About us

My family is from New Mexico. I grew up in California and Connecticut, which meant I inherited the stories but missed the place. Most of the family stories end with some wild antic, like a shootout in a bar somewhere. No, this is not the 1870s "wild west" these are stories about the 1970s.

My great-aunt was a seamstress who began her career working in high-end alterations for a department store in San Francisco in the 1920s, when that city was called the Paris of the West. The women I research and the garments I reproduce aren't just history to me, they're personal.

If you are from New Mexico we are probably related. People often ask about this and I love figuring out how I am related to everyone from the old Spanish families. So, here is what you need to figure out what kind of cousins we are:

My maiden name is "Armijo" and we are from the branch that settled in Socorro/ Albuquerque sometime between 1693-1700. This branch intermarried with the Montoya family in the mid 1800s. There was a flood in the early 1800s that wiped out the baptismal records but a genealogy center in ABQ helped me trace these kids' births through their kids' births, which is why we do not appear in many of the baptismal records online.

The other half of the New Mexico family are Abeytias descended from a branch of the Armijos. This is the branch that intermarried with the Baca (and Cetabaca) family frequently 1850-1900.

Not to be confused with the famous Armijo family, who all named their kids after US presidents. Or the famous Abeytia family, one of whom attended the constitutional convention for New Mexico. Those are cousins.

My joke is that three thirds of New Mexicans are either Armijos or related to one. We all know how we are related to Manuel Armijo, governor of New Mexico. He is my fourth great-grand-uncle, so that should help you narrow down how we are related.

Below is a family tree completed in 1890, now in the collection of the New Mexico History Museum. The Jose Armijo at the bottom was born around 1649. Knock yourself out.

Oh by the way, if you thought I was kidding about the "wild antics" this tree was completed as part of a business contract for a dry goods/ jewelry store founded by the Abeytia brothers in Socorro, New Mexico. The contract stipulated who would get a cut of the money (thus the family tree) and had a special clause about what would happen if one of the Abeytia brothers showed up drunk. Apparently this happened a lot because there were many clauses, provisions, and fancy legal language about how drunkenness in the jewelery store would be handled.