Juan Montes Vigil License of Passage, 1611

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. Therefore, Juan Montes Vigil was born circa 1586-1587.

A partial transcription of the license of passage by John Colligan is available at Jose Antonio Esquibel's Beyond the Origins of New Mexico Families website. However, it is missing the key page (folio 3r) where Juan Montes Vigil's age and physical description are recorded. And there is no English translation of it available online.

I transcribed and translated the entire license of passage and all associated documents (see below), from the original manuscript available at the Portal de Archivos Españoles (PARES):  https://pares.mcu.es/ParesBusquedas20/catalogo/description/144247?nm

(Contratacion, 5323, N. 29)

The first two folios are don Jacinto de Olmos’ and Juan Montes Vigil’s petitions from June 1611, in Seville, to grant the license of passage and the recording of the bond they had to place as a financial security, which was guaranteed by Gaspar Méndez de Navia. The third folio contains the statement of Sebastian de la Vega, in Madrid, that a license allowing Olmos to take Vigil had been issued, and that Vigil’s own license was in the process of being issued. The remaining folios are the backup documentation (certified copies) reporting Juan Montes Vigil’s genealogy, which were recorded in February 1609.

There is no new genealogical information from the complete transcription, and the witness testimony is repetitive, but readers may be interested to see the full details of those who testified regarding Vigil’s family and genealogy. When the testimony was recorded, Juan Montes Vigil was still the owner of what remained of his parent’s property in Siero, Asturias. The property was caught up in the legal dispute between his uncle Bartolomé de Vigil and Diego de Argüelles—a case that wasn’t settled until September 1610 (see my blog post series on the case).

The profile for Juan Montes Vigil in the Hispanic Genealogy Research Center's “Great New Mexico Pedigree Database” has his date of birth as “About 1598” which likely was an earlier estimate, before the license of passage was discovered.

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