In this post, you will find resources about the 1540 Vasquez de Coronado Expedition Members. As most Americans you probably heard about Vasquez de Coronado and the golden cities of Cibola in history class, not as a topic but probably as a footnote in American History.
His full name was Francisco Vasquez de Coronado and in my research on the earliest families and settlers of Mexico his name kept coming up.
Then through my research I came to find out that Francisco was the brother in-law of my ancestor Maria Antonia Sosa y Guevara. He was married to Beatriz de Estrada the daughter of Alonso de Estrada and Marina Gutierrez Flores de la Caballeria (my 12th great-grandparents).
This past summer my family and I did a road trip where we visited nine states and one of the stops was the South rim of the Grand Canyon. There I found a poster about the Coronado Expedition and was just amazed.
This prompted me to do more research on the expedition members. I already had some but not all of them. I came to find out that many of them were with Cortez in the conquest of Mexico, in the settling of many regions and cities of Mexico and in many other expeditions. Some even ended up in South America.
Here are some resources so you can find out if any of your ancestors took part in the expedition.
Book: A Most Splendid Company: The Coronado Expedition in Global Perspective
This magisterial volume unveils Richard and Shirley Flint's deep research into the Latin American and Spanish archives in an effort to track down the history of the participants who came north with the Coronado Expedition in 1540. Through their investigation into thousands of baptismal records, proofs of service, letters, journals, and other primary materials, they provide social and cultural documentation on the backgrounds of hundreds of the individuals who embarked on the Coronado expedition. Buy Book on Amazon
A Most Splendid Company: A Database of People from Sixteenth-Century New Spain
Members of the Expedition: This free website is the companion digital project to Shirley and Richard Flint's analytical history A Most Splendid Company: The Coronado Expedition in Global Perspective. On this site you will find a series of displays of the large volume of data the Flints amassed during research in dozens of archives concerning hundreds of people who participated in or were associated with the Coronado Expedition of 1539-1542 into what is now northwest Mexico and the American Southwest. View List
What I love about this last resource is that it is online and readily available and that it contains allot of Genealogical information as well as citations.
Book: Fundadores de Nueva Galicia Guadalajara Tomo I
This book is very rare to find but may be available at a library near you. One of the Chapters is called "Expedicion de Coronado, 1540-1542" and lists the names of the people that were in the expedition. It is not detailed as the above database, but it is still a great resource.
The above photo in this post is from the poster that was at the Grand Canyon.
If you are a descendant of any members of the expedition please let me know. I would love to add you to my database.
Hi Moises,
On my maternal-side, my mother's father Domingo Castaneda was originally from Zacatecas. He moved to Kansas around 1910 to work for Union Pacific and became naturalized.
He, it seems, was a descendant of Pedro De Castaneda de Najera.
As I was vetting all the records I could find in Ancestry.com, etc,(I can vouch for my ancestors up until the early 1700's with some modicum of confidence) and it suggested Pedro de Castaneda,.
Later I find out he was the chronicler of the expedition.
Is there some family book available?
Thank you so much for taking the time to look at this