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Locating Colonial Records of Genealogical Value
This article originally appeared in "Colonial Spanish Borderland Research" by George R. Ryskamp, JD, AG in The Source: A Guidebook to American Genealogy
Describing the location of all of the varied materials available for the Spanish and French colonial periods with an accompanying bibliography of guidebooks, inventories, indexes, and published transcripts is far beyond the scope of this chapter. Rather, descriptions of the archives, libraries, and microfilm collections where a majority of those records may be found, as well as useful Internet sites, appear in this section, followed by specific descriptions of local civil records, census records, and Catholic Church parish records on a state-by-state basis.
Archives in Spain
The archives of Spain are rich in material about the colonial period in the United States. That treasure house has been mined for decades, and excellent guides, indexes, and inventories have been prepared, some to collections in the archives generally, others aimed specifically at the Americas and even at particular regions in the United States. Description of these archives and their collections, including virtual visits, can be found at http://www.cultura.mecd.es/archivos/; computerized access to these collections is available at http://www.aer.es. The following three are the most important, both in quality and quantity of their collections relating to the U.S. Spanish colonial period, but literally hundreds of other libraries and archives in Spain have collections with materials relating to the Americas.[1]
Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain, is the primary archive for Spanish colonial documents. Governmental, judicial, commercial, and military records for all of the colonies in the Americas are found here. Local government reports, passenger lists, censuses, and a multitude of other records, often intimately local in nature, are found here. Of particular interest are the Papeles de Cuba section, which contains extensive documentation relating to Florida and Louisiana, and the various subsections in the Gobierno, Justicia, and Contratación sections that relate to New Spain.[2]
Archivo General de Simancas, Valladolid, Spain, is the oldest national archives in Europe. In 1790, all of the sections relating entirely and specifically to the administration of the colonies were sent to Seville to create the Archivo General de Indias. There remain, however, many records relating to the Americas that were integrated in collections that covered all of the functions of Spanish government.[3] Notable are those for Títulos de Indias,[4] describing appointments to numerous government positions in what is now the United States, and Hojas de Sevicio Militar en América, which includes military officers' personnel sheets from posts stretching from Saint Augustine, Florida, to San Francisco, California.Cite error: Invalid
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Archivo General de Segovia, Segovia, Spain, as Spain's premier military archive, contains material about military operations in the New World. Of particular interest is the fully indexed section dealing with officers' service files, which includes many who served in military posts in what is now the United States.[5]
Archives in France
Many French archives have material relating to Louisiana and Quebec.18 Of interest are the Department Archives in port cities such as La Rochelle and those of the navy. By far the largest collections of such materials is found in the:
Le Centre des Archives d'Outre-Mer (CAOM), Aix-en-Provence, France. This is the archive for records of the French overseas ministry and the former French colonies, including Louisiana and Quebec.19
Archives in Cuba
Archivo Nacional de Cuba, Havana, Cuba. Although not currently available to U.S. researchers, the national archives of Cuba has many documents relating to Louisiana and Florida.20
Archives in Mexico
Archivo General de la Nacion, Mexico City, Mexico. Censuses, correspondence, reports, and diaries concerning political and financial administration, military affairs, eccles-iastical affairs, relations with indigenous peoples, explorations, expeditions, mining, and much more are all found in this collection. Originating as the archives of the viceroy of New Spain, this is the richest collection of Spanish Colonial materials concerning the United States, consisting of 115 record groups containing more than 41,000 volumes.21
Those working in the Southwest should be sure to search the excellent index now available online at http://www.agn.gob.mx, especially for the Californias and Provincias Internas sections.
The Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Sonora, and Baja California all have state archives with material relating to the southwestern United States. Chihuahua and Sonora have notarial archives with relevant materials.22
The large and growing set of digital documents and images is at http:www.agn.gob.mx/inicio.php?cu=ic&sc=ic.
Libraries and Archives in the United States
Universities and other libraries and archives in the United States have collected large amounts of materials relating to the Spanish and French colonial periods. Many are copies or transcripts of those found in foreign archives, as well as originals acquired by Anglo-American document collectors in the past. As a researcher moves beyond the basics of parish and census research, the catalogs for these collections should be consulted. In each case, a website is provided to gain more information about these collections, and many offer catalogs, indexes, and even digital documents.
Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. The world's largest collection of microfilms of original documents of genealogical value, the FHL has microfilms of many of the records described elsewhere in this chapter. Anyone researching Spanish colonial records should check to see what is available here, as most can be sent to a local Family History Center for minimal cost. Go to FamilySearch.org under Family History Library Catalog, and check for any record source mentioned under "place search" using first the town, then the county, then the state to search for records during the colonial period. If all else fails, try a creative search using keywords.
University of Texas, El Paso, has microfilm holdings relating to the Borderlands area that number over 160 sets, including copies purchased from other microfilming sources such as the University of Texas at Austin, the National Archives, and so forth. For details, go to http://www.utep.edu/border.
University of Texas, Austin has two very large collections containing Borderlands materials: Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collections and the Center for American History's Research and Collections Division.
University of California, Berkeley. The Bancroft Collection provides original and secondary materials in a variety of formats to support research in the history of the American West, Mexico, and Central America, with greatest emphasis on California and Mexico from the period of European exploration and settlement onward. For details go to http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/bancroft.html.
National Archives, Washington, D.C., has materials concerning those portions of the United States under Spanish or French control during the colonial period.23 Go to http://www.archives.gov/research/tools for details.
University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana, has manuscripts documenting the history of the Catholic Church in the United States, including correspondence of early missionary bishops, papers of prominent Catholic religious and lay people, and records of significant Catholic organizations, including the originals or microfilms of records for many Catholic colonial parishes and the diocese of Louisiana and Florida. Go to http://www.nd.edu/~archives.
The Documentary Relations of the Southwest (DRSW), Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, houses an extensive collection of microfilm relating to the Southwest. Online at http://www.statemuseum.arizona.edu/oer/index.shtml, one can access the Master Bibliography and Indexes, which contains over 17,000 records. These records describe an estimated total of 500,000 pages of primary documents dealing with the greater Southwest from 1520 to 1820, which corresponds to the Spanish Colonial era. Documents included cover an extensive geographical area bounded by the 22nd to the 38th parallel of north latitude and by the 92nd to the 123rd meridian of west longitude. This approximates the colonial frontiers of northern New Spain. The documents indexed come from a total of thirty-one archives in Europe and the Americas, including significant materials from the following archives: Archivo General de Indias (AGI-Sevilla); Provincias Internas of Mexico City's Archivo General de la Nación (AGN-Mexico City); Spanish Archives of New Mexico (Santa Fe, Mexico); Archivo de San Antonio de Béxar (to 1790) (University of Texas, Austin); Archivo de Hidalgo del Parral (Parral, Chihuahua); as well as fifteen smaller archives.
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. The Latin American Collection of the University Library has the oldest Latin American manuscript collection in the United States, as well as approximately 435,000 printed volumes, plus newspapers and microfilms. Go to http://www.yale.edu/las/lcollections.html for more detail.
- ↑ Direccion General de Archivos y Bibliotecas, Guía de fuentes Para la historia de Ibero-América conservados en España, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1966); Jose Tudela, Los Manuscritos de America en las Bibliotecas de España (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispanica, 1954); Lawrence H. Feldman, Anglo-Americans in Spanish Archives (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1991); Lino Gomez Canedo, Los archivos de la historia de América, periódo colonial española, 2 vols., Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia, Comisión de Historia, Publicación Num. 225 (Mexico City: Comisión de Historia, 1961).
- ↑ Cristobal Bermuda Plata, El Archivo General de Indias de Sevilla: sede del americanismo (Madrid, 1951); Charles E. Chapman, Catalogue of Materials in the Archivo General de las Indias for the History of the Pacific Coast and the American Southwest, University of California, Publications in History, vol. 8 (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1927); Charles E. Chapman, Catalogue of Material in the Archivo General de Indias for the History of the Pacific Coast and the American Southwest, University of California, Publications in History, vol. 8. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1919); Índice de documentos de Nueva España: existentes en el Archivo de Indias de Sevilla (México, D.F.: Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores, 1925-31); Purificación Medina Encina, Documentos Relativos a la Independencia de Norteamérica Existentes en Archivos Españoles, Vol. I: Archivo General de Indias, sección de gobierno, años 1752-1822 (Madrid: Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Dirección General de Relaciones Culturas, 1976).
- ↑ Angel de la Plaza Bores, Archivo General de Simancas: Guía del Investigador (Madrid: Dirección General de Archivos y Bibliotecas, Patronato Nacional de Archivos Históricos, 1962).
- ↑ Ricardo Magdaleno, Catálogo XX del Archivo General de Simancas, Títulos de Indias (Patronato Nacional de Archivos Históricos: Valladolid, 1954).
- ↑ Guía de archivos militares españoles (Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa, 1995); Federico Heredero Roura and Vincent Cadenas y Vicent, Archivo General Militar de Segovia: Índice de Expedientes Personales, 9 vols. (Ediciones Hidalguía: Madrid 1959-63).


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'11 Birthdays,' 'Confetti Girl' selected for book awards
Two books about young girls dealing with growing pains have been judged the best by Kansas schoolchildren.
"11 Birthdays" by Wendy Mass (Scholastic Books) and "Confetti Girl" by Diana Lopez (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers) are the recipients of the 2011 William Allen White Children's Book Awards.
The William Allen White Children's Book Award program was founded in 1952 by Ruth Garver Gagliardo, a specialist in children's literature for Emporia State University. One of the few literary awards that asks young readers to choose the winners, the program is directed by Emporia State University and supported in part by the Trusler Foundation.
Both authors have been invited to the awards celebration, set for Saturday, Oct. 6, in Emporia.
"11 Birthdays," selected by voters in grades 3 through 5, is the story of Amanda, who is excited to celebrate her 11th birthday — except everything goes wrong, starting with not celebrating with her best friend, Leo. They've shared every birthday of their life, but are on the outs.
When Amanda goes to sleep that night, she's just glad the day's over. But, the next morning, her birthday starts all over again.
"I was really thrilled and honored to learn that '11 Birthdays' had won the William Allen White Children's Book Award," said Mass. "I had so much fun writing this book about friendship, forgiveness, and second chances (and third, fourth, fifth chances, etc!). It means a lot to me to know that the children of Kansas had fun reading it. What more could a writer ask for?"
Mass is the New York Times best-selling author of 12 novels for young people, which have been translated into 14 languages and nominated for 50 state book awards.
Her titles include "A Mango-Shaped Space," which was awarded the Schneider Family Book Award by the American Library Association; "Leap Day," the "Twice Upon a Time" fairy tale series, "Every Soul a Star," "Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall," "Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life" and "Finally." Her most recent books are "The Candymakers" and "13 Gifts."
Mass writes more than books — she wrote the storyline for an episode of the television show "Monk," titled "Mr. Monk Goes to the Theatre," which aired during the show's second season. She tells people her hobbies are hiking and photography, but really they're collecting candy bar wrappers and searching for buried treasure with her metal detector. She lives with her family in New Jersey.
"Confetti Girl," chosen by readers in grades 6 through 8, is a clever and honest story of a young Latina girl navigating growing pains in her South Texas city. Apolonia "Lina" Flores is a sock enthusiast, a volleyball player, a science lover, and a girl who's just looking for answers.
Even though her house is crammed full of books (her dad's a bibliophile), she's having trouble figuring out some very big questions, like why her dad seems to care about books more than her, why her best friend's divorced mom is obsessed with making cascarones (hollowed eggshells filled with colorful confetti), and, most of all, why her mom died last year. Like colors in cascarones, Lina's life is a rainbow of people, interests, and unexpected changes.
"What makes winning the William Allen White Award so special is that students select the winner," Lopez said. "I used to teach middle school, so as I wrote 'Confetti Girl,' I kept thinking about my students. I wanted to write a book that they would like. That's why I got so excited when I heard I won the award. Thank you, Kansas!"
During the October awards celebration, schoolchildren from across the state of Kansas travel to Emporia for special events including lock-ins, author readings and book signings along with a parade through downtown Emporia to the awards ceremony itself. Many teachers use travel to the book awards as incentives in their school reading programs.
Short URL: http://www.jeffcountynews.com/?p=12920

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