Author unearths Socorro land grant history

Published October 2025, Robert J.C. Baca’s book “History and Families of the Socorro Land Grant: Part 1: The Baca Family and Their Descendants” is the culmination of over two decades of research and writing.

Baca, an Albuquerque-based teacher and genealogist, has been digging into the tangled history of the Socorro Land Grant — a story that involves Spanish colonization, the Pueblo Revolt, the Mexican period, U.S. annexation and generations of family lore. His new book brings together years of archival research, genealogical work and family stories connected to the people who resettled Socorro in the early 1800s.

Baca, who grew up in Socorro and descends from founding families of its land grant, said his interest in genealogy began at home. “My parents and grandparents talked a lot about our family,” he said. “My dad even wrote out a genealogy himself.”

After his parents passed away, Baca felt a pull to learn more about his ancestry. What began with tracing his own family soon expanded into a much larger project involving the interwoven histories of dozens of Socorro families.

Although not a trained historian, Baca served as president of the New Mexico Genealogical Society and spent countless hours in archives, beginning with the Albuquerque Public Library’s Special Collections. About 15 years ago, he discovered documentation of the Socorro Land Grant, including three major court cases that shaped its fate under US rule.

While Baca acknowledges the history of colonization and its displacement of the area’s first nations, his research focuses on the history of Spanish landgrants along the Rio Abajo.

In Baca’s book, the archival records — depositions, translated testimonies, Spanish and English documents — reveal not only the legal battles but also everyday lives of the people living in Socorro during the late 1800s. They also reflect the complicated social layers of the region’s history, shaped by Native, Spanish, Mexican and later Anglo communities.

His research revealed to him what he calls the first case, which recognized roughly 800,000 acres of land whose Spanish ownership began in 1815 — a ruling later overturned by the US federal government. Subsequent such cases eventually reduced the Socorro area land grant to a standard four-square-league community grant, centered on the historic San Miguel Church. That land, too, was later sold off, said Baca.

His book focuses largely on the families themselves rather than the legal intricacies, reconstructing their stories through baptismal records, marriage documents, burial books and early census-style lists. One of his key sources was an 1818 distribution list detailing donations collected from Socorro residents for a military campaign in northern New Mexico. From the names — many of them incomplete or listed simply as “wife of” — he identified 66 individuals connected to Socorro’s founding era.

Tracking those families required patience. “You might see a name like Juan Montoya — but which one? Or a woman listed only as a wife,” he said. “I tried to recover as many women’s names as possible.”

The wider historical context, he noted, is just as complex. The land grant’s origins lie in the 1815 resettlement of Socorro, decades after the Pueblo Revolt forced Spanish settlers south to the El Paso–Juárez region. The families who returned to central New Mexico often came from Belen, Albuquerque and other Río Abajo communities, many of them related across generations.

Baca emphasizes that New Mexico’s multicultural history — its blend of Indigenous, Spanish, Mexican and Anglo influences — is not something buried in archives. “It’s visible everywhere,” he said, from architecture and land grant history to food, language and family traditions. “We can’t disentangle ourselves from it. It’s who we are.”

Baca will discuss his research and his new book during a presentation on Dec. 13. at the Socorro Public Library, with a book signing following at a location to be announced where he will sell his book in person. His book is also available through Amazon.