A website maintained by José Antonio Esquibel

I met briefly with members of the HGRC Board, and on behalf of Jaohn Colligan and myself, I extended our appreciation to the Board for their willingness to publish SRNM. To date, 250 books have been sold. We are hoping to sell an additional 250 over the next six months. A book review is forthcoming in the Albuquerque Journal and this will in conjunction with a book signing to possibly be held at the Albuquerque Museum.

Currently, the books are available by mail through HGRC. They can also be purchased from myself in Santa Fe, or at the Museum of New Mexico Bookstore on the Santa Fe Plaza.

Pedro Ribera Ortega, a Santa Fe historian, recently conducted a presentation about his recent contact with people from the town of Los Palacias, Spain, the birthplace of Captain Juan Páez Hurtado. Don Pedro invited me to bring some copies of SRNM to sell to interested participants. The city officials of Los Palacios have been invited to Santa Fe and are schedule to come during the next Santa Fe Fiestas.

A book signing for SRNM was sponsored by the NM State Records Center and Archives from 10:00am -12:00noon. This book singing was held in conjunction with the monthly meeting of the Northern New Mexico Genealogical Group. An article in The Santa Fe New Mexican concerning the book helped to draw a large crowd of people for the book signing. More than 50 attended.

Over 1000 copies of the book arrived in Albuquerque at the end of November. I made the trip from Santa Fe to Albuquerque to sign the copies of the pre-publication orders (over 100). The response has been very favorable from people who have ordered the book. A few typos still made their way into print, but Jack and I think that our readers will forgive those in exchange for all the new genealogical and historical information that is packed into the 447 pages of the book. I will be signing books at the December meeting of the HGRC in Albuquerque. In addition, the New Mexico Records Center and Archives (2501 Camino Carlos Rey, near Cerrilos Rd in Santa Fe) is sponsoring a book signing on December 11^th from 10:00am - 12:00pm. If you are a member of any genealogical society, feel free to come by and do some research at the Records Center and Archives which will be open from 10:00am - 2:00pm.

The final copy of the formatted text was sent to the printer, Thomas Shore Publishing Company (Wisconsin), on September 13^th. Ron Miera received the digital blueline pages on September 27^th, and he and I met the evening of Thursday, September 28^th to review the blueline pages. The text looks great! There were no problems with the blueline pages. The pages were sent by express mail back to Wisconsin on September 29^th. According to the printer, the books will be delivered to HGRC on October 20^th.

A total of 1,100 books are being printed. To date about 80 orders have been placed. There have been requests by people placing orders to have the books signed. At this time, I live in Santa Fe and can get to Albuquerque easily soon after the books are received by HGRC. John lives in California and may not be able to get into town to sign books in advance. We will see what we can do.

I am optimistic that the book will be a valuable reference for colonial New Mexico genealogical research for many years to come.

Beside extending the genealogy of many of Mexico City colonists further back, the book also extends the family genealogies into the early 1800s and provides some of the most comprehensive histories of these families to date. Also, there are a couple of significant breakthroughs. In particular, the book contains information extracted form records of passage to the New World for the Moya and Góngora families. These represent the first of such records to be uncovered for any New Mexico family!

I have to say that August was a long month. Quite a bit of time went by without any word from Laura Gutman on the final changes and additions to the SRNM manuscript. Ron Mierra and I had really hoped to get the manuscript to the printer by mid-August, or September 1^st at the latest. I received a call from Ron on August 30^th informing me that the manuscript was ready for one last review. It is really something to know we are so close to the publication of the final product. I'm certain that people with roots in colonial New Mexico will find the book to be a valuable genealogical research tool and an excellent history book about the remarkable group of 'city slickers' that left Mexico City to become pioneering frontier people.

Ron and I met this evening to review the final manuscript. It is 444 pages in length. Some corrections need to be made on the table of contents for Part I and three illustrative tables need to be added. Hopefully, these changes will be made soon and we can send the manuscript to Thomas Shore Publishing Company in Wisconsin by September 10^th.

I realized that I had not seen the formatted version of the Appendix. Some minor editing changes were necessary. The appendix is an excellent research tool. It is an alphabetical compilation of the Spanish transcriptions of all known muster rolls of the Velasco-Farfán expedition by John Colligan. When I first saw this compilation I was impressed. A careful examination of the information even lead me to be able to date a previously undated muster roll (the one for July 1693). In addition, the surname index is now complete and has been delivered to Ron Miera. Laura Gutman will work on corrections to the appendix material and formatting the surname index. We hope to have all the changes completed by mid-August. We will be about two weeks behind are latest schedule.

The past five months have seen three editing cycles of SRNM. I have been traveling back and forth between Santa Fe and Albuquerque several times each month picking up and delivering pages of the manuscript. Currently, I'm working on the index for the book. We decided to go with a surname only index. An every name index would have been too long (the majority of the manuscript consists of genealogical material with page after page of names of people). We are planning to have the manuscript to the printer in Wisconsin by early August so that the book is available by mid-September.

I spent quite a bit of time this past week editing the newly formatted text for SRNM. There were some large sections of material that did not get printed out with the version Ron and I were editing. Also, I really worked to help make the text flow well and made some changes to help the eye follow the text better. My daughter and I drove from Sante Fe to Albuquerque to deliver the edited text to Ron Miera. My daughter had a good dinner before heading to Ron's place. Once Laura Gutman makes the current changes in the text, it looks like we may need to do at least two more edits. Once this is accomplished, John and I will work on an index. We are in agreement to put this process on a fast track. It is our plan to have the book published by June 1999!

I met with Ron Miera, President of HGRC, at the Special Collection/genealogy Library today. He had copies of the formatted text for SRNM completed by Laura Gutman. Luara offered a couple a variations in the formatting for us to decide on for the final product. At this time, it looks very good that SRNM will be one large volume. Volume I will become Part I and will be formatted in two columns per page. Volume II will become Part II and the historical narrative will appear in two columns per page, and the genealogies will appear on full pages (no columns). I will spend time over the next week editing the text, and plan to return the manuscript to Ron next Saturday (February 20^th).

This evening, I delivered the bibliography and the last three sections of the book that I have been editing to Laura Gutman who will complete the formatting of the text for publication. It feels great to have all the material submitted, and I look forward to seeing the formatted text soon. Hopefully, Laura can provide us with a draft of the text. We need to determine if the book will be one large volume, or two volumes. Things will begin to move quickly once we see the text and make a decision in this regard. The text will be proof read by three to four people. We hope to have the edited text to the publisher in Wisconsin by mid-March. The publisher will prepare page proofs of the text. These proofs will be sent to us for review of thoroughness and ensure there have been no accidental emissions nor blatant errors have occurred. The page proofs will be sent back to the publisher and the book will be produced. The final product will be in paperback format. If all goes smoothly, we should see the book available by June 1999! Stayed tuned for more frequent updates in February and March.

I delivered additional material from Volume II to Laura Gutman in Albuquerque. There are only two sections left before she has all the material of the book. In the meantime she has continued to format the material. We are still looking at getting all the material into one large volume. The last remaining sections (Sandoval Martínez and Valdés), to be delivered to Laura by January 9^th, were written years ago, but in the interim they were never entered into a computer. Once the entire book is formatted, we will set ourselves to the task of proof reading the whole manuscript and working on an index. After this task, the book will be sent to the printers who will produce the page proofs. Once again we will have the opportunity to proof read the text before the final version is published.

Today I delivered additional material (disk and hardcopy) from Volume II to Laura Gutman in Albuquerque. Laura is formatting the text of SRNM in preparation for publication. It was a pleasure to meet her in person. Laura is a faculty member of the University of New Mexico's Division of Continuing Education and Community Services, and is the Computer Program's Macintosh Lab technician. She has a doctorate degree from St. Andrew's University in Scotland. She is also a freelance graphic artist, writer and publisher (having written, illustrated and published two children's books). I'm extremely pleased to have someone of Laura's caliber working to format SRNM, and look forward to seeing her work on the book.