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Choir Master ofPopayán, 1621

•  Detailed here is the last will and testament of the choir master of Popayán, Colombia. Ramírez was an absentee office holder, for he lived in Peñafiel, Spain, indulged in this failure to take up his duties in the New World by the bishop of Popayán—who happened to be his uncle. The choir master’s wealth was considerable and while not itemized as in an estate inventory, it is more than hinted at via the bequests here of real estate (with provenance), of silver and gold chalices and crosses, and of cash in the form of coin. The bequests also give an interesting picture of the size of his family and the ranking of nieces, nephews, etc.

Certified, contemporary copy of the original.

•  Sewn. In good condition. Very legible notarial hand.

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The Choir Master’s Nephew’s Widow

  Gets the (that’s, HER!) Children

•  Don Alonso Ramírez was the past choir master of Popayán, Colombia, and his nephew Diego Ramírez Carrillo gave him power of attorney to his (Diego’s) last will and testament and to compile the requisite inventory of the estate. María de la Puente, widow of Diego is appointed the tutor and guardian of Diego’s and her minor children. The will is very standard with bequests for masses, etc. The inventory of possessions is lengthy and very detailed, showing Diego to have been a man of some wealth. Contemporaneous certified copy of the original document. Click the image to the left
for an enlargement.

•  Written in a clear notarial hand, but with bleed-through in the inventory, making reading slightly challenging — not, impossible. Very good condition.

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The Choir Master OwnedVineyards
   (& Maria Got Those, Too)

•  Don Alonso Ramírez was the past choir master of Popayán, Colombia, and by this document gives various properties to María de la Puente, widow of Diego Ramírez Carrillo (Don Alonso’s nephew) and Doña Isabel Ramírez Carrillo, Maria’s daughter. The properties include a vineyard (“nueve viñas” that Don Alonso bought from Diego on 9 March 1591; another (“viña a Manzanillo”) that he bought from Juan Arranz, the elder, citizen of Manzanillo, on 7 December 1612; a third vineyard (“viña a Majuelo”) that he purchased from Francisco Santos and his wife (María Muñoz), citizens of Manzanillo, on 20 April 1614; a piece of land in Manzanillo, in the region called “tierras de las Tapias,” sown with two cargas of seed, purchased from Gaspar Decian on 6 January 1586; and a house in the parish of Nuestra Señora de Mediavilla that he purchased on 16 July 1605 from the administrators of the trust that Joratalina Sarmiento established. Click the image for an enlargement.

A contemporaneous certified copy of the original document.

•  Written in a clear notarial hand. Very good condition.

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This also appears in the HISPANIC
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Oaxaca, 1656   

•  Detailed here are the accounts of the income and payments of the province of San Hipólito Martir of the Order of Preachers in Oaxaca, Mexico, for the twelve month period September, 1655, through August, 1656. The accounts are detailed and specific.
Single-click the image,
for an enlargement.

Seventeenth-century manuscripts from Oaxaca are rare in the marketplace.

•  Written in a clear clerical hand. Leaves separated from each other, but in very good condition.

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Colonial Support for theRoyal Retreat — MS. Accounting, 1781–85

(Subsidies for the Escorial).

•  Certified copy of a document relating to the 13,200 ducats annually due the monks of the monastery of the Escorial in Spain, promised them in perpetuity by King Philip IV in 1654. In exchange for this annual subsidy of proceeds from encomiendas in Huaylas, Chuquitanta, Conchucas, and other regions in Peru, the monks promised to say masses and to do certain other religious acts for the crown. This document contains specific and detailed accounting data for the years 1781, 1782, 1783, 1784, and 1785.

•  Sewn, in good condition.

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      A MAP:
Mixtec Region of Puebla,

•  Change and reform were everywhere in Mexico in the decade following the 1767 expulsion of the Jesuits from that country and from the rest of the Spanish empire. These reforms and changes were both in the secular and the religious realms of life. Secular changes were designed and implemented by José Bernardo de Gálvez (1720–87), who served as a visitor general in New Spain (i.e., Mexico) during a significant portion of that critical decade. In the religious realm, the continued diminution of the indigenous population, the shifting of agricultural and manufacturing loci, and the freeing up of parishes, churches and lands previously owned or entrusted to the Jesuits, meant reorganization of parishes, reassignment of property and church buildings, etc. Click the image at left, for an enlargement.

This map depicts the parishes of San Francisco Tlapanzingo, Tlachichilco, and Ygualtepec in the Mixtec region of Puebla, Mexico, extending north into the current state of Mexico. The map also shows various still-extant towns (including Huehuetitlán), others then-extant and gone now, various ranchos or haciendas, a number of smaller villages, and the now extinct river Guacapa (a pestilential black water canal in modern times). The map is accomplished in red, green, yellow, brown, and grey. The lettering is precise and the whole very appealing.

•  Very good condition. Two small abrasions in map area with minuscule loss. Clearly once tipped into a volume of manuscripts or other documents.

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Survey ofLand Holdings

Ulloa Troche y Sesse, Diego.

•  Gracián and Angelina de Sesse and Sancha de Casasola established an entail (i.e., mayorazgo) and in 1731 Diego Ulloa Troche y Sesse held it. In this series of documents he sets out to get an account, via survey, of all the lands in the estate. In the end, it develops that there are 58 pieces of land in and around Olmedo.

Don Diego styles himself “señor de la Villa de la Ventosa,” and a citizen of Olmedo.

•  Bound in limp vellum. Written in a very clear hand. Very good condition.

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Royal Wills — A Manuscript Compendium
From the Gavito Collection

Single-click any image where the hand appears on
mouse-over, for an enlargement.

•  This fine manuscript comes from the collection of the great 20th-century Mexican bibliophile Florencio Gavito and bears his bookplate on the front pastedown. It is a compilation of manuscript copies, dating in our estimation from the early part of the 18th century, of the last wills and testaments, and codicils, of the kings and queens who ruled Castile, beginning with Don Pedro, El Justiciero, and finishing with Dona María Luisa de Borbón. Given that the kings and queens represented here all died before the War of the Spanish Succession, it is reasonable to suppose that the manuscript was compiled during or very shortly after that war. The absence of the new Borbón rulers seems significant, to us, in the dating of the MS.


The volume was written on a single paper stock but by a (small) number of copyists. It bears an unidentified marca de fuego in the lower margins which usually indicates a religious library's ownership, increasing the possibility that the manuscript originated in the scriptorium of one of the orders. The purpose for compiling the documents is unclear, but since the various orders were in almost continuous litigation, and would often invoke the memory and spirit of a past monarch, a compendium such as this would have been extremely useful—especially when operating in opposition to the new, foreign monarchs, who, with their French ways of doing things, were to be challenged and "educated."

Provenance: Gavito collection; marca de fuego as above and below.

•  Contemporary limp vellum with yapp edges; recased and new endpapers applied. Clean, crisp, unwormed text. Marca de fuego reading "CDS" within a rectangular braided border.


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A Viceroy Who Was theSon of a Viceroy,
      & Good Viceroys They Were

Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Don Luis was the eighth viceroy of New Spain and the son of the second (also Luis de Velasco). He was one of the best of the 16th century and counted among his achievements the pacification of the Chichimec tribes.

In this manuscript he grants Maria Verdugo three caballerías of land in “el monte del pueblo de Quaguacan [sic, for Cuahuacan], terminos de Tlalnepantla.” The specific location is given as are the names of the property-holders bordering her grant.

•  Paper uniformly age-toned; mounted on a later, larger sheet of laid paper. Some chipping at the edges of the document with loss of a few letters. Written in a very clear notarial hand in black ink. Signature unaffected and bold.  (24527)

FOUR Documents — 17th-Century Mexico

•  On 1 June 1655 Viceroy Albuquerque confirmed Capt. Rodrigo Mexía Altamirano as the holder of the post of alguacil mayor perpetuo of the Tribunal de Cuentas. The viceroy further allowed Capt. Mexía to incorporate the title and position into his entailed estate. As part of his marriage agreement with the Mexía family, Capt. Agustín Urrutia de Vergara Alfonso Flores de Valdés obtained rights to the aforementioned title and position, that is, upon Capt. Mexía's death.

In 1678 Capt. Urrutia petitioned the archbishop-viceroy of Mexico, Fray Payo de Rivera Enríquez (usually given in modern histories as Payo Enríquez de Rivera), to be confirmed in the post. In consultation with the king, the archbishop-viceroy confirms him.

Two documents bear the signature and paper-over-wax seal of Archbishop-Viceroy Enríquez de Rivera, one bears the signature and paper-over-wax seal of Viceroy Albuquerque, and another document has a stamped signature of the king.

•  Sewn into a velvet binder with green silk ties. One of the archbishop’s wax seals is deteriorated with loss of text and paper. Else all in very good condition.

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Skirmish beforethe Somerville Expedition

•  In his role as Secretary of the government of Nuevo Leon, Vidaurri writes to the officials in Linares, N.L., informing them of the success that Gen. Pedro de Ampudia achieved in Matamoros in a skirmish with an unnamed force. At this time the skirmish almost certainly would have been with Texans who were probing in anticipation of the Somerville Expedition that occurred late in the Fall of 1842. Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Written in a clear hand and with the integral blank leaf. Paper good and document attractive.  (21767)

If We Put Off the Investigation,
    Maybe It Will Go Away . . .

•  Lic. Gabriel Javier del Corro composed and signed this legal statement on behalf of Gen. José Anselmo de Villavicencio y Torres. In it the general seeks an immediate trial of the corregidor of Riobamba, Ecuador. The corregidor, on the other hand, seeks to stall any investigation or trial until it is time for his end-of-term-of-office investigation (i.e., residencia). The charges against him are theft of land, money, and other things; abuse of women; the summary flogging of citizens; general tyranny; and overall abuse of office.

The corregidor seeks the delay knowing that the residencia judge will be his successor and that traditionally residencia judges were lenient: They tended to use the standard investigation and trial as means of learning new scams, singling out troublesome citizens from meek ones and the corruptible from the honest, and so on.

•  On Villaviciencio Torres, see: Medina, Biblioteca Hispano-Americana, V, 4432. Now housed in a quarter cloth (faux leather) folder with marbled paper sides. Sewing holes in inner margins, fore-edges a little tattered and dog-eared; in sound and useable condition.

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TWO Manuscripts . . .

Ybrillos, Spain.

•  The ecclesiastical cabildo presents for approval its revised statutes as per the bishop’s request. The first version had failed to address the question of burials: The new statutes do so.

The Castildelgado document is the settling of a dispute with the town of Ybrillos over pasturing rights.

•  Bound in limp vellum with remnants of ties. Written in clear notarial hands. A very little tattering; in very good condition.

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