Lineage of Bernardo Mirabal

Document from The Spanish Archives of New Mexico, dated 5 October 1761, referring to Bernardo Mirabal.

The March 2025 edition of the New Mexico Genealogist includes my article, "Who Were the Parents of Bernardo Mirabal? Breaking Through an Adobe Wall." The article reveals the lineage of Bernardo Mirabal, who was born circa 1737 in Rio Arriba, New Mexico. Although no baptism or marriage records for Bernardo have yet been found, in the article I demonstrate how other types of documents can provide definitive proof of family relationships.

One such set of documents is the Spanish Archives of New Mexico. Ralph Emerson Twitchell compiled and chronologically arranged many of the documents from these archives with brief summaries of their contents in English in his two-volume 1914 publication. This valuable resource and the New Mexico Land Grant Case files are available and searchable online at Ancestry.com.

Since writing the article, I discovered that Bernardo's father Carlos Joseph Pérez de Mirabal may have been related to Francisco Pérez de Mirabal, (born circa 1701 in Antequera, Málaga, Spain; died in Seville, Spain, after 1773). Francisco was a keyboard instrument maker, including organs, harpsichords and pianos. Prior to 1727, he relocated to Seville, where he resided in the Santa Cruz district, apparently near the composer Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757). Scarlatti was the music teacher of the Spanish Crown Princess Bárbara de Braganza who later became Queen as the wife of King Fernando VI. The Spanish court resided in Seville from 1729 to 1733 and fostered local demand for harpsichord and piano construction, which benefited master craftsmen such as Francisco.[i] In 1754 he made a harpsichord, which at the end of the 19th century was owned by the Count of Morphy, personal secretary to King Alfonso XII. Unfortunately, the piece was lost by the count's descendants during the Spanish civil war.[ii]

Additional research is needed to verify that there is a family connection between Carlos and Francisco Pérez de Mirabal.

[i] Laurence Libin, editor, The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, 2nd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, online edition, 2015).

[ii] Beryl Kenyon de Pascual, "Francisco Pérez Mirabal's Harpsichords and the Early Spanish Piano," Early Music, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Nov., 1987), pp. 503-510, 512-513.