Francisco Montes Vigil

Francisco Montes Vigil and María Jiménez de Ancizo were colonist from Zacatecas. In 1695, in Santa Fé, he gave his age as thrity years. In 1710 he received a grand of land at Alameda, but sold it two years later.

He later sold the land and moved to Santa Cruz de la Canada. There is a land grant south east of Cordova, New México, in the Carson National Forest known as the Francisco Montes Vigil Land Grant.

~The Origins of New México Families, pg. 311

Capitán Francisco Montes Vigil died 11 September 1730 and was buried at Santa Cruz de la Cañada. His burial record, recorded in 1731, gives his age at death as 80 (b.ca. 1650). His wife died fourteen years late on 19 November 1745 and was also buried at Santa Cruz. Her name was recorded as María de Enciso y Giménez, and she was described as being over age 50.

Researcher: José Antonio Esquibel

Source: Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, Roll 39, Santa Cruz Church, Burials: 1726-1859.

Muster Roll of the Colonists who went to new Mexico with Juan Páez Hurtado, 1695. 424

Francisco, his wife and their children came to New México in 1695 with the Juan Páez Hurtado expedition. He is described on the muster roll as thirty, an able-bodied Spanish native of Zacatecas with somewhat curly chestnut hair, and a scar on the left side of his face below his eye.

Francisco Montes Vigil I, in 1712, was the Assistant Captain of the Santa Fe Presidio. 1715 - He and his wife Maria Jimenes de Ancisco distributed 40 cattle among several of their children. 1716 - He was in the Moqui campaign with Don Phelix Martinez, Governor and Captain-General of the Kingdom of New Mexico. August 1720 - Lieutenant Francisco Montes Vigil I was one of 14 survivors of Lt. Governor Pedro de Villasur expedition force that was massacred by the French and Pawnees near the Platte River in Nebraska.

Francisco married María Jiménez de Ancizo, daughter of Miguel de la Cruz de Lara and Juana de Ancizo, about 1685. (María Jiménez de Ancizo was born in 1674 in Zacatecas, Nueva España, died on 19 Nov 1745 in Santa Cruz de la Cañada, Nuevo Méjico, Nueva España and was buried in Santa Cruz de la Cañada, Nuevo Méjico, Nueva España.)

From http://rockstoroads.blogspot.com/ :

In 1710, Francisco Montes Vigil requested more than 100, 000 acres of Tiwa land north of Chaves and west of the Río Grande in return for his services in the Reconquest. He claimed “he was retiring from the army and had acquired a small start of cattle” and so “needed the tract in order to maintain his family, which was large, and also as a pasturage for his animals.”

Vigil and his wife, María Jiménez de Ancizo, had come north in 1695 in the group from Zacatecas led by Juan Paéz Hurtado. Vigil’s grandparents, Juan Montes Vijil and Catalina de Herrera Cantillana, had sufficiently established their ancient hidalgo lineage to be able to migrate from Estremadura to Mexico City in 1611.

His father, Juan Montes Vigil was an unmarried Zacatecan merchant wealthy enough to own at least one mulatto slave woman. He entered some real estate transaction there with Cristóbal Zaldívar, no doubt, some sort of kinsman of Cristóbal de Oñate.

When Francisco and his wife were interviewed by Paéz, they were able to satisfy him they were españols. They arrived in Santa Fé with their five children and a free mulatto servant.

Rather than settle the land, Vigil sold the Alameda Grant in 1712 for 200 pesos to Juan González Bas, a man descended from Juan Griego through his daughter, Isabel Bernal, who had married Sebastián González. Two years later, when he was about 49, Francisco divided 40 head of cattle amongst his children.

He remained active in the military. In 1716 he was with Felix Martínez in his war with the Hopi and in 1720 went with Pedro de Villasur to investigate French influence among the Pawnee. He was one of the few who survived an ambush. He was dead in 1730 at about age 65.

Vigil wouldn’t have been the only one to disguise personal motives in the language expected by a government trying to populate the frontier. Chaves may have said he was reclaiming his father’s land, but in fact he was requesting adjacent land. In 1705 he sold his patrimony to his sister’s husband, Manuel Baca, who owned the land to south.

FRANCISCO MONTES VIGIL and MARIA JIMENEZ de Ancizo were colonists from Zacatecas. In Santa Fe in 1695 he said he was a native of El Real de Zacatecas and thirty years old. In 1710 he received a grant of land in Alameda, but sold it two years later.

Their known children were: Maria, wife of Martin Romero and mother of Antonio Romero; Gertrudis; Elena; Domingo, who married Maria Estela Marquez; Francisco, husband of Antonia Jiron and then of Lorenza Medina; Manuel, who married Manuela Sanchez; Juan, husband of Ynez Lopez and then Nicolasa Lujan; and presumably, Pedro, who married Juana Trujillo.