There are a few genealogy books that I have on my bookshelf. El Cerrito, New Mexico Eight Generations in a Spanish Village by Richard L. Nostrand is one that I have purchased four times, because each time I have shared it with someone in family, they inevitability keep it for themselves.
The book is the documentation of the author (Richard L. Nostrand) desire to continue the work that was performed by two sociologists employed by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1939. By 1979, when Mr. Nostrand started his efforts in earnest to continue to document Spanish population shifts, the town of El Cerrito had been surprisingly well documented by other university scholars and other government agencies (Nostrand, 2016).
With that being said, this is not a traditional genealogy book in the sense of documenting a family history. It is just fortuitous that my family is from that particular town. My paternal grandfather, was born in the village on New Year’s Day, 1931. He was the fourth of nine children born to the union of Agapito Quintana and Maria de la Paz “Paisita” Chavez. Agapito’s family, while living in the village, did eventually exhibit the behavior that Mr. Nostrand came to study; the migration of the Spanish people north.
My grandfather, while I was growing up and into my adult years, made it a point to remind us that we were Spanish and not Mexicans. The fundamental difference is this: the Spanish came directly from Europe while a Mexican is a native or inhabitant of Mexico, even though they may have their origin from Europeans including Spanish. The distinction was important, with my best guess being the bias that the Mexican people experience to this day from all directions.
My third great-grandfather José Fernando Quintana moved to El Cerrito after his marriage in 1840 to María Gertrudis Martín, a granddaughter of one of the original fifteen landholders documented in 1824. “Fernando rose quickly into the ranks of El Cerrito’s elite and emerged as the undisputed leader of a generation whose challenge was to stay close to home and farm.” (Nostrand, 2016).
While that was a reasonable desire, by 1947, and two generations later, my great-grandfather Agapito and most of his family had moved to Las Vegas, New Mexico permanently, because economics and survival dictated it. This particular generation was not one to look back, my memory does not recall my grandfather stating in his lifetime, any desire to return to El Cerrito. My grandfather married my grandmother at nineteen and joined the military all by 1950. The only tie to El Cerrito for this branch of the Quintana family that Agapito and Paisita’s only daughter Geraldine is buried in the cemetery there, having died at the tender age of fourteen.
This book is important to me to have as I have expressed my obvious connection to the village. That bias out of the way, if you have family of Spanish origins, this book can provide insight to the lives of those in the area about 1800 and understand motivations for migration. Mr. Nostrand also documents and talks about how people are documented, from church records, land grants, interviews, government collections, unpublished thesis papers, books and pamphlets.
I’m certain that I will return to the topic of my Quintana family again, this book gives me an appreciation of the impact of community and how outside factors can drive life decisions.
References
Nostrand, R. (2016). El Cerrito, New Mexico: Eight generations in a Spanish village. University of Oklahoma Press.