I had started researching my family tree at the age of 11 years old in 1973 from where my older brother had left off in a class assignment. Making a family trip that summer to New Mexico, I had started to interview close family members. We made a trip to K-Mart to pick up some items which was to be ¼ hour trip and turned into a 2 hours in the store. My father was stopped many time by lots of people whom my father would tell me were his cousins. When we returned to my Uncle Salomón's house, I started to question him on how they were related. I started to write all this down, as many names were being mention.
When going away to University in 1980, I was introduced to computers. All my research I had done so far was written on paper in a dozen of notebooks. My mother had started to get involved into computer, and found a genealogy programme called "Brother's Keeper" (BK) in shareware. After reviewing the programme, I decided to use BK and started to enter all the data I had collected. Later on, I registered the programme and received an updated version. I been using BK since and download updated versions about 2 times a year. You can check out BK web site at http://www.bkwin.com.
Entering all the names into the computer, started to notice repeat names of relatives. The discovering that it was common practice in the area for relatives to marry, with a few cases of second cousin marriages. My father would tell me "In Socorro, if you were not related by blood, then my marriage." This is when I decided to change my focus of doing my family tree and work on the founding families of Socorro County. Now, it involved Valencia and Sierra Counties, and other places where families of these three counties moved in later generations.
About 70 % of entries on the database were compiled my myself. But other individuals have given information or copies of their database, which I had incorporated to this database from a number of people. I give a big THANK YOU for your help. Recently, I have been working with Gloria Torres de Armijo, a board member of the Valencia County Historical Society on connecting missing links and correcting mistakes on the database, along with new additional entries.
The database will be
updated monthly. If you notice any mistakes or want to add your own
database or family line, send an email to samquito
.
click here to enter the database
click here to return to Sierra County webpage
click here to return to Socorro County webpage
click
here to return to Valencia County webpage
This page was last updated on 16 February 2004 by Sam-Quito Padilla G.