Beyond Origins of New Mexico Families
A website maintained by José Antonio Esquibel
Home Page ½ Current Projects ½ Bibliography
The Baca-Ortiz Family and Don Francisco Pacheco de
Córdoba y Bocanegra: Otra Vez
By José Antonio Esquibel
Erroneous information concerning the ancestry of Ana Ortiz, daughter of Francisco Pacheco, and wife of Cristóbal Baca (b.ca. 1667, Mexico City) is still being accepted by people who can trace their ancestry to this common ancestor of people with Hispano roots in New Mexico. Although corrections have been published to inform people of that the connection between Ana Ortiz and don Francisco Pacheco de Córdoba y Bocanegra is not verifiable, this avenue of research is still pursued by people and the supposed family relationship continues to be published.
In my article titled "The Jewish-converso Ancestry of Doña Beatriz de Estrada, Wife of don Francisco Vásquez de Coronado" (Nuestra Raíces , Vol. 9, No. 4, Winter 1997: 134-43, and also posted on the 'Beyond ONMF' web site at http://pages.prodigy.net/bluemountain1/beyond origins.htm), I stated quite frankly that there is no substantiated evidence to link Ana Ortiz with the family of don Francisco Pacheco de Córdoba y Bocanegra. I have received several responses asking if it can be disproved that Francisco Pacheco, father of Ana Ortiz, is not the same person as don Francisco Pacheco de Córdoba y Bocanegra. With this, we now entered into another aspect of this issue, which is a sign of reluctance to stop hoping that there is indeed some family connection with the prominent families of early New Spain. Now, there is a challenge to have proof to disprove an unsubstantiated genealogical conclusion. To satisfy this challenge, information that I presented at the 10th Annual Conference of the Genealogical Society of Hispanic America in Alamosa, Colorado (June 25-27, 1999), is provided below. Of particular note is the year of birth of don Francisco Pacheco de Córdoba y Bocanegra, b.ca. 1573. Compare this date with the approximate year of birth of one of Ana Ortiz's daughters, Isabel de Bohórquez, born circa 1586 —thirteen years after the birth of don Francisco Pacheco de Córdoba y Bocanegra!
Information to Disprove the Supposed Connection Between Ana Ortiz and don Francisco Pacheco Córdoba y Bocanegra:
A. Two other men named Francisco Pacheco who were prominent citizens of New Spain in the late 1500s were:
1) Francisco Pacheco, brother of Luis Pacheco, sons of Gonzalo Hernández de Mosquera and residents of Mexico City. (Source: Baltazar Dorantes de Carranza, Sumaria Relacion de las cosas de la Nueva Espana [originally published in the first decade of the 1600s in Mexico City], Editorial Porrúa, S.A., México, 1987: 174)
2) Capitán don Francisco Pacheco Carvajal, a resident of New Spain, still living in 1598. (Source: This man is listed as #673 in "Catologo de Pobladores de Nueva Espana," in Boletin del Archivo de la Nacion, Mexico, Tomo XII, 1941.)
B. The genealogy of the Pacheco de Córdoba y Bocanegra family and the Estrada family has been well researched in Mexico, and Ana Ortiz is not identified as a member of this family.
C. Don Francisco Pacheco de Córdoba y Bocanegra was still living in 1600 when the Baca-Ortiz family went to New Mexico. He died on March 29, 1619. Furthermore, The year of birth for don Francisco Pacheco de Córdoba y Bocanegra has been documented as 1573 (Guillermo Porras Muñoz, El gobierno de la Ciudad de México en el siglo XVI, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1982: 268-71).
If this man were married by age 20, he would have been bearing children by 1593. Instead, it is evident that Ana Ortiz was a contemporary of this man since she was already a mother of four children by 1598. Her daughter Isabel de Bohórquez gave her age as 40 in 1626, indicating she was born circa 1586, thirteen years after don Francisco Pacheco de Córdoba y Bocanegra was born.