Family papers

Scope and Content Collection consists primarily of correspondence, but also includes contracts, account documents, power-of-attorney claims, and other materials. Series I consists primarily of letters to Chavez from various family members and friends. Includes a funeral corrido (ballad), a letter requesting smallpox vaccinations, and a letter from Archbishop Lamy refusing to establish a new religious order in New Mexico. Series II consists of letters to Chavez from business associates, including Miguel A. Otero...

Scope and Content Collection consists of photocopies of documents involving members of the Mariano Chavez family and others. Most of the materials concern land grants, wills and estates, land conveyances, and litigation over land and water disputes in New Mexico during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Other materials include inventories of personal property, a license to build a chapel at San Jose de Chama (1844), a geneaology of the Chavez family, a collection of alabados (religious verses), and...