Dear all,

I am relatively new to Nueva Galicia genealogy and glad to be joining this community. Hopefully some of you may have not only similar questions but answers.

Across all the different DNA testing platforms, there is a recurring segment of some 25 cM that unites me and all my tested relatives on my paternal grandfather's side with a whole swathe of distantly related people who all descend from New Mexico's founding families. They and their trees have names like Lujan, Archuleta, Montoya, Baca, etc., which were so intertwined by endogamous marriages during the colonial period, that lines are difficult to untangle. This endogamy (combined with the one in our own ranchos) makes any predictions of degrees of cousinship based on shared DNA very problematic, which in turn means that the common ancestor with these New Mexico cousins could be any number of generations ago.

I descend from the Ruiz de Velascos of Ayo el Chico, so I can account for my ancestry in the Altos/Cienega region many generations back across multiple lines, which only makes this more of a mystery. Was there some renegade GG-uncle who fled to settle in the frontier? Y-DNA results compared with the New Mexico FTDNA projects suggest that the link is not through the direct paternal line. Someone from the New Mexico project who had worked on Jalisco connections looked at my results and tree and was also at a loss.

There are only two surnames in my tree that seem to overlap with the New Mexico entangled trees: Herrera and Moya. But the Herrera and Moya founders who settled New Mexico arrived in the mid 17th century. I cannot account for my ancestors in that two surname lines that far (yet). And the New Mexico genealogies (which are very developed) don't really trace these founders far before their arrival to the territory.

Does anyone have a possible explanation or suggestion? Or share these surnames and have New Mexico matches? Or not?

Thank you,
Guillermo