Miguel de Quintana’s Family

Miguel de Quintana came to Nuevo México with the colonists recruited from Mexico City by Cristóbal de Velasco in 1693. He traveled with his wife, Gertrudis de Trujillo, her parents, and her sister’s family.

Gertrudis’ mother, María Ruiz de Aguilar, was the daughter of the Nicolás Ruiz de Aguilar who had angered Franciscans in 1659 when the governor asked him to monitor their pueblo labor practices. The Inquisition in Mexico City found him guilty of "obstructing the missionary program" in 1664. He was caught in the same controversy that ensnared Francisco Gómez Robledo.

Aguilar had married Mariana de los Ángeles Guerrero in 1652 in Ciudad de Mexico. María was born in 1654 in Mexico City. While he was in Santa Fé, he fathered three children with Catalina Marquez. It’s not clear if Mariana had died and Nicolas remarried, or if she stayed south. Catalina’s three boys used her name. One step-brother, Nicolás, and some of their cousins returned with Diego de Vargas.

María was around 11-years-old when her father died in 1666. If Mariana were still alive, the girl might have had dim memories of her father’s situation and more vivid ones from tales told by her mother or stepmother. Quintana may have heard them sometime before María and her husband returned to México in 1705.

Gertrudis’ sister, Estefánia, was married to José de Atienza Sevillano. His father, José de Atienza de Alcalá y Escobar, had migrated to Nueva España from the area of Toledo in Spain. Several hundred years before, people with the same last name in the same area were convicted of being secret Jews, according to Stanley Hordes.

Quintana’s own family was more obscure. All his grandparents were born in Nueva España, with his maternal grandfather, Francisco de Valdés Altamirano, from the Toluca valley. While his wife’s ancestors were classed as meztisos, nothing was said about Miguel in 1673 other than he was of "sound body."

José Esquibel and John Colligan traced the family back to the powerful Álvarez de Toledos. Although long rumored to be conversos, Antonio Domínguez Ortiz said their genealogy suggested they were Christians who had adopted some customs from their Arab conquerors in Al-Ándalus.

Miguel and Gertrudis had at least ten children. A baptismal certificate survives for only one, Nicolás, who was born in 1712. His godparents were Juana Martín Serrano and Diego Marques.

Marriage records for their children and baptismal records for their grandchildren are equally sparse. Two Quintanas married children of María Luján and Pedro Sánchez de Iñigo, whose brother had been alcalde in Santa Cruz in 1713. Michaela married his son Pedro, while her brother Juan Tadeo married Francisca Xaviera.

The 1731 baptismal record for a child of María and Pedro was the first entry in Santa Cruz’s bound register. The names of the godparents were damaged so only Antonio survived for the man, and Magdalen (torn) Vaca for the woman. Juan and Xaviera’s marriage entry survived in better condition. María and Pedro were their witnesses. Their first baptismal entry was made in 1735 with Antonio Tafoya and Prudensia Gonzales as sponsors.

No sacramental records survived for their oldest daughter, Gertrudis Lugarda, who married Ascencio Archuleta. He was the grandson of Juan de Archuleta, but apparently had disappeared long before Lugardia wrote her will in 1749. She had borne three children, but reserved a few things for a niece, one guesses she might have been raising.

The Quintanas’ daughter Antonia does not appear in the Santa Cruz records. Angélico Chávez said her husband was Juan Gómez del Castillo. His mother was Juana Luján, the daughter of Matías. Chávez thought his father was Bartolomé Gómez Robledo, the illegitimate son of Bartolomé. The latter was the brother of the Francisco mentioned above and of Andrés, the father-in-law of Ignacio de Roybal. They probably were living in the San Ildefonso area when their first child was born in 1732.

The first child’s name to appear in the sacramental record after Quintana was denounced by Manuel de Sopeña in March of 1732 was their oldest boy. José had been born in 1698 and married to Lugarda Tafoya when they had a son in April. She had previously been married to Juan Sayago, who was killed during the Villasur expedition in 1720. Chávez thought he might have been related to Francisco de la Rosa, since both also were called González. It’s possible José was also a widow, but all that’s known about him was he was killed by Indians in 1748. The godparents in 1732 were Antonio Tafoya and Prudencia González.

Another son, Francisco Xavier, remarried after Quintana agreed to his fate in January of 1737. He married Juana Martín in September of 1737, with Manuel de la Rosa and Gertrudis Jirón de Tejeda as witnesses. Their first surviving baptismal record was from 1747. Francisco’s first wife, María Rosa Trujillo, died in 1728. It’s not known if she was local or a cousin through one of his mother’s brothers.

Three adolescent boys, beside Juan, were living at home when Quintana was denounced. Their marriages weren’t recorded and their first baptismal records in the Santa Cruz register appeared after 1737. Nicolás, who was 20 in 1732, married Mariana de Herrera; Manuel, who was 16, married María Feliciana Medina, and Juan José, who was 13, married Petronila Romero. Mariana’s family had roots in the Río Abajo before the Revolt. Pedro Asensio Tafoya and Ana sponsored the baptism of her son in 1745.

Feliciana’s maternal grandfather in Chimayó was Cristóbal Martín Serrano. Her paternal grandfather, Diego Medina’s daughter married Diego Romero, the son of Salvador, in 1714. The first recorded sponsors for her children were her parents, José Isidro de Medina and María Catarina Martín in 1743.

Little is known about Juan José and Petronila, except she died in Belen. He may have moved south where he had cousins. His father’s younger brother, José, had come after the Reconquest. He joined the presidio and married Antonia Luján. They moved to Bernalillo, perhaps after her mother, Juana Domínguez, died. Antonia’s father, Domingo Luján, died in 1693. Juana later was accused of living with Lorenzo de Madrid, whom she subsequently married.

Family genealogists have found references to two other children for Miguel and Gertrudis. Juan Baptista was born in 1708 and alive in 1712 when Quintana testified he had seven children. He may have died after that, or moved away.

The other, María, survives, so far, as only a name, with no birth date. She may have died young.

Notes: Gertrudis’ full name was Gertrudis de la Santa Trinidad Moreno de Trujillo. Miguel was born Miguel Matías de Quintana. Juan Sayago also was called Juan Gallegos. Mariana de Herrera also was listed as María Antonia de Herrera. The connections between the Medinas and Martín Serranos in Chimayó were mentioned in the post for 4 November 2015.

Chávez, Angélico. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.

Domínguez Ortiz, Antonio. Los Judeoconversos en España y América, 1971; quoted in Wikipedia entry on Pedro Álvarez de Toledo.

Esquibel, José A. and John B. Colligan. The Spanish Recolonization of New Mexico, 1999; cited by Hordes on Quintana’s family; cited by López for Aguilar’s marriage in Mexico City.

Geni genealogical website. Entries on Quintana’s family including María Ruiz de Aguilar and her Márquez kin; some are anonymous; other contributions were made by Ben M. Angel, Laura Elaine Chamas-Ortega, Ric Dickinson, Orlando Ricardo Mestas, and Henry Joseph Romero.

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

Lomelí, Francisco A. and Clark A. Colahan. Defying the Inquisition in Colonial New Mexico, 2006; contains Spanish and English versions of all documents described.

López, Nancy Lucía. Entry for Mariana de los Ángeles Guerrero on My New México Roots website, updated 25 January 2015.

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.

_____. 100 Years of Marriages, 1726-1826, Santa Cruz de la Cañada, New Mexico, extracted and compiled by Henrietta Martinez Christmas and Patricia Sánchez Rau.

Quintana, Lugarda de. Will, Santa Cruz, 1749; in Lomelí. She wrote "my husband is absent, and I do not know where."

Quintana, Miguel de. Lawsuit against Joseph Trujillo for a theft of two horses, 8 August to 24 October, 1712; in Lomelí.

Sánchez, Joseph E. "Nicolás de Aguilar and the Jurisdiction of Salinas in the Province of New Mexico, 1659-1662," Revista Complutense de Historia de América 22:139-160:1996; quotation on Aguilar.

Velázquez de la Cadena, Pedro. List of families going to New Mexico, 4 September 1693, in John L. Kessell, Rick Hendricks, and Meredith Dodge, To the Royal Crown Restored, 1995.