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Copyright ã 1998

As we come together to commemorate the history of the Catholic Church in New Mexico from 1598 to the present, it is easy to focus on the history of the clergy and the ecclesiastical institution. Let us be reminded that the very foundation of the Church in New Mexico is the people who for centuries sustained the Catholic faith. People who served as vessels of tradition and diligently cultivated the faith from one generation to the next. Who were these people? A great many are no longer remembered, their names and deeds having faded in the long passage of time. Yet, the faith that was nurtured through the colonial, Mexican, and territorial eras of New Mexico’s history endured through the transition of three governments. Although lost to memory, the names of countless numbers of Catholics of New Mexico can be found in the surviving record books of sacraments. These records are documentation of events that joined individuals to the church as members of the body of Christ and strengthened that bond over the course of each lifetime.

Sacraments are regarded as the visible signs of God’s invisible presence, signs through which faith is manifested and in which the grace of God is received and Christ is present.¹ In 1547, the Council of Trent (1545-1563) set forth the sanctioned dogma of the sacraments, formally recognizing their number to be seven: baptism, penance, confirmation, holy order, matrimony, and extreme unction, also referred to as anointing of the sick.²

Almost twenty years earlier, beginning with the founding of New Spain in 1520, clergy, soldiers, and colonists, serving the two majesties, God and king, firmly established Catholic communities as new settlements were established and populated from Mexico City northward. In the area of New Mexico, several courageous but failed attempts were made between 1530 and 1598 to bring the word of God and establish the Catholic faith among the Native American people.³

When don Juan de Oñate organized his expedition to New Mexico in 1595 clergy were present from the start. The large body of volunteer recruits —men, women and children— not only required social and military leadership, but also religious and spiritual leadership as well as the administration of the sacraments. The expedition formed a Catholic community under the guidance of Franciscan missionaries who would minister to the soldiers and colonists as well as to the people met with in New Mexico.

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In the early 1600s, Santo Domingo Pueblo was chosen as the custodial headquarters of the Franciscan missionaries in New Mexico, and thus all archival records pertaining to church activities, including matrimonial investigations and the filled books of baptisms, marriages, and burials were stored at the convent. A brief description of this custodial archive given in 1776 identified matrimonial investigation records from as early as 1619, as well as volumes of baptismal records and many more unbound sheets of burial and baptismal records from various churches.⁹ Unfortunately, when the Rio Grande flooded in 1886 an unknown amount of records were probably washed away with the old church and convent.¹⁰ Through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the ecclesiastic archival records were neglected.

In 1933, Archbishop Gerken initiated the assemblage of the archdiocesan archives at Santa Fe. Dr. Lansing B. Bloom did some early work with these documents. Col. José D. Sena who began to classify many of the different records followed him. The enormous task of cataloguing and filing the entire collection of archival records was undertaken by fray Angélico Chávez with approval of Archbishop Byrne in 1954.¹¹ The most significant decision regarding these records was the granting of permission to allow the collection to be microfilmed. This action has allowed access of these valuable documents to the general public, in particular historical and genealogical researchers, and has ensured the greater preservation of the information found in the collection.

The records of sacraments that are a part of the archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe are a lasting testament to the signs of faith of our ancestors, a faith that for many people with family roots in colonial New Mexico has been passed on for as many as sixteen generations, and for which there is documentation in sacramental records for the last three hundred years. Sacraments are esteemed as "moments when the Church becomes the Church."¹² In this respect, the books of baptisms, marriages, and burials document the continuous creation of the Church in New Mexico, the steadfast formation of the church consisting of numerous individuals.

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The availability of the sacramental records of the Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, combined with the seminal work of fray Angélico Chávez, has been instrumental in fostering an increased interest among many people with roots in New Mexico to research and document their family genealogy.¹³ Numerous lineages from the colonial era to the present have been constructed using sacramental records as primary sources. Two lineages originating in seventeenth century New Mexico and converging in the early nineteenth century are presented here as an example (see the genealogical chart on the following page). The progenitor of these two lineages was an Apache woman named Ana Velásquez, also referred to as Ana de Velasco, who most likely received her Spanish name through baptism. She appears to be the same Ana de Velasco identified as "Yndia" who had served in the household of Governor don Diego López de Mendizábal for eleven months around 1660-61 at Santa Fe.¹⁴ She then came to serve in the household of the prominent Domínguez de Mendoza family. A known son of Ana Velásquez was Captain José Domínguez de Mendoza, born circa 1666 in New Mexico and thought to be an illegitimate son of one of the Domínguez de Mendoza brothers,¹⁵ but he may have received his surname through baptism if a member of the Domínguez de Mendoza family had stood as his godparent.

In a petition presented to fray Nicolás Hurtado dated April 8, 1682 at El Real de San Lorenzo near El Paso del Norte, José Domínguez de Mendoza requested to enter into the state of matrimony according to the order of "Nuestra Santa Madre Yglesia," "Our Holy Mother Church." He identified himself as a native of New Mexico and a son of Ana Velásquez and an unknown father. According to a marriage certificate, he was married on April 19, 1682 with Juana López, a daughter of Sargento Mayor Diego López Sambrano and María de Suaso, all natives of New Mexico, originally residents of the Villa de Santa Fe.¹⁶ From this union there was born a son, Domingo Domínguez, and a daughter, María Domínguez (see genealogical chart), prior to the death of Juana López.¹⁷

A widower by 1692, José Domínguez de Mendoza, holding the military rank of Alférez, participated in the efforts of don Diego de Vargas to restore New Mexico to the Spanish crown. In this endeavor, he was reunited in October 1692 with his sister, Juana Domínguez, who had been taken captive by the Pueblo Indians during the revolt of 1680.¹⁸ In May 1697, mention was made of the "orphan children of José Dominguez, Domingo and María." They were recipients of livestock in a distribution made at Santa Fe by Governor Vargas.¹⁹ Apparently, Domínguez was away at this time, however, soon after this he entered into his second marriage with Gerónima Varela de Losada Perea, by whom he had at least one known child.²⁰ It is the lineage from this second union that will provide the example of sacramental records used to construct a genealogy from the late seventeenth century into the mid-late nineteenth century beginning with the death record of Gerónima Varela at Santa Fe:²¹

This record, dated April 11, 1727, identifies Gerónima Varela as the widow of José Domínguez. Before her death she received "all the holy sacraments," most likely referring to the sacraments of penance, Eucharist and extreme unction. This record is characteristic of the majority of burial entries. Burial records customarily began with either the date of burial or the date of death, followed by the name of the deceased. If the individual was married, the name of their spouse was recorded. The burial record of Gerónima Varela indicates her body was interred "en su capilla de Nuestra Señora" ("in her chapel of Our Lady"), a testament to her devotion to St. Mary. During the colonial period, most people were buried in the local church or in a local chapel.

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At the age of twenty-nine, Bernardo was married to Santa Fe native Apolonia Gutiérrez, herself being a descendant of José Domínguez de Mendoza and his first wife Juana López Sambrano (see genealogical chart). Apolonia was baptized at Santa Fe on April 13, 1811, and was a daughter of Antonio Gutiérrez y Alire and María Inés Solano y Valdés. As a child, her parents came to reside at El Potrero. According to her testimony given as part of the prenuptial investigation, she had known Bernardo since she was a child. At the age of 15, she was married to him at the church of Santa Cruz on January 8, 1827. Bernardo was among the first grantees of the Mora Land Grant in 1830, and relocated his family to the Mora area. From late March 1848 until October 1848, he served in the U.S. Army as a member of the Missouri Volunteers in New Mexico under the command of Lt. Col. William Gilpin.³⁰

Bernardo and Apolonia were the parents of two known children, both of whom received the sacrament of baptism at the church of Santa Cruz. Their only daughter was born at El Potrero on December 1, 1827 and baptized three days later. Her baptismal record provides an excellent example of a new standard in recording the sacrament of baptism implemented just before the beginning of Mexican Republic era in 1821. In contrast to earlier baptismal entries, the names of paternal and maternal grandparents were recorded. This became a common, although not always consistent, practice for the next four to six decades. María Viviana’s baptismal record reads:³¹

An entry such as this is an exceptional genealogical record, documenting the names of three generations spanning almost seventy years.

María Viviana Martínez was co-founder of three distinct families of the Mora Valley: Bóne, Ébel, and Metzgar.

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  The documentation of the lineage presented above provides one of countless examples of how sacramental records have preserved the genealogy of New Mexico families. In the past decade, there has been a dramatic increase of interest among people with roots in New Mexico to research their family genealogy. Often this work leads to the discovery of common ancestors shared by individuals who had no knowledge of their distant relationship. The diligent work of fray Angélico Chávez and the dedication of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe to preserve and make available its archival documents to the public has been instrumental in nurturing this interest. Today, more people than before seek to uncover and restore the names of ancestors long forgotten. By documenting our family genealogy we identify our connection to ancestors and begin to develop an understanding of how the decisions they made in life have effected our own.

Although the surviving records of baptisms, confirmation, marriage, and burial are a valuable storehouse of genealogical information, they are also records of the transmission of the Catholic faith, evidence of the continuous building of the church, generation by generation. As signs of faith, the sacraments sanctify the passage of life from birth to death. The sacraments are signs of the unity of the church, and are keystones of the expression of the Catholic faith that has endured in New Mexico for almost four hundred years.

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