regions.
In 1988, I began to work
on a book for my father concerning his ancestry. This project was completed in
February 1989. I had plenty of genealogical and historical data available
concerning other branches of the Esquibel family. Over the course of a couple
of months in the spring of 1991, I organized this data and produced 55 pages of
material that I titled "Esquibel Families of Eighteenth Century New
Mexico." This compilation was published in four issues of The New
Mexico Genealogist in 1992-1993.
I continued to
conduct genealogical research and organize the material for publication.
Writing articles for publication became the best avenue for me to share the
results of my research with other interested people. To date, I have
thirty-five published articles concerning the history and genealogy of Spanish
colonial families (see Bibliography ).
By far my largest
research project has been the compilation of historical and genealogical
material relating to the families recruited at Mexico City in 1693 that arrived
in Santa Fe, NM, in June 1694. I had the fortunate opportunity to begin a
correspondence with another genealogical researcher, John B. Colligan in 1992.
I had been extracting numerous baptismal and marriage records from microfilm
copies from three Mexico City churches when our correspondence began and we
discovered we had a mutual interest in the same topic. John had been compiling
the available information on the Mexico City colonists from New Mexico record
sources. We have combined our research and have written a monumental manuscript
that is titled "The Spanish
Recolonization of New Mexico: An Account of the Families Recruited at Mexico
City in 1693."
This opus of approximately 447 pages contains the most detailed historical and
genealogical account of over 50 families that traveled nine months on El Camino
Real to settle in New Mexico. Genealogical lineages have been extended from one
to five generations for the majority of these families. More information about
this work can be found below under the bibliography or by clicking on the title
given above. For the past three years, we have been trying to find a publisher.
Negotiations are currently taking place with an interested publisher. Check
these pages for updates.
John Colligan is
responsible for putting me in touch with Rick Hendricks of the Vargas Project
at the University of New Mexico. I shared some of my extractions with Rick who
asked if the material could be included in the footnotes of the third volume of
the Vargas Project, To the Royal Crown Restored: The Journals of Don Diego
de Vargas, New Mexico, 1692-1694, Kessell, hendrick and Dodge, eds.
(UNM Press: 1995). I enthusiastically confirmed the request and for my research
efforts was listed as a Research Consultant on the book. Since then, I have had
opportunities to work as a research consultant on several interesting projects
(see Research Consultation under the bibliography).
I have been fortunate to
have papers accepted for the annual New Mexico Historical Society Conferences
in 1996, 1997, and 1998, and numerous opportunities to make presentations
before various interested groups.
Two milestones for 1998
include: 1) the publication of The Royal Road: El
Camino Real from Mexico City to Santa Fe (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1998)
—Photographs by Christine Preston, text by Douglas Preston and José Antonio
Esquibel; and 2) the publication of "New Light
on the Jewish-converso Ancestry of Don Juan de Oñate: A Research Note," in the Spring 1998 (Vol.
7, No.2) issue of the Colonial Latin American Historical Review. Both
are accomplishments based on personal goals of mine.
