Bancroft's Inquisition documents

Hello Charles and welcome to the group.

Regarding the inquisition documents held at Bancroft; I have viewed
part of the film that contains the petitions by Capitan Nicolas Flores
de la Torre (dated 27 Jul 1694) and Melchor Perez de la Torre. I got
through the entire petition by Nicolas, but only got through part of
Melchor's petition because of time constraints. Anyway, the gist of
it is Nicolas Flores de la Torre is requesting "dos Reales Cedulas"
for the encomienda de Juchipila. He testifies how, as the the direct
male line descendant of el Capitan Diego Flores de la Torre
Altamirano, he is the rightful heir to the encomienda. His petition
is backed by the testimonies, regarding his noble lineage, by
witnesses: Geronimo de Moscoso y Sandobal, Mathias Mejia and Matheo
de Robalcava. The witnesses state that Nicolas is the 2nd
great-grandson of el Señor Licenciado de la Torre, second Governor of
Nueva Galicia. Melchor's petition was dated 13 Aug 1671. I know
there are some older documents preceding Melchor's petition, but I was
unable to get that far in the film.

This film is of great interest to me because I have a Flores de la
Torre line that ties into this family (Maria Bacilia Flores de la
Torre b. abt 1740 in Guadalajara, daughter of Nicolas Flores de la
Torre and Maria Munoz de la Barba). Another item to note is that the
parents of Nicolas were Pedro Flores de la Torre and Clara de
Miramontes. I know there are a few people researching the Miramontes
family in the group. The film is not an easy read and a few frames
are nearly illegible. If you don't have the patience to go through
the microfilm (Bancroft won't allow you to handle the originals) you
can find the contents extracted in the book "Fundadores de Nueva
Galicia" by Guillermo Garmendia Leal. I cannot give an opinion as to
the accuracy or completeness of Mr. Garmendia Leal's extraction since
I have not gone through the entire film, but it is certainly a much
easier read than the film.

Good luck on your trip to Bancroft and if you'd like to join us at one
of our Northern California meetings please contact me or Alicia
directly.

Maria Cortez
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 15:10:15 EDT
> From: User176613@aol.com
> Subject: Re: [Nuestros Ranchos] Hello to all
> To: research@NuestrosRanchos.com
> Message-ID:
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>
> Thank you, Alicia. I am sort of new to genealogy. I have done a lot of
> snooping around on the internet with google searches and such. I plan on taking
> a trip to UCBerkeley in three weeks. They purchased Mexico's documents from
> the Mexican Inquisition. There are over sixty different docs. There is one
> on the Flores de la Torre family's genealogy from the the town of Juchipila.
> It was requested by two Flores de la Torre family members. I wonder if
> there was something bad that came of it Because I have discovered the Flores
> family descended from conversos from Sevilla ( sometime around siglo XIV or
> siglo XV).
> It was considered an incredible acquisition for the Bancroft Library. I
> cant wait to learn more.
> thanks again,
> Charles Flores
>