Our gift to Albuquerque's 300th birthday, 2006, was

Aquì se Comienza - A Genealogical History of the Founding Families
of La Villa de San Felipe de Alburquerque.

The book is the New Mexico Genealogical Society's contribution to the city-wide Tricentennial Project, celebrating Albuquerque's 300th birthday. A year-long project that involved numerous volunteers, it was directed by Gloria Valencia. Released to the public in 2007 and has won prestigious awards. It is Book E-13 in NMGS Press publications.

Our longest standing project is recording translated AASF sacramental documents, as well as county and census records. Volunteers across the country who have skills in paleography collaborate with those who type the material, work in data entry or create indexes, and the Society coordinates their publication. See a full current list at NMGS Press. See a History of the AASF Publications project.

Genealogical Resources in New Mexico, by former Genealogist editor Karen Stein Daniel, CG^SM, received favorable recognition by both Family Tree Magazine (David A. Fryxell, Aug 2004, pp. 50-59), and Ancestry (Dwight A. Radford, Sept/Oct issue, p. 34-41).

The new Third Edition of Genealogical Resources in New Mexico is much larger at 124 pages. This edition offers the latest information regarding sources judged helpful to researchers, as well as contact information.

The New Mexico Genealogist has been published four times each year since 1962. It was recently awarded the Lansing B. Bloom Award by the Historical Society of New Mexico "for outstanding publication or series of publications by a society or institution." The Genealogist received professional critiques by the National Genealogical Society in 1998 (Patricia Black Esterly, editor) and again in 2000 (Karen Stein Daniel, editor).

The First 40 Years of the NMGS Quarterly were produced on a CD in 2002. The result is an information-packed CD with transcriptions of state, county, and church records, genealogy articles, and historical information with approximately 100,000 names in the index.

NMGS member Karen Stein Daniel, CG^sm was awarded a $500 individual grant by the Historical Society of New Mexico to assist the completion of the third volume of Naturalization Records by New Mexico Courts. The full series is now available from NMGS Press as books #E8, E12, and E-16.

This web site was designated "Site of the Week" by both the Albuquerque Journal, during our first month online, and by the Albuquerque Tribune's genealogy columnist Mary Penner in December 2005.

In 1999 this site was chosen by Study Web researchers  to be on their list of the best educational resources  on the web for students and teachers.

This comprehensive project provides direction for finding the Catholic church where your ancestors' records of birth, marriage, and death were recorded.

In December 2005, Locating Catholic Church Records in New Mexico was named by Family Tree magazine as one of the best free "cyberstops for researching ancestors."

In August 2008, the New Mexican Hispanic Culture Preservation League (NMHCPL) celebrated its 10th anniversary and honored Patricia Baca Black Esterly for her work on this project and on the web site by conferring upon her the title of Doña Eufemia de Peñalosa. Doña Eufemia was a heroine of 1598 with her encouragement for the citizens and soldiers. When the Spanish comunity needed protection from Indian raids, she organized the other women to patrol on the housetops with rifles. Read more about Doña Eufemia on the NMHCPL website.

Esterly accepted a plaque on behalf of herself and coworkers on this project, Armando Sandoval and Angela Lewis.

We support our local genealogy library, the Special Collections Branch of the Rio Grande Valley Library System. Profits from the sale of our books and CDs are used to help fund purchases of research materials including books, CDs, microforms, and computer hardware and software.

The AASF publication project began about 1975, when the sacramental records of the Archdiocese were housed in Albuquerque. Virginia Olmsted asked permission of Father Angelico Chavez to extract baptisms prior to 1850. At that time, the extractions were recorded by hand into steno notebooks. Each baptism record was typed onto a 3x5 card, proofread at every stage, and kept in a filing cabinet. In addition to Virginia Olmsted, the original extractors included Petrita Alcon, Eloise and Henry Arellanes, Catherine Blouin, Donald Dreesen, Amelia Garcia, Sophie Kemm, Ella Louise May, Felipe Mirabal, Lila Pfeufer, and Marie Roybal. Others helping with proofreading and typing included Evelyn Bishop, Betty Gutierrez, Ann Mossman, Karen Hansen, and Margaret Windham.

Later, Father Chavez gave permission for one volume of Albuquerque baptisms. This was Albuquerque Baptisms, 1706-1850, (Book #A-1), which was released in 1983. When Mrs. Olmsted passed away, the project was put on hold until Margaret Windham shouldered the task, and it continued today under her direction until 2008, when Billye Archunde assumed this awesome responsibility. At this time, Rose Holte serves as liaison between the NMGS Board and all the projects underway, including this one.

The New Mexico Genealogical Society has now published 30 books of New Mexico baptisms (from 1701) and marriages (from 1726), plus census and cemetery recordings. More are in progress. Most of the books are over 450 pages in length, and many 500 and 600 pages. This immense project has made thousands of records available to the researcher.

Due to the dedication of its workers, the Society has earmed a reputation of excellence in its publications. In 2003 and 2004 Margaret L. Windham and Evelyn Lujan Baca were the NMGS nominees for the Ruth C. Bishop Volunteer Hall of Honor awarded by the Federation of Genealogical Societies.