Chavez History Library

Library, Archival, and Research Collections

The Fray Angélico Chávez History Library collections consist primarily of books, manuscripts, and maps.

Catalogs, databases, finding aids, and other links are available in the Access Chávez History Library Digital Resources section on this page.

Books

The collection of 45,000 books listed in the online catalog includes rare and fragile volumes, research texts, and general interest books. For example, the Rare Book Room houses colonial Spanish law books, nineteenth-century publications of Padre Martinez (from his Taos press), and first editions of many major New Mexico literary figures. In addition, the library contains rare volumes on Mesoamerican history (the Bourne Collection), thirty foreign language translations of Ben Hur (parts of which were written by Governor Lew Wallace during his residence in the Palace of the Governors), and a collection of over 4,000 titles about the history of the atomic bomb and the nuclear age.

Manuscript Archive

The archives house a collection of 650 processed manuscripts. The continually growing collection is used by researchers as primary source material. Finding aids are available in the New Mexico Archives Online.

The most prominent and frequently used manuscript collections include:

• Edgar L. Hewett Collection
  NEW digital resources available!
  Hewett was director of the Palace of the Governors, Laboratory of Anthropology, School of American Research, and founder of the Museum of New Mexico
• Adolph Bandelier Collection
  Bandelier was a pioneer Southwest anthropologist, archaeologist, historian
• Martínez de Montoya Collection
  Juan Martínez de Montoya served under Juan de Oñate, New Mexico’s first governor. Martínez de Montoya is considered the founder of the plaza de Santa Fe
• Mauro Montoya
  Montoya was a collector of New Mexican documents covering Spanish colonial to the territorial period
• WPA New Mexico Collection
  The depression-era program created a comprehensive folklore and folk history collection
• Ernest L. Blumenschein Collection
  Blumenschein was an important Southwest artist from Taos, New Mexico
• Lincoln County Heritage Trust
  This collection preserves the history of Lincoln, New Mexico, and includes a Letter from Billy the Kid to Governor Lew Wallace

Maps

The Map Room houses an impressive collection of over 6,000 original, facsimile, and reproduction maps dating from the seventeenth century to the present. The majority of the collection is listed in the online catalog and a selection of historic maps are viewable in the Digital Collections.

Notable documents include:

• Le Nouveau Mexique, appele aussi Nouvelle Grenade et Marata. The Coronelli map of the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico was the best and most exact large-scale map of the region from the seventeenth century. The library owns a 1742 copy of the 1688 original made by Father Vincenzo Coronelli (1650–1718).
• Mapa de ella parte interna de la Nueba Mexico. The Bernardo Miera y Pacheco (1713–1785) map shows a portion of New Spain labeled with the Spanish settlements and Indian tribes known at the time. It remained the best map of the region for fifty years. The library copy (in museum storage) is oil on canvas, ca. 1760.

Teachers interested in using maps owned by the Fray Angélico Chávez History Library as instructional material are welcome to request a copy in either CD or paper format of the 30-page guide Historic Maps as Teaching Tools: A Curriculum Guide for Grades 5–8 (PDF).

Online Resources from the Library

Online resources are of three types: digital collections, online exhibits, and digitized books.

Digital Collections

The library’s digital presence is limited due in part to the fragility of bound materials (scrapbooks, newspapers, books, diaries), a policy of only digitizing single sheet items (set by the National Archives), and copyright issues.

Digitized materials are organized into three collections as part of New Mexico Digital Collections, which is maintained by the University of New Mexico:

• Maps Collection (a sample of about 40 historic maps)
• Graphics Collection (nearly 350 graphics including architectural drawings, lithographs, posters, menus, political cartoons, and illustrations from Harper’s Weekly magazine)
• Documents Collection (550 documents such as letters, broadsides, sheet music, scrapbooks)

Online Exhibits

Browse all online exhibits from the Palace of the Governors.

• Between the Lines: Culture and Cartography on the Road to Statehood

About Angélico Chávez

The library is named after Franciscan priest Fray Angélico Chávez to honor his life and contributions to New Mexico as an author, archivist, and artist. His personal papers, the Fray Angélico Chávez Collection, are now part of the library collection where he conducted much of his research.

Biography

Angélico Chávez (born Manuel Ezequiel Chávez in Wagon Mound, New Mexico) was the first native New Mexican to become a Franciscan.

A prominent historian and intellectual, he spent a lifetime researching New Mexico history, writing books, scholarly articles, poetry, and fiction. He was also a self-taught artist and mural painter. Because of his artistic talents in seminary school he took the religious name Angélico, after the early Renaissance painter Fra Angelico.

During WWII and the Korean War, he served as an army chaplain. He later worked as the official archivist at the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, where he translated and cataloged their archives. He is the author of the important historical and genealogical work Origins of New Mexico Families. His personal papers, the Fray Angélico Chávez Collection, are now part of the library collection where he conducted much of his research.

A bronze statue of Chávez by artist Donna Quasthoff stands on Washington Avenue outside the building that currently houses the library and photo archives of the New Mexico History Museum.

More about Chávez is available from the Office of the State Historian.

Books by Chávez

History and Genealogy

• But Time and Chance: the Story of Padre Martinez of Taos, 1793-1867
• La Conquistadora: the Autobiography of an Ancient Statue
• Coronado's Friars
• My Penitente Land: Reflections on Spanish New Mexico
• Origins of New Mexico Families: a Genealogy of the Spanish Colonial Period
• Chávez: a Distinctive American Clan of New Mexico

Novels and Short Stories

• The Short Stories of Fray Angelico Chavez
• When the Santos Talked; A Retablo of New Mexico Tales
• New Mexico Triptych: Being Three Panels and Three Accounts
• From an Altar Screen; El Retablo: Tales from New Mexico
• The Lady from Toledo

Poetry

• Clothed with the Sun
• The Virgin of Port Lligat
• Eleven Lady-lyrics, and Other Poems
• Cantares: Canticles and Poems of Youth, 1925-1932
• Selected Poems, with an Apologia

100th Anniversary Symposium Speakers

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Chávez’s birth on April 10, 2010, the library sponsored a symposium of distinguished speakers, including historians, writers, and those who knew Chávez personally.

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• Tomas Jaehn, introductory remarks (8 min)
• Frances Levine, director of the New Mexico History Museum; Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan, Archdiocese of Santa Fe (25 min)
• Jimmy Santiago Baca, poet (10 min)
• Fabian Chávez, former legislative leader, longtime public servant and brother of Fray Angélico (15 min)
• Nasario Garcia, professor emeritus of Hispanic Languages and Literatures (30 min)
• Thomas E. Chávez, former director, Palace of the Governors (30 min)

• Tomas Jaehn, introductory remarks (8 min)
• Frances Levine, director of the New Mexico History Museum; Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan, Archdiocese of Santa Fe (25 min)
• Jimmy Santiago Baca, poet (10 min)
• Fabian Chávez, former legislative leader, longtime public servant and brother of Fray Angélico (15 min)
• Nasario Garcia, professor emeritus of Hispanic Languages and Literatures (30 min)
• Thomas E. Chávez, former director, Palace of the Governors (30 min)

• Tomas Jaehn, introductory remarks (8 min)
• Frances Levine, director of the New Mexico History Museum; Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan, Archdiocese of Santa Fe (25 min)
• Jimmy Santiago Baca, poet (10 min)
• Fabian Chávez, former legislative leader, longtime public servant and brother of Fray Angélico (15 min)
• Nasario Garcia, professor emeritus of Hispanic Languages and Literatures (30 min)
• Thomas E. Chávez, former director, Palace of the Governors (30 min)