Oral and written family histories

What's in the telling of our stories and telling of our lives? It depends........, could be a great deal or very little, depending on who's doing the telling and who's doing the listening.

I, because I've been consumed with geneaological research for the last year and a half, communicate this to almost anyone who will listen, who is family or may be family or may want to be family or may want to just listen to me babble.

In one of my spurts a few months back, I began to relate to one of my sister's friends who is from Mexico with ancestors from Monterey, Nuevo Leon and from Chihuahua how I was doing family research. One conversation led to another and while she listened to my musings she interrupted me to say that she believed we might be related to her boyfriend, as he had mentioned in their long courtship some of the same family names and the same towns and ranchos. She then told us that he had a book on Nochistlan which I assumed would be Jose Luis Vasquez y Rodriguez de Frias' book. I showed her my copy of this book and she said it was a different one that focused on the Duranes of Nochistlan, Zac, written by a Duran of Nochistlan. A couple of weeks later she came with her boyfriend. Sure enough, her boyfriend's grandparents were from Nochistlan.

Last night they dropped by with this book, written in spanish by Ingeniero Jesus Duran Rodriguez with a prologue by Mariano Gonzalez Leal. The title is; NOCHISTLAN, ZACATECAS, Su Parroquia, Los Duran y otras familias antiguas. Estudio Historico-Genealogico. It is 349 long delicious pages of local history.
This hardback book was printed in 1991 in Monterrey, N.L, Mexico and has many photographs but it does not have an ISBN number.
They let me borrow this book and will allow me to present it to our next Northern California meeting to be held in July in Brentwood Ca.They might also consider attending this meeting with me if their schedule allows it. If there are any of you out there from the Nochistlan area or any other town mentioned below that are interested in research of this area, this book is full of family and histrorical data.

Some of the other Zacatecas towns are Apulco, Jalpa, Toyahua, Tenayuca, Cofradia de la Animas and Tlachichila. It also includes families from Mexticacan, Yahualica, Jalostitlan, Tepatitlan and Teocaltiche Jalisco as well as Aguascalientes. It lists property owners, Census records, death, marriage, baptism and church records, slavery in Nochistlan and much local and regional history since the founding of this city.

That's all for now,
Alicia Avelar Olmos de Carrillo