By Rick Hendricks When death overtook Capt. Bernardo Antonio Bustamante y Tagle, lieutenant governor of New Mexico during the administration of Governor Juan Domingo de Bustamante, at the presidio of Guajoquilla at eight o'clock on the night of 15 January 1773, it set in motion a struggle over the…
By Rick Hendricks For most residents of colonial El Paso, the ancient church of Our Lady of Guadalupe regulated their lives. The cornerstone of the mission church dedicated to Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de los Mansos del Paso del Norte was laid in December 1659 by the Franciscan friar,…
Letter from Ferdinand II to the Duque del Infantado Transcription, Translation and Analysis by Rick Hendricks Del Rey Duque primo, la condesa de Saldaña vuestra hija, mi sobrina entrara mañana en esta villa, como ya vos escrivj y por que como sabeys las velaçiones se abrira pasado el…
By Rick Hendricks Fabián García was born in Chihuahua on 20 January 1871 to Ricardo García and Refugio Romero de García. Orphaned of both parents soon after his birth, García moved to the Mimbres Valley in southwestern New Mexico with his paternal grandmother, Jacoba García, when he was…
1881 By Priscilla Solis Ybarra, Ph.D. Adelina (Nina) Otero Warren—suffragist, educator, politician, entrepreneur, and writer– was born in 1881 in La Constancia, New Mexico, near Los Lunas. She was the second child of Manuel B. Otero and Eloisa Luna Otero. Both her parents had deep roots in New Mexico,…
By Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint Captain Melchior Díaz was a key member of the Coronado expedition of 1539-1542. He was characterized as being "a very upright individual with high intelligence and understanding, a good Christian, competent, and a man very experienced in matters of war, a prudent…
9 11 1640 Governor Domingo Jironza Pétriz de Cruzate, 1683-1686, 1689-1691 By Rick Hendricks Some of the precise details of the early life of Domingo Jironza Pétriz de Cruzate are murky. He appears to have been baptized in Hecho in the Spanish province of Huesca in the Kingdom of…
By Rick Hendricks, Ph.D. New Mexico State Historian At present, little is known of the origins of Antonio de Otermín, although some information exists about the family. The House of Otermín was based in the Consejo of Gaintza, municipality of Araitz in the Basque province of Navarre. The community…
By Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint A major player in the re-conquest of New Mexico in the 1690s under Diego de Vargas was Antonio de Valverde Cosío. He became interim governor of the province in 1715 and was named to the post in his own right in 1718….
1851 By Patricia Trujillo In a footnote in Marc Simmons, Little Lion of the Southwest: A Life of Manuel Antonio Chaves, the author writes, “It should be noted that historian Twitchell in writing of Manuel relied heavily on information supplied by Amado” (226). Indeed, Simmons credits Chaves with compiling…
