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This excellent genealogy book (Spanish text) is entitled the origin of the founders of Cadereyta. Guillermo Garmendia Leal begins his genealogy book with a brief introduction, a list of abbreviations used and listing the events (1635 – 1639) surrounding the initial founding of San Juan Bautista de Cadereyta on 8/13/1637 and 2/25/1638. Then he provides genealogy documentation and descendant charts of ten of the founding families (see table 1) of San Juan Bautista de Cadereyta. Guillermo Garmendia Leal then follows by a listing of Cadereyta elected officials and elected dates of officials from 2/25/1638 to 1/1/1745.

Guillermo Garmendia Leal extracts the records of the book ‘Foundation of the Brotherhood of Nuestra Senora Del Rosario’. The records from this book provides a listing of brotherhood membership, elected members, donations, and the date of memberships starting from1666 to 1761. This would be useful for anyone tracking their Spaniard ancestor’s presence in this community for the years covered.

One of the best features of this genealogy book is the 1712 Padron (census) of Cadereyta and the surrounding area. While this Cadereyta census only occupies 16 pages of the book, it provides a view of the families that lived together in this area and time. The census listing provides the community, first name and surname, family member position (i.e. Father, Mother, and child), if the person has received Communion or Confession, race (Spaniard, Mestizo, Indio, Coyote, etc) and martial status. Some census records also indicated profession or number of Indian servants. This census also mentions several Indian tribe names that were used when describing Indian servants (Alazapa, Boca Prieta, Borrados, Boycaxamaras, Cacalotes, Cadimas, Cadimes, Guaripa, Pelones, Zamoranos).

"Note: To visualize what the Cadereyta community was like in 1712, I used the information that Guillermo Garmendia Leal extracted from the Cadereyta 1712 census, and produced the charts (Chart 1 & Chart 2) below.

This genealogy book also describes the last re-founding of Cadereyta in 1763 and how the city was moved and set up. There is also a listing of the heads of families that participated in this move. The last section of this book describes over 450 families that came from Cadereyta and participated in the founding of towns in Tamaulipas (see table 2). Guillermo Garmendia Leal concludes his genealogy book with a bibliography of his sources.

In concluding this genealogy book review, I would recommend this book to anyone whose has or may have ancestors from Cadereyta Jimenez, Nuevo Leon, Mexico during the period covered (1635 – 1763). This genealogy book does not limit itself to a description the founders of Cadereyta or subsequent founding families of Tamaulipas towns. This book provides information on the founder’s descendants and the subsequent citizens of Cadereyta. This genealogy book also provides several ways to track your ancestors live through their civic and church participation. Because the Author chose to use several diverse genealogy sources for his book a person begins to get a feel for what it was like for our ancestors to have lived in this time and place. Finally, with the added genealogies and census this genealogy book includes, it is truly an indispensable resource for genealogy research in this area.