Originals or Not

Having spent considerable time with the Pilot.FamilySearch images of
christening records of Rincón de Romos and San José de Gracia,
Aguascalientes, I have reached a few conclusions I hadn't really
expected before.

There are a lot of inconsistencies in the records - mistakes or errors
- which I had first believed were mostly due to incomplete or
inaccurate information from the parties involved: in other words, the
informants were not well informed. But I've ben able to correlate multiple references to the same individuals in numerous families, and the kinds of
mistakes suggest something else: namely, that the mistakes (and there are
many of them) are copying errors.

For example, many of the mistakes are names that look very similar but
do not necessarily sound similar: like Castorena for Contreras, Chavez
for Chaires, Filomena for Florencia, Montoya for Mendoza, and many
more. Even though the handwriting is clear, it must have been copied
from handwriting that was not. I have even seen similar mistakes
within the same record, where for example the name in the margin looks
similar to but is not the same as the name in the text.

What further supports the conclusion that many errors are copying
errors is the organization of Rincón and San José baptismal records.
In any given month, the records for that month consistently begin with
records "En la parroquia de San José de Gracia ... bautizé ... en la
Yglesia de Rincón de Romos". These begin with the first of the month
and continue through the end of the month. Then, without any break,
but usually an inserted heading, the register goes back again to the
first of the month and lists records "En la parroquia de San José de
Gracia ... en la Yglesia de este lugar", that is, the chapel in San
José. These also continue to the end of the month, and then the
records for Rincón begin again for the following month. This format
spans many decades.

The only way these records could occur in this order is if they were
copied from some other books or papers. That would also explain the
types of errors that are present - the scribe couldn't read the
other's (or his own) handwriting. At times I am inclined to believe
that the real originals from which these were copied must have been
quite a mess. That the original registers might be copied
and the copies become the only known "originals" is of course
no surprize, and was probably quite commonplace. Temporary records
were made and then "permanentized" into another register, or old books
became worn and tattered and were copyied afresh - for which we can be
thankful. Who knows when the records were copied - it may have been
months or more than a hundred years after the real originals were
made.

I have heard that priests sometimes carried the books with them as
they journied to various localities within their jurisdiction, and
recorded the events directly into the registers. You can imagine how
such volumes might quickly become worn and damaged. I expect too, that
some head priest might combine the records made by several assistants,
creating the official registry.

Anyway, the bottom line is that it appears that many of the bautismos
from Rincón de Romos and San José de Gracia were copies, which
explains the types of errors often present in them. Knowing this
affects the way I interpret the records. The marriage records,
however, (some of them) seem to be more consistant, and perhaps were
more original. In my mind they carry more weight or credibility than
the baptismal records, particularly as to parents's names, although
one would normally expect the reverse to be true.

Studying these records has been a revelation. I'm recognizing more and
more handwriting idiosyncrasies. The other day, my wife and I were
both puzzling over a name in 1888 that looked like Erenpas when all of
a sudden I realized it was Campos. I would never have thought of
Campos had I not known it was a common name in the area, and also the
peculiar way this particular scribe sometimes made his C's. Once I saw
the name as Campos, I could not see it as anything else. I'm sure
everyone who studies these records has had similar experiences. If
only someone would tell those people to be more consistant with their
a's and o's, so I could tell hijas from hijos ... or better yet - why
didn't they just use a typewriter!

On another topic, I am a little puzzled by the term "auciliar". Rincón
de Romos was originally an auciliar de San José de Gracia. But San
José de Gracia is also sometimes written as "la yglesia auciliar de la
parroquia de San José de Gracia" at a time when San José de Gracia was
really a parish in its own right and not an auxiliar of anything,
except perhaps of the diocesis, if you can think of it that way. I'm
wondering if the term auciliar was used rather loosely, and as such
has no particular significance.