More Mexican Records Indexed on FamilySearch
by Michelle Dwyer Cohen
How many times have you gone back to a brick wall ancestor after a period of time away from researching them? You looked at your old notes or research log, referring to a particular source, and said to yourself, “Done – already checked that.”
Maybe at that point you moved onto another source that you didn’t know about earlier – you found a new book, or a new collection on one of the popular genealogy websites that you decided to search instead.
At that point, you may have missed an opportunity. The major sites, including FamilySearch, will add new records to existing collections, of course, but they also may have recently completed an indexing project on a collection that had previously been image-only. And knowing when you last searched, or whether you searched an index in the past (rather than images alone) may help you identify a source to re-visit.
A great example is the amazingly large collection of Mexican civil registration and Catholic church records available through FamilySearch. Just a short time ago, without an index, any researcher would need a great deal of time and patience to work their way through very challenging handwritten records. And, as is typical in most genealogy research, knowing the specific area to search would have been key to avoid wading through thousands of images.
Working on a client project last month gave me a chance to revisit these records. FamilySearch has been using an automated indexing system to index some of these records, so be flexible with your spellings and search terms. I think it is just as challenging for the machine to interpret handwriting as it is for us!
To give you an idea of the detail available, I have translated and abstracted a portion of the marriage record of Jesús Bautista and Romana Delgado, one set of my client’s ancestors:
In the city of Charcas, 28 November 1877, at 5:30 in the afternoon, Jesús Bautista and Romana Delgado appeared before the civil registrar. Jesús is 28 years old, the legitimate son of Marciano Bautista, deceased, and Gervasia Martinez, still living. Romana, 20 years old, is the legitimate daughter of Gregorio Delgado and Felipa Sanchez.1
The record also gave residences or hometowns for the parties marrying and their parents, and
included information about their ethnic heritage, too. In this case, the record stated that they were indigenous people of Mexico.
To see what is available and indexed on FamilySearch for Mexico, you can search the catalog by Mexican states or jurisdiction, then click on church records or civil registration.
To check whether any collection you are interested in has recently been updated, use this link:
https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/list/ and then type your locality of interest into the search box.
Happy hunting!
1 San Luis Potosí, Mexico, Civil Registration, Matrimonios, 1875-1880, Bautista-Delgado, 28 Nov 1877, no. 137, page 169; database and images online, FamilySearch, “Mexico, San Luis Potosí, Civil Registration, 1859-2000”, film no. 004851915, image 395 of 570, accessed 12 Sep 2021.
