Mexico Church Records: Difference between revisions

<br>In some cases smaller municipal archives within a state have been transferred to central state archives where the possibility for preservation and access for researchers is better. The municipal archives of Mexico—especially those in capital cities such as Saltillo, Chihuahua, and Mexico City—are excellent, and many have rich historical rudimentary level. For information on material contained in specific city archives see Patricia Rodriguez Ochoa’s Archivos Estatales de Mexico. Indexes and archival guides for many specific archives may be located in university and large public libraries in the United States. <br>During the middle years of the twentieth century, archives were organized in the majority of Mexican states to house accumulated records relating to state government agencies. Two categories of records generally comprised the core of these collections: judicial records and state administrative records (correspondence of the various governors, legislative acts, official state bulletins, court records, and so on). In many—although not all—states, notarial records for the national period were added. Some states sent in pre-1920 copies of civil registration records, generally beginning about 1875. Alternately, state copies of civil registration in states such as Chihuahua and Hermosillo are held by the central office of civil registration located in the capital city in Chihuahua, or have been held in a separate archives held by the colegio notarial, as in Mexico City.  

'''CATHOLIC CHURCH ARCHIVES''' An extensive and rich collection of Catholic Church records in Mexico exists beyond those of the parish. While parish records are recorded by individual parish priests, the role of bishops and archbishops is to oversee the work done at a parish level, including the maintaining of parish records. In addition their acrivities created records which are maintained at a diocesan level. <br>General records refer to documents that bishops or archbishops created by the bishop’s courts and asministrative agencies within that diocese and preserved in diocesan or archdiocesan archives. Each archive begins with the date of the creation of the diocese and contains records of genealogical significance such as marriage dispensations, censuses, and communion lists. Although many of these records have been filmed, only a limited work—primarily limited to marriage dispensations—has been done to index or even inventory them. One notable exception is the Archivo Historico del Aquidioceses de Durango, which has been microfilmed and indexed by the Rio Grande Hustorical Society located at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. This index can be purchased at their website http://archives.nmsu.edu/rghc/contents/contents/html.