In the late nineteenth century, brothers José Albino Baca (born circa 1830) and Pablo Baca (born circa 1839) raised sheep in California, New Mexico, and Texas during the 1870s and 1880s. On December 4, 1877, Pablo penned a letter to José describing the financial ruin and ultimate demise of his sheep business due to bad weather and competition in California. The event set in motion Pablo’s relocation to New Mexico and then to Texas, where he resumed his sheep-raising enterprises with the help of his brothers.
The Pablo and José Albino Baca letters include sixteen letters and one envelope. José Albino Baca authored four of the missives. Pablo Baca wrote the rest of them. The brothers’ correspondence provides a unique look at the social and economic changes that affected the lives of ethnic Mexicans involved in the sheep industry in the American Southwest following the Mexican Cession of 1848.
The collection is organized into four series, all of which are located in one folder:
For additional material pertaining to New Mexico during the nineteenth century, see El gobernador constitucional y comandante principal del departamento de Nuevo Mejico, a sus habitants ... (DeGolyer Microfilm Mf80.01 reel 388, no. 3845), The First Printing in New Mexico (Z209.N553 M2), and Historia de Vincente Silva, sus cuarenta bandidos, sus crimenes y retribuciones by Manuel C. de Baca (F801.S5 B315 1896).
For more on the sheep industry, see
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This collection is indexed under the following terms in the Southern Methodist University Libraries' online catalog. Researchers desiring related materials may search the catalog using these terms.
Pablo and José Albino Baca correspondence, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University.
Purchase, 1993.
George A. Méndez, 2009.
Lara Corazalla, 2009.
The first series of letters traces the relocation of Pablo Baca from San Francisco, California to New Mexico following the demise of his sheep business. The letters chronicle Pablo’s request for help from his brothers in New Mexico, the travel arrangements which were financed by José and another of the Baca brothers, and a final letter shares Pablo's travel itinerary with his family in New Mexico.
The second series of letters begins about a year after Pablo Baca’s arrival in New Mexico. These letters document Pablo’s departure from Las Vegas, New Mexico to Trujillo, New Mexico. The April 13th letter, however, suggests that Pablo went to Texas. The first letter is from Pablo to a California lawyer named William Matthews, requesting that the latter come to New Mexico to represent ethnic Mexicans in land title disputes. The rest of the letters are also from Pablo reporting to his family in Las Vegas, New Mexico about his early misadventures and successes in the sheep business in Trujillo.
The third series of letters begins about two years after the last correspondence from Trujillo, NM though now Pablo Baca is notating that he is writing from Trujillo, Texas, which was located in the Lone Star State’s Oldham County. These four letters further discuss Pablo’s sheep-raising exploits, his financial situation, and his plans to visit his brothers in Las Vegas for both personal and business reasons.
This is a basic summary of the collection’s sixteen letters written by the seller. The seller annotated Trujillo, Texas with “sic,” suggesting that Pablo Baca incorrectly identified his location, but the 1880 census records reveal that Pablo Baca was indeed a resident of Oldham County, Texas, where the city of Trujillo was then located.