Does anyone have a time machine that I can borrow? I need to travel back to 2008 so I can see this:
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...the book, a libro de hidalguia, served as a passport and family tree…his book - along with those of 19 other Spanish settlers of Mexico and Texas - occupies a case at the Museum of South Texas History, where an unwitting descendant may well stop to admire its intricate artwork. The exhibition, shown for the first time in the United States, is only part of a larger collection of cartas de hidalguía belonging to Mission residents Ricardo and Debbie Backal. It is one of the largest private collections of such documents in North America, according to the museum…
http://www.themonitor.com/news/local/article_b18f4eb9-6a8a-508c-9680-68521180bbd7.html
The Backal’s website is called halfspoon.com, and here is a slideshow with some neat photos of the exhibit:
Here are some more photos from the Backal’s collection: http://s306.photobucket.com/user/rcaobras/media/f6cf92c1.pbr.html
I’m not sure, but I think these photos contain at least of one of the documents that was in the exhibit:
http://i306.photobucket.com/albums/nn267/rcaobras/DSCF0171.jpg
I wonder if it would be possible to get individual pictures with identification of the person to whom the arms belonged. The arms of the Hispanic settlers from Texas to California constitute a sadly neglected part of the history of American heraldry. I’d love to add these to the Roll of Early American Arms.
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The arms of the Hispanic settlers from Texas to California constitute a sadly neglected part of the history of American heraldry.
I completely agree. Another potential avenue for research would be to see how many Tejanos, Californios, etc appear in the records of the Archivo de la Real Chancillería de Valladolid in Spain. According to one article I read online:
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...when an hidalguía was challenged, usually by a town council that tried to collect direct taxes from its holder, the individual claiming to be an hidalgo could only affirm his status by suing the town in one of the two Royal Chancery Courts of Castile, which resided at Valladolid and Granada. The Chancery Courts (chancillerías) were the highest tribunals in the kingdom short of the Royal Council, and, from the fifteenth century onwards, had exclusive jurisdiction in all cases concerning the dispute of an hidalguía, which were heard by a special chamber called the Sala de Hijosdalgo…http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0uexPCmuL0AJ:www.econ.yale.edu/seminars/echist/eh05/drelichman-051109.pdf+&cd=48&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
Apparently the records of the Sala de Hijosdalgo in Valladolid are vast and contain records on tens of thousands of individuals. I think Alfredo Basanta de la Riva published an index in the 1950s called Sala de los Hidalgos, Catálogo de Todos los Pleitos y Expedientes y Probanzas. An electronic index is apparently also now available for purchase: http://www.xenealoxia.org/libros/161-indice-onomastico-de-hidalguias-1
Furthermore, the University of Arizona maintains a website, the Biofile Southwest : http://uair.arizona.edu/item/68386
It is a “a biographical listing of nearly 20,000 persons living in the greater Southwest and northern ‘New Spain’ in centuries past.”
I wish that I knew more about the operation of computer machines, because these computing devices would presumably be able to search out matches between the electronic index of hidalgos with the University of Arizona’s website. Even a few dozen or a hundred matches might shed some light on Spanish colonial armigers in the southwest.
Nice document Sebastian. I’ve searched the web several times trying to find some reference to arms of Spanish land grant holders in California, but have come up with nada.
Elisa Ruiz wrote a very good article in 2006 about the kinds of documents that were on display at the Museum of South Texas History. Here is a link to a pdf version: http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ELEM/article/download/ELEM0606220251A/21625
Here is a link to a neat English-language video presentation about cartas de executoria de hidalguia or, rather, one example from the collection of an American institution:
