Entrepreneurs in the South

Jean l’Archevêque was with another Frenchman when he was ransomed by the Spanish in 1688. Jacques Grollet had been born in the Huguenot port of La Rochelle. Little is known about his family. Stanley Hordes said his particular neighborhood was one where conversos settled in the 1500s. Grollet described himself as an "experienced sailor," and indeed sailed on a fishing voyage with the Saint Jacques in 1682. Two years later he was with La Salle when his flotilla embarked from La Rochelle.

There’s no reason to believe Grollet and Archevêque were close before La Salle was murdered. Grollet had deserted earlier to live with the Tejas and Cenis tribes, but rejoined the survivors after La Salle died. Later he and Archevêque abandoned the group to live with the Hasinai.

When they heard Spaniards were in the area, the two sent a message asking to be rescued. They then spent years in jail together in México and Spain. When the men finally were released to Nuevo México, the one stayed in Santa Fé while the other moved to the Río Abajo.

Grollet married Elena Gallegos in 1699. Her brother’s daughter married Felipe Silva in 1722. He was the man who first was reported selling wool in 1734 to the commander of the presidio at Jano in Sonora in the post for 6 March 2016.

Elena’s cousin, Josefa Baca, never married, but had several sons. In 1745, Manuel Sáenz de Garvisu financed a partido contract with Capitán José Baca. This son of Josefa Baca received 417 young sheep, and committed to deliver 160 lambs and 150 fleeces each year for three years.

Sáenz was from Navarre and serving in the presidio under Gaspar de Mendoza. He probably met the Bacas through his wife’s uncle. Diego Lucero was married to Margarita Baca, who was the first cousin of Josepha and Elena. A year after his contract with José, Sáenz had enough money to buy property in Santa Fé from Maria Gómez de Robledo.

As the market for fleeces developed, the use of partido spread, and with it economic stratification. The business relationship had originated in Spain in the 1300s when it had been used as a way to pay shepherds. John Baxter said, it was in México that it became "a way of lending capital at interest."

The older usage survived in the north. When Lugarda de Quintana died in Santa Cruz in 1750, she had just inherited 110 sheep from her father who died the year before. She had some sons still at home, but her husband was "absent and I do not know where." All the children without parents whose baptisms she sponsored were girls. She had animals, little available labor, and mentioned no grazing land.

She said she first traded some sheep for some cattle. She apparently loaned them out on unspecified terms. She only stipulated what she was owed. Some may have been studs sent out in return for payment in kind. Miguel Trujillo owed her two rams while Miguel Martín and Eusebio Durán each owed her one. Juan Esteban owed a three-year-old bull.

Except for the last, these men were relatives or men of substance. Trujillo’s sister was married to Lugarda’s husband brother, Hilario Archuleta, and he himself was wed to María Antonia Archuleta. If Durán were Eusebio Durán y Chaves, he was born in the Río Abajo and would marry Vibiana Martín Serrano in 1752 in Alameda.

Antonio Martín died in 1749, and his estate still owed her a lamb. An indio who worked for him, Gerónimo, owed 10 animals. Antonio’s and Miguels’s relationships to the Martíns weren’t clear to Angélico Chávez. That means no records survived or they were captives or meztisos given the Martín name or they were descended from one of the wayward branches.

Several of the other people who owed her livestock were indios like Gerónimo, or lived in a pueblo. She said the cacique owed her a yearling sheep and a goat. An Indian woman named Magdalena, who may have been the Apache baptized by Antonio Bernal in 1732, owed a goat. So did Juan, who was ransomed by Marcos Martín.

This sharing a few animals, either as studs or with poorer individuals, was very different than the economy in Santa Fé where Cristóbal Baca, a brother of Josefa, left more than 900 ewes when he died in 1739. When Ignacio de Roybal died in 1756 he left fewer animals - 350 sheep and goats - but they were "loaned at interest on partido for 30% of the wool, lambs and kids produced annually."

Even larger numbers of animals were available for loan down river. In 1760, Capitán Juan Vigil gave Ignacio Jaramillo 605 pregnant ewes. He was expected to make yearly payments of 130 wethers and fleeces. While Vigil’s return was greater than his investment, he agreed to share the costs of losses to native raids. Jaramillo’s incentive for managing the animals was he enjoyed the sales of 80% of their fleeces for four years and owned the flock outright after five years.

The drought years accelerated economic trends in the second and third generations after the Reconquest. At the top were families and military men who shared an entrepreneurial attitude with the rising merchant classes in La Rochelle, Bristol and London. Beneath them were men like Jaramillo who could use other men’s capital to create their own wealth. And beneath them were men like Francisco Sáez who didn’t pay his share because he had used some animals to pay existing debts and gambled away the others, or like the former captives who owed Quintana one or two animals.

Origins of Men Involved in Wool Trade, Río Abajo

Cristóbal Baca, son of Antonio, son of Cristóbal
	Manuel Baca
		Josepha Baca
			José Baca contract with Manuel Sáenz de Garvisu (Navarre)
			Antonio Baca
		María Magdalena Baca marry Jose Vásquez de Lara (México)
			María Vásquez Baca marry Diego de Padilla
		Cristóbal Baca
	Catalina Baca marry Antonio Gallegos
		Elena Gallegos marry Jacques Grollet (La Rochelle)
		Antonio Gallegos
			Juana Gallegos marry Felipe de Silva
			Felipe's sister Gertrudis marry Gerónimo Jaramillo
	Ignacio Baca
		Margarita Baca marry Diego Lucero

Notes: Most of the details on the growth of the wool industry came from Baxter; most about the families came from Chávez. Sáez was discussed in the post for 6 March 2016. Jaramillo probably was related to Gerónimo, who married a sister of Felipe Silva, or to Francisco Silva who married an aunt of Garvisu’s wife. Vigil may have been the son of Manuel Montes Vigil, a soldier in the presidio who died before Garvisu arrived.

Antonio Baca, another son of Josefa Baca, married Mónica de Chaves. Two of their sons later married daughters of Sáenz. Diego Padilla, also mentioned in the post for 6 March 2016, was Josefa’s nephew-in-law by her sister María Magdalena. Grollet’s captivity was mentioned in the post for 14 May 2105.

The two translations that exist for Quintana’s will differ in their understanding of her livestock. Lomelí translated the phrase "declaro tener ciento y diez cabezas de ganado menor que de unas reses que traje de herencia de mi padre" as "110 head of goats and cattle from my father’s inheritance." Christmas made it "110 head of sheep, for which I traded some cattle." "Ganado menor" was a generic term for small livestock that included both sheep and goats.

Baxter, John O. Las Carneradas, 1987.

_____. "The Ignacio De Roybal House," The Historic Santa Fe Foundation, Bulletin, January 1980; on his estate.

Chávez, Angélico. Chávez: A Distinctive American Clan of New Mexico, 1989.

_____. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.

Grollet, Jacques. Testimony, published on "La Salle: Building a French Empire in the New World," University of North Texas website.

Hendricks, Rick. "Wills from El Paso del Norte, 1754-1817," Nuestra Raíces 6:161-167:1994.

Hordes, Stanley M. To the End of the Earth, 2005.

Maldonado, Gilbert. Maldonado Journey to the Kingdom of New Mexico, 2014; on descendants of Catalina Baca.

Migrations.fr website. Département de La Rochelle, "Le St Jacques of La Rochelle Bound la Pêche à la Morique, 14 Mars 1682."

New Mexico Genealogical Society. New Mexico Baptisms, Santa Cruz de la Cañada Church, Volume I, 1710 to 1794, transcribed by Virginia Langham Olmstead and compiled by Margaret Leonard Windham and Evelyn Luján Baca, 1994.

Quintana, Gertrudis Lugarda de. Will, 12 May 1749; original in Ralph Emerson Twitchell, Spanish Archives of New Mexico, volume 1, 1914; English and Spanish versions in Francisco A. Lomelí and Clark A. Colahan, Defying the Inquisition in Colonial New Mexico, 2006; English translation available at Henrietta M. Christmas, "(Getrudis) Lugarda Quintana - Will 1749," 4 August 2014 posting on 1598 New Mexico website.