Description

This collection contains more than 360,000 pages of handwritten documents from the Municipal Archives of Parral, Chihuahua, Mexico, for the years 1631-1821. Material in this collection documents the Spanish Colonial Era of Northern Mexico (and what is now part of the Southwestern United States.)

This primary source material, written in old-style Spanish, covers administrative problems and decisions, commerce, Indian affairs, slave traffic, law suits, criminal proceedings, etc. Reels are arranged chronologically. For each year covered, the material has been divided into the following sections:
Section I: Causas Administrativas y de Guerra
Section II: Minas Solares y Terrenos
Section III: Protocolos
Section IV: Causas Civiles
Section V: Causas Criminales
Section VI: Papales Varios

Location

El Archivo de Hidalgo del Parral, 1631-1821 is located in the Capen Multimedia Center MICFILM CD3676 .P3

Access

The last reel of microfilm is a complete index.

There is also a print index:
Index to el Archivo de Hidalgo del Parral, 1631-1821
Lockwood Library Book Collection CD3676 .P3 Index

The following references may be useful when researching old Spanish documents:

Northern New Spain: a research guide
Lockwood Library Book Collection Z1251 .S8 B37

Paleographic guide for Spanish manuscripts, fifteenth-seventeenth centuries: roman numerals
Lockwood Library Book Collection PM3001 .T8 vol. 2 no. 1