The Conquest of Mexico: Finding Your Ancestor Among the Conquistadors

Mr. Alfredo Pena, did a presentation on," The Conquest of Mexico: Finding Your Ancestor Among the Conquistadors", Saturday at the Bonita Library in Bonita, Ca.
We learned some very interesting things about Hispanic research.

1. Spanish Archives are free for research. That is a huge plus.

2. Church records are pretty stable for research results.

3. The time line of your research will determine, as with any place,
what type of information you may find.

4. Interesting is how the church records record 4 generations of family on
an event.

5. Their records are more linearal conscious of family lines.

6. Many of the conquistadors were inter related to each other.

7. Mr. Pena could show lineage to five of the soldiers.

8. He also explained the confused naming pattern that is non consistant
throughout the lineages. MONEY TALKED

9. It appears that if you were wealthier than the spouse your name went forward,
if you were less wealthy the spouse name went forward.

10. He had a super great chart printed out and the naming patterns shown
about 7 or 10 generations and the signs for the names moving around.

11. My thoughts were if you could find data in Spain's archives you would be
able to muddle through the transitions.

12. We worry about the misspelling of a name and they completely change the names.

We had 5 guests and 9 members attend this talk. It dealt with pre 1600 time line
dominately and then how the records changed coming to the 1900th century.

Members from the audience asked some great questions so we could better understand some of the confused system used by the Spaniards.

So looking forward to the next step in this process.