Progress After Three Days

Before I left for Mexico, I searched through the AGN site for material that UWF did not possess. At the National Archive I’ve been going through every volume that popped up either in the search or in our collection. After that's done, I'll probably look at AGN guides in the National Library in central Mexico City and plug in every name and date I have into the AGN guide's search engine.

2 “series” exist for Correspondencia de Virreyes which isn’t listed either in Coker’s notes or anywhere I noticed on the AGN site so I was a little confused and annoyed when the archivist asked me “Which series?” All volumes are the Viceroy writing or forwarding material to the King, the Council of the Indies, or a Minister directly. Some of this material is probably in Spain’s Archive of the Indies (AGI). In UWF collections of AGI documents, I found a letter or two that responded to letters I found in Coker’s small collection of documents from this volume.
The first Viceregal series is vaguely schizophrenic: Volume 1 1755-1759, Volume 2 1664-1665, Volume 3 1758, Volume 4 1766-1771, Volume 5 October 1771 to end of 1773, and Volume 6 1771-1773. I photographed expedients in Volumes 1, 3, and 4; found nothing of interest in volumes 5-6; and stopped there. Series 2 was more lucrative, I photographed material in Volumes 2 (1757), 4 (1759), and 5. Volume 3 seemed to have started to burn before someone doused in with water-- the resulting damage made it a little uncertain as to whether or not anything relevant is there.

Material in Tierras details San Carlos on the Chachalacas River near La Antigua Veracruz, where the Apalachee and Yamassee settled after they left Pensacola due to the 1763 Treaty of Paris. I photographed everything to that end from Volumes 911, 1085, and 2780 for a total of 349 pages. Nothing interesting was in volume 466 or 690. I got caught up in material in 3543 dating from 1769-1776s describes the foundation of a new town by blacks that worked as slaves at San Juan de Ulua. Going through that and other volumes won't be directly relevant but will evidence interesting changing class and status issues in New Spain.

Archivo Historico de Hacienda has lots of great financial details. I started to go through volume 472 which so far has a a few pages about St. Augustine. I photographed part of Volume 967 which has Windward Fleet financial details from 1734-1735 and also grabbed Volume 1117's summary of New Spain's status in 1763 (finances for every Real Caja, status of each mission and presidio, a very informative read). I also photographed the entirety of volume 1306 that is Windward Fleet from 1650s to 1719-ish. A few more volumes in this section left to go.

I started Reales Cedulas Originales by photographing relevant material from Volume 38 and went through the online index of Volume 40. Tomorrow I should finish Archivo Historico de Hacienda and start with Reales Cedulas Originales—next week is General de Parte and other sections I haven’t started looking at yet.