Thursday, September 29, 2011

Francisco Romero de Pedraza, born circa 1633-1635 in Santa Fe.





The second son of Matias Romero and dona Isabel de Pedraza was Francisco Romero de Pedrazaborn circa 1633-1635 in Santa Fe.



My 3rd Generation information is from the article
The Romero Family of Seventeen Century New Mexico Part 2
 by Jose Antonio Esquibel
The article in it’s entirety is in:



In October 1660 his brother-in-law, Captain Juan Lucero de Godoy was planning to travel out of New Mexico and named Francisco in his place to serve as regidor (town councilman) of Santa Fe and as escudero of his encomiendas. Francisco formally accepted the appointment as escudero on October 21, 1660, in Santa Fe. At about age twenty- five or twenty-six, these appointments gave Francisco Romero de Pedraza the early experience of serving on the Santa Fe cabildo and committed him to providing the military service required of encomenderos in the absence of Lucero de Godoy for which Francisco would receive a share in the encomienda tributary. Francisco was apparently effective in demonstrating his leadership abilities and was appointed teniente alcalde of Santo Domingo, a post which he held in 1664.
Francisco Romero de Pedraza was referred to as "an Uncle of Lucia Gomez Robledo, daughter of Andres Gomez Robledo. Actually, Andres G6mez Robledo was Francisco's first cousin. This is an example of the Spanish custom of referring to the children of one's first cousin as niece or nephew. Francisco Romero de Pedraza sought and obtained the hand of Francisca Ramirez de Salazar in marriage. Her parents are still not known from surviving historical and genealogical records. The next accounts of Francisco Romero de Pedraza and his family begin Pueblo Indian uprising of August 1680, at which time he, his pregnant wife, and four children escaped and settled at El Paso del Norte. Prior to the uprising, this family resided in the Rio Abajo region from where they fled south to EI Paso del Norte with other families under the leadership of Captain Alonso Garcia.
             On August 14, 1680, four days following the attack of Pueblo Indians, the survivors of the Spanish settlements of the Rio Abajo region were camped at Isleta Pueblo where a general account of the recent traumatic events were recorded. The group then proceeded southward to the Pueblo of Socorro where they found the Pueblo Indians to be peaceful and apparently not privy to plans to attack the Spanish citizens as organized by the northern Pueblo people. Under the guidance of Captain Alonso Garcia, the various military leaders gave their opinion on the course of action to follow. Unsure of the fate of the citizens of the northern Spanish settlements, and being fearful of further attacks, the council of military leaders, including Francisco Romero
de Pedraza, agreed unanimously to seek a place of safety by traveling further south in retreat.
              On September 15, 1680, Francisco Romero de Pedraza was referred to as holding the military rank of captain when he presented himself in a weakened physical state for a muster roll of soldiers, declaring he was ill with chills and a fever, but resolved to perform his duties "in the royal service of both Majesties."
He gave his age as forty-seven (b.ca. 1633) and declared he possessed neither horse nor saddle, and his only weapons were his own sword, dagger, carbine
and a leather jacket. He signed the record, indicating he was a literate person. Nine days later on September 24th, he was identified as a settler and soldier receiving a salary in goods equivalent to two hundred and fifty pesos, and was also given a ploughshare, an axe, and four iron hoes, as was provided to all the settlers. In this account, his age was given as forty seven (b.ca, 1634) and a brief physical description of Romero de Pedraza recorded described him as being "slender, with a turned-up nose, a little deaf.

On September 29, 1680, Alferez Francisco Romero de Pedraza with his wife, four children and three servants, were accounted for in a muster roll of surviving families. All he was able to claim as a soldier was a broken harquebus, a sword and a jacket, most likely the same leather jacket he claimed fourteen days earlier." To date, the names of his four children mentioned in this record have yet to be clearly identified. One of these children could very well have been Baltasar Romero de Salazar, born circa 1672-1674, Santa Fe.
In October 1680, Francisca Ramirez de Salasar gave birth to Graciana Romero, who was baptized at Guadalupe del Paso on October 22, 1680, with Francisco Xavier as her padrino. Francisco Xavier, an encomendero of New Mexico, was a native of Sevilla, born circa 1630, who had come to New Mexico in 1658. Xavier married Graciana Griego, for whom Graciana Romero was apparently named. The family of Francisco Romero de Pedraza and Francisca Ramirez de Salazar continued to grow. Their next child born in the EI Paso area was Domingo Romero de Pedraza (b.ca. 1686 - d. 1720).
The New Mexico colony struggled to subsist in the El Paso del Rio del Norte region. Early attempts to regain New Mexico failed and New Mexican families resolved themselves to remain in the EI Paso del Norte area where they established several small communities along the Rio Grande. Some families chose to leave and settle in areas further south. Francisco Romero de Pedraza and his family remained and endured the challenges and difficulties. Francisco also continued the family tradition of serving on the Santa Fe cabildo (town council). In October 1684 he held the post of notary of the cabildo at Guadalupe del Paso del Norte and he was still serving on the cabi/do in the 1690s, being alcalde of Santa Fe in 1694. The other member of the Romero family serving on the cabildo during this period was regidor Jose Telles Jiron, Francisco's brother-in-law. Also well-represented on the cabildo was another prominent encomendero family, the Anaya Almazan.
 With the arrival in 1691 of don Diego de Vargas as governor of New Mexico, a renewed hope for returning to Santa Fe was rekindled when in 1692 Vargas secured a diplomatic agreement with the Pueblo Indians, whose leaders accepted terms of peace. When Vargas ordered an accounting in late December 1692 of the New Mexico families willing to return to the north members of the Romero clan were among six of the first ten family households numerated, including Captain Francisco Romero de Pedraza, his wife dona Francisca Ramirez de Salazar and their two children, Graciana, whose age was given as twelve, and Domingo, whose age was given as 6 (b.ca, 1686). Also in this household was a thirteen year old girl named Maria, regarded as a dependent, and a servant, Juan, with his wife and two children.

Vargas recognized the need for additional families in order to assure retaining New Mexico as a kingdom of Spanish crown. Initially, Vargas sought to bring back the previous residents of New Mexico that resettled in the realms of Nueva Vizcaya and Nueva Galicia. The conditions at EI Paso del Norte were consider so deplorable that even the consequences of disobeying a royal directive did not budge the former families of New Mexico from the safety and comfort they found further south. These families had no interested in returning to New Mexico. The only recourse Vargas could follow was to recruit non-native New Mexicans willing to be settlers. Vargas managed to entice some people from the towns of Zacatecas, Sombrerete, Fresnillo, and Durango with the prospects of receiving the privileges of pobladores, frontier settlers. To this end he recruited a small band of fifty volunteer settlers consisting of a combination of families and young single men and women. This group traveled with Vargas to EI Paso del Norte, arriving in mid-September 1693 and continued on to the abandoned Pueblo of Socorro because Vargas did not want this group mixing with the New Mexican families, whom
were regarded as being of a better social class. Among these settlers was a man named Francisco Xavier Romero, a native of the barrio de Nuestro Senora del Carmen in Mexico City, who married Maria de la Cruz, a native of New Mexico, on November 1, 1693, "en el Paraje de Socorro. They were the progenitors of their own distinct Romero family that lived in the area of Santa Cruz de la Canada.

At EI Paso del Norte, Vargas organized the New Mexican families willing to go to Santa Fe for the long expedition northward. The group left El Paso on October 4, 1693, and proceeded slowing on the old camino real, which was rutted by the run off of rain from lack of use over the course of thirteen years. The journey to Santa Fe was challenging, particularly due to the extreme cold and several snow storms. The combined group of New Mexican families and the recently recruited settlers consisted of approximately seventy families with about eight hundred people.
They arrived at Santa Fe in mid-December 1693, including Francisco Romero de Pedraza and his family.          .
The Tewa and Tano Indians occupying Santa Fe refused to surrender the town, representing a reversal in attitude from the previous year's agreement of peace that Vargas achieved. With his soldiers and the families camped outside the walled villa, Vargas attempted diplomacy. His efforts were futile. Concerned that the severe weather and diminishing supplies threatened to cause the death of more citizens the members of the Santa Fe cabildo called an open town council meeting on December 17, 1693, to ask for the opinion and the vote of citizens about the recourse to take. Captain Francisco Romero de Pedraza came forward to state his opinion:

 ... having heard the proceedings of the very illustrious cabildo, stated that it is his opinion ~ that the very illustrious cabildo, justicia, and regimiento should immediately be given possession of the casa reales where the apostate Indians have built their fortress and pueblo. Since they are natives of Galisteo, the lord governor should require them to leave, with the means most appropriate to the royal services, and if they do not agree, make them do so by force of arms. This is his opinion, and he signed it.

By December 24th as many as twenty-children died from illness and the "harshness of the weather." The stalemate in diplomacy came to an end when Vargas and his soldiers stormed the fortified villa on December 29th and regained the town through battle. The name of Francisco Romero de Pedraza does not appear in the signed documents of the Santa Fe cabildo in December 1693, but he did sign his name as a cabildo member in a document of January 1694. Romero de Pedraza and his family remained as residents of Santa Fe and were accounted for as leading citizens in May 1697, being recorded as the third household in the distribution list of livestock and other supplies. By this time, Francisco and his wife had another son named Antonio, who appears to have been born between January 1693 and May 1697. Francisco Romero de Pedraza held the post of alguacil mayor (chief constable) in 1702 and served as a member of the Santa Fe cabildo in 1701 and 1703.