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Por MADERA_32 |

My question is about what provinces to be included in the geneology of Nuestros Ranchos.

It is supposed to be the provinces of Jalisco, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes which back in the colonial days would had been the region of "Nueva Galicia."

Nueva Galicia as well as other northern provinces such as Nayarit, Durango, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Los Californias and Texas was under jurisdiction of the Real Audencia Government of Guadalajara of Jalisco province. As well as the Catholic Bishop of Guadalajara who had religious jurisdiction.

So my question is should nuestros ranchos should include the geneology of those other northern provinces as well since our ancestors were governed by the Real Audencia and Catholic Bishop of Guadalajara/Jalisco?

If someone applies to the group and they are researching Nayarit and/or Colima I accept them into the group. If someone even suspects their roots might come from Jalisco, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, Nayarit and/or Colima I accept them into the group as long as they focus on our area of research. Having said that I don't interfere with the discussion unless I see it is causing a problem.

Many good points have been made regarding how jurisdictions changed over time. One other point I'd like to make is that we sometimes underestimate/forget how mobile our ancestors really were. I have found many a family that stayed for generations in one single place while other families frequently settled in one place than later migrated to another place within the same or subsequent generations. In my case, had I just focused my genealogical research to just Jalisco records, I would have missed out on the true origins of some of my ancestors who migrated from Spain -> Michoacan -> Jalisco, etc.

The founder of this group decided that NR should focus on only these 3 states for the site. It has been this way from the beginning, to keep the attention focused on the genealogical interests of this area. Unless he decides to change his mind, we will stay focused. There are other areas of Mexico/New Spain that have special genealogy groups for them, so one could go there or start another site, I suppose.

What Rosalinda says in her post is all true. I just want to add that in my experience the NR community tends to be more inclusive in scope rather than exclusive. If one searches the NR website using the keywords Michoacan, Guanajuato, Nayarit, or Colima, for instance, one can see that there are many, many posts that fall outside of NR’s stated geographic focus. (A search of the keyword Texas shows 55 pages of results!)

It could be that in practice the focus is broader because of the fact that various family lines can be traced to places that are outside of the boundaries of the modern Mexican states of Jalisco, Zacatecas and Aguascalientes. Also, as Antonio points out in the original post, it could be because the current boundaries of the above mentioned states do not correspond exactly with the boundaries of the historic administrative entities that came before them. Even the modern boundaries can be problematic. One has to remember that Jalisco has been partitioned at least once, that I can think of, since its founding in 1823 (Nayarit, 1917).

On the whole, I think most contributions here are appreciated by the NR community regardless of how strong or tenuous a geographic link they may have to the modern states of Jalisco, Aguascalientes and Zacatecas. But I may be wrong about this.

Thanks. Yes, I agree with you-- in practice, it has not been so clear cut, and I think Joseph's attitude is that as long as there is a connection, tenuous it may be, to Aguascalientes, Jalisco, and Zacatecas, it's fine. However, to remove that parameter overall could mean more moderation and attention is needed for the website, when there are few volunteers for such tasks.

I don't think Joseph's expectation is too much, considering he is the founder, and he's always been generous. I just don't want a free-for-all where people post everything and anything (I am a moderator at Mexican Genealogy on Facebook, and it's a job to moderate it, and we have a team of volunteers there!).

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