University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications
Document Type
Dataset
Publication Date
2-28-2025
Abstract
This dataset was created as part of a larger study to recover the Belen colonial Catholic mission Church and the Plaza Vieja emergence history. By using extractions in Oswald Gilbert Baca’s Burial Records from the Roman Catholic Parish of Nuestra Señora de Belen, Belen, New Mexico, 1793 – 1900 as an initial source and comparing with the original register pages (available online at familysearch.org), I have begun to verify, clarify, correct and expand Baca’s extractions.
For ease in sorting and counting, I created a master spreadsheet with all the pertinent information pulled from Oswald Baca’s extractions and from images of the original burial registers. I also used the 1790 census of Belen and Los Chavez to help identify the deceased origins/class/ethnicity. Burials began at the new church grounds immediately after the opening of the new church at the present location of the current Our Lady of Belen Church. Therefore, I conclude at this point in my research that burials at the Belen Plaza Vieja church site (and neighboring properties) took place from 1800-1860. There is the possibility of some Belen area residents buried at the original church grounds prior to 1800 although the Isleta burial register notes that those early Belen residents were buried in San Agustin de la Isleta church or some at the Tomé church. There is also the possibility that some continued to bury their family members privately on the grounds after 1860 into the early 1900s.
By studying the Nuestra Señora de Belen church burial register, which includes notation of burials inside the church and the earliest cemetery burials, which would have been immediately outside the front entrance of the church, this work not only provides statistical information about the life and death of early Belen parishioners, but also helped identify potential areas for archeological excavation. The extension of this study along with continued genealogical research can also be used in corroboration with future archeological excavation results and DNA studies to confirm ancestor descendant relationships and establish cultural affinities of early Belen area residents.
This dataset was done in part as a support grant awarded by the National Council of Preservation Education (NCPE).
Recommended Citation
Sisneros, Samuel E.. "Nuestra Señora de Belén Catholic Church, Belen, New Mexico – Burials Register Extractions 1800-1860." (2025). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/ulls_fsp/212
Comments
As a result of over 4 years of archaeological excavation, several hundred loose bones and 15 full burials were exhumed from the original resting grounds and re-interred at the new Our Lady of Belen Catholic Church cemetery. The scope of the burial register extractions in my spreadsheet does not in any way represent or attempt to connect names to the bones extracted and reburied. The spreadsheet only lists the 2325 burials that took place at the original site. Except for the small percentage of bones retrieved and reburied at the new church cemetery in Feb. 2025, almost all the burials documented in the register remain underground at the original colonial church site.