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New Mexico Prenuptial Investigations From the Archivos Históricos del Arzobispado de Durango,1760-1799
Rick Hendricks, editor John B. Colligan, compiler
Forward by Thomas J. Steele, S.J.
Rio Grande Historical Collections
New Mexico State University Library, 1996, 166pp
Published in 1996, this initial volume of DMs extracted from the Archives of the Archdiocese of Durango can be ordered through bookstores or by contacting the Rio Grande Historical Collections/New Mexico State University Library, Dept. 3475, P.O. Box 30006, Las Cruces, NM 88003-9990.
The introduction to the book has this to say:
"This volume presents the abstracts of one hundred and forty diligencias matrimoniales, or prenuptial investigations, from the microfilm collection of the Archivos Históricos del Arzobisbado de Durango at the Rio Grande at New Mexico State University. They all relate in some way to colonial New Mexico in the period 1760 through 1799 and are the earliest such records in the collection. These records complement the much larger body of New Mexico prenuptial investigations in the Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. Together with an important related collection at the Catholic Archives of Texas in Austin, dealing with the El Paso area and including a number of earlier documents, they go a long way toward filing in the gaps in the historical record that Fray Angelico Chavez lamented in the introduction to his
New Mexico Roots, Ltd.In form, content, and spirit, our extractions and presentation of the information are modeled on his pioneering work. Following Chavez, we have systematically ordered the information here rather than reproduce the variable organization of the original. Because of the much smaller mass of material at our disposal, we have frequently included considerably more of the information contained in the original prenuptial investigations than possible for Fray Angelico. This inclusiveness was also dictated by the nature of these documents. While most of the prenuptial investigations that Chavez worked with were handled by local Franciscan priests, all proceedings reproduced in this book required dispensations or permission from higher authorities, either a vicar in New Mexico, a military vicar in Chihuahua, or a bishop in Durango." (p. xv)
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