As per wikipidia, the Basque Country is an autonomous community of northern Spain. It includes the Basque provinces of Álava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa, also called Historical Territories. As you conduct your Mexican genealogy research you will inevitably come across one or two ancestors that can be traced back to this Basque region of Northern Spain.
The eBook “Basques in the Americas From 1492 to 1892: A Chronology” by Stephen T. Bass demonstrates provides a chronological timeline of many of the Basques in the Americas including Mexico. For example he lists all the known soldiers that were Basques that under the command of Hernan Cortez and Panfilo de Narvaez. Overall Mexico is mentioned 312 times in this eBook, this just goes to tell you that many of the names mentioned settled in Mexico and thus they may be your ancestors.
The following is a short excerpt from the Foreword of the book:
The Basques have been a successful minority for centuries, keeping their unique culture, physiology and language alive and distinct longer than any other Western European population. In addition, outside of the Basque homeland, their efforts in the development of the New World were instrumental in helping make the U.S., Mexico, Central and South America what they are today. Most history books, however, have generally referred to these early Basque adventurers either as Spanish or French. Rarely was the term “Basque” used to identify these pioneers. Recently, interested scholars have been much more definitive in their descriptions of the origins of these Argonauts. They have identified Basque fishermen, sailors, explorers, soldiers of fortune, settlers, clergymen, frontiersmen and politicians who were involved in the discovery and development of the Americas from before Columbus’ first voyage through colonization and beyond. This also includes generations of men and women of Basque descent born in these new lands.
Cover of eBook “Basques in the Americas From 1492 to 1892: A Chronology”:
This book is freely available and you can download your copy by clicking the link bellow. I highly recommend that you download it and save it since you never know when you may need it.
- http://www.nabasque.org/old_nabo/pdf/Basque%20Chronology.pdf (Good LInk, Thanks Rebecca for finding the link)