There are two known wills of Juan Montes Vigil III, native of Mexico City, the son of Juan Montes Vigil II and Catalina de Herrera Cantillana. He made the first one on 1 October 1682 in Zacatecas. In it, he named his parents, both natives of Spain (Castile), his sister María de Herrera Cantillana, and his “natural” son (born out of wedlock), Francisco Montes Vigil. He also named Carlos Vigil, a two-year-old orphan child who he and his sister cared for and raised in their hous

In 1611, Juan Montes Vigil applied for a license of passage to go to Peru, via New Spain, as an “aide” ( criado ) in the service of don Jacinto de Olmos. One might be tempted to assume that don Jacinto was a man of considerable wealth and status to employ Juan, who himself was an hijo d’algo  (a member of the privileged class). But Jacinto’s own license of passage reveals that he was not a man of such stature. Rather, he was only 14 years old and a native of Cusco, Peru! Not

Recently a user posted on the FamilySearch profile for Juan Montes Vigil II questioning his estimated year of birth. I know of only two primary sources that provide his age. One is the license of passage from 1611, which states that he was 25 years old that year. The other is the license of passage, also from 1611, for don Jacinto de Olmos . Juan Montes Vigil was going to Peru, by way of New Spain, as his aide. In that document, he was recorded as  being 24 years old. Therefo

When Captain Juan Páez Hurtado recruited Francisco Montes Vigil and his family to enlist as colonists for New Mexico in 1695, he also recruited Montes Vigil as an accomplice to defraud the royal treasury. Governor Pedro Rodríguez Cubero uncovered the fraud in 1697 when colonists’ complaints prompted an investigation of former Governor Diego de Vargas and his right-hand man, Páez Hurtado. Since each colonist or family unit was given an allowance to enlist, Páez Hurtado’s schem

A number of secondary sources claim that my 8x-great-grandfather Francisco Montes Vigil was one of only fourteen survivors of the ill-fated Villasur Expedition of 1720.

Detection of Forged Grant Papers   The first time that questions were raised regarding the validity of the Ramón Vigil grant was during...

The so-called Ramón Vigil Grant was actually granted to my 7x-great-grandfather Pedro Sánchez in 1742 by Governor Gaspar Domingo de Mendoza.

In the last part of the lawsuit, the royal audiencia  rendered its final judgment in the case on September 17, 1610. It upheld the...

In the third part of the lawsuit between Diego de Argüelles (plaintiff) and Bartolomé de Vigil (defendant), the two parties reiterated...

In the second part of the lawsuit, Bartolomé de Vigil responded to the complaint, followed by another petition from Diego de Argüelles to...

Document from 1602 reveals what happened to Juan Montes’ family and his motivation for leaving Asturias.