New Mexico Records
Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe

Loose Documents:
1680 - 1850

Within the five reels of AASF Loose Documents of 1650-1850 numerous records were found that were from other parishes. Those records have been incorporated into the following books of the corresponding dates:
Cochiti - A13;
Abiquiu: Vol I - A14, Vol II - A15
Santa Cruz: Vols I, II and II, and
Tomé: Vol. I
Taos: Vol. I

The Loose Documents of the Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe are a treasure trove of miscellaneous information. There are a total of eight reels of Loose Documents (Reels #51-58), covering the period 1680-1900.

The New Mexico Genealogical Society has undertaken the task of transcribing and publishing information gleaned from the five earliest reels, #51-55, 1680-1850. The three remaining reels, covering the period 1850-1900, will be continued by the Hispanic Genealogical Research Center of NM.

Scattered throughout the five reels (AASF Reels 51 to 55) of filmed documents up to 1850 are books of patentes which includes official church notices and announcements, books of accounts, and sacramental records. Of those sacramental records (burials, baptisms, marriages including diligencias), an isolated scrap of a record may be found elsewhere. At least one is a whole or most of a book, i.e., pages bound together as in the early Abiquiu baptisms. Most are individual pages or series of pages or scraps. Some of the records were written on blank spaces of letters received by priests from superiors or other priests.

From notes by Evelyn Lujan Baca. This paragraph discusses the Cochiti and Abiquiu books, but the information also applies to the Tomé and Santa Cruz volumes of work.

. . . Mining the loose documents to record any of the baptisms from Abiquiu proved to be a treasure hunt. Fray Angelico Chavez in his Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe 1789-1900 (Academy of American Franciscan History, Washington DC, 1957), had identified papers and marked and described the books in which sacramental records are to be found. He also identified the Loose Documents. If the place name wasn't available or easily seen he labeled it as being from the same place as the documents next to it. With a monumental work such as his, there were bound to be some errors.

Having become familiar with the names of the places near Cochiti and Abiquiu at around the same time period, we were able to correct in our book the place names of some of the baptismal entries in the Loose Documents previously labeled as being in Cochiti when the entry belonged in Abiquiu, and vice versa.

But we could not leave well enough alone. We were concerned that the baptismal loose documents from that whole stretch of land around Abiquiu which were not already covered in books of Santa Cruz, etc, including anything we found in Loose Documents labeled Rio Arriba, El Rito, San Juan, Puente, Moqui, Tierra Azul, Cañones, Coyote, etc. would not be transcribed and published.

Therefore, included here are all of those baptisms found in the loose documents which had as place or church names mentioned above plus Sebilleta, Las Nutrias, Cienega, Casita, and many more.

There will be errors. Some of the entries are extremely difficult to read and decipher, but we have done the best we could.

Evelyn L. Baca
Alburquerque, NM
23 March 2000 and 23 January 2001