From author Jose Antonio Esquibel's posting on Feb. 16, 2013:

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/3726672-paredes-zaldiva...

Jose Antonio Esquibel's Blog - Posts Tagged "juan-andres-de-zaldivar"

Paredes, Zaldivar, Cortes Clarification

Rebecca Vigil-Fox recently posted a query on the Facebook Page of the New Mexico Genealogical Society asking if anyone had any information to confirm that Cristóbal de Zaldívar and Leonor Tolosa (aka Corté Moctezuma) were the parents of Juan Andrés Zaldívar, the husband of Andrea Rangel and the father of doña Beatriz Cortés.

I answered the query, responding that there was no documented evidence to confirm the name of the parents of Juan Andrés Zaldívar. In fact, the presumed link of Juan Andrés de Zaldívar to Cristóbal de Zaldívar y Mendoza and doña Leonor Cortés Moctezuma is based on a misinterpreted by readers of information I published in an article almost twenty years ago and has been erroneously spread across the Internet.

Although I informed Rebecca that the information about Juan Andrés de Zaldívar and doña Beatriz Cortés was first posted on the ‘Beyond Origins of New Mexico Families” Web site (established in 1998). Turns out I was wrong about that.

The information regarding the Zaldívar-Cortés couple and their link to New Mexico was first published in an article of mine in the Spring 1994 issues of “Nuestra Raices,” the journal of the Genealogical Society of Hispanic America (GSHA), under the title ‘Genealogical Essays on Three 17th-century New Mexico Families: Paredes, López de Gracia, and Manzanares.”

María de Paredes, also known as María Domínguez, married Felipe de Montoya and this couple lived in New Mexico during the late 1600s and left descendants. Historical records, and her use of the Paredes and Domínguez surnames, indicate that María de Paredes was a daughter of Mexico City native Álvaro de Paredes and doña Damiana Domínguez de Mendoza (bt. October 4, 1628, Catedral de México, Mexico City), a daughter of Tomé Domínguez and Elena de la Cruz Ramírez de Mendoza.

You can read more about the history and genealogy of Álvaro and Damiana and about the Domínguez de Mendoza and Paredes families of seventeenth-century New Mexico and Mexico City in the recently published book, “Don Juan Domínguez de Mendoza: Soldier and Frontiersman of the Spanish Southwest, 1627-1693” by France V. Scholes, Eleanor B. Adams, Marc Simmons, and José Antonio Esquibel (UNM Press, 2012).

Álvaro de Paredes (bt. February 23, 1638, Catedral de México, Mexico City) came to New Mexico sometime in the mid to late 1650s, most likely as a young soldier in the company of his brother, Fray José de Paredes (b.ca. 1638). The brothers were sons of don Esteban de Paredes and doña Beatriz Cortés, as first published by Fray Angélico Chávez in “Origins of New Mexico Families in the Spanish Colonial Period” (page 87). Chávez added a comment about doña Beatriz in parentheses, stating that she was “A high-born lady according to her title, she was very likely descended of Hernán Cortés.” However, other than a common surname, there was no specific information to actually make a genealogical link between doña Beatriz and Hernán Cortés.

In 1993, while deep into my research of microfilm copies of various church records of Mexico City, I stumbled across the marriage record for Esteban de Paredes and doña Beatriz Cortés, married April 18, 1633, in the Sagrario Chapel of the Catedral de México. The presiding priest was Licenciado Diego García Rangel and the official witnesses to the union were Don Juan Ochoa, Diego Rodríguez, Doctor Quemada, and Antonio Durán. Unfortunately, the marriage record did not contain the names of the parents of the couple.

Most of the Mexico City church records were not index at the time I conducted my research. I would order microfilm and conduct a frame by frame, entry by entry search, hoping to come across familiar names. Through trial and error, I learned that the marriage records of the Catederal de México had a corresponding book of ‘informaciones matrimoniales,’ banns of matrimony, which include useful genealogical details about the couples.

After finding the marriage record of don Estéban and doña Beatriz, I searched for the corresponding banns of matrimony record for the Catedral and located a record dated April 17, 1633, which provided the places of their birth and the names of their parents. The record reads:

• en 17 de abril
• desp[osa]dos
• don estevan de paredes nat[ura]l desta ciudad
• hijo de alv[ar]o de paredes y de doña beatriz soto
• maior con doña beatriz cortes nat[ural] desta çiudad hij de Ju[an] Andres de saldivar y
• de Andrea Rangel

Go to my Author’s Facebook page to find a digital image of this banns of matrimony record, posted on January 21, 2013: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jos%C3%...

I also located a copy of the marriage record of a sister of doña Beatriz Cortés. Gerónima Rangel, identified as a daughter of Juan Andrés Zaldívar and doña Beatriz Cortés, was married on February 13, 1638, Santa Catalina Church, Mexico City, with Cristóbal Rincón, a resident of Mexico City and the widower of Ana Sánchez.

Those who are familiar with the early history of New Spain and Nueva Galicia are familiar with the famous surnames of Cortés and Zaldívar. In my 1994 Paredes essay, I wrote: “Gerónima Rangel used her maternal surname while her sister, doña Beatriz Cortés, most likely drew her surname from one of her grandparents.

It is the use of the family names of Zaldívar and Cortés which hints at the possibility that Doña Beatriz Cortés may have been a descendant of Don Cristóbal de Zaldívar y Mendoza and Doña Leonor Cortés Moctezuma. Additional research is needed to confirm or deny this supposition.” This statement was misinterpreted by readers who added the names of Cristóbal de Zaldívar y Mendoza and Doña Leonor Cortés Moctezuma to their genealogy charts and databases and has been erroneously spread across the Internet

I have conducted research and published extensively on the Zaldívar family, extending the family lineage as far back as the early 1400s with primary records, and have not yet found any records to confirm a genealogical link between doña Beatriz Cortés and any branch of the Zaldívar family or any known descendants of Hernán Cortés. Some readers have simply added the names of Cristóbal de Zaldívar and Leonor Cortés as parents of Juan Andrés de Zaldívar, despite the lack of documentation.

Still, the search continues!