The Mexico/Arizona Project

The Mexico/Arizona Biographical Survey was conceived in 1992, while I was doing research at the Tempe Historical Museum for an exhibit called The Barrios. It was the first effort to portray the story of the Hispanic community that had been a part of Tempe since the 1860s, but of which so little was known. Documentation on Mexican families was vague or non-existent. Only four Hispanic individuals were prominently mentioned by name, and in all of the written histories, articles, memoirs, and archival collections, it was never mentioned that Tempe was originally settled by Mexican farmers, or that the town continued to be a predominantly Hispanic community through its first 30 years. In fact, through nearly all of the published histories of Arizona, the contributions of people of Mexican ancestry in the late 19^th century have been virtually ignored.

However, these people did not disappear entirely. They were baptized, married, acquired property, and otherwise left their footprints all over the public record. And generations of their descendants still live in Tempe. Reconstructing their history required a genealogical approach. Genealogy proved that they were here and revealed a lot about who they were.

After documenting Tempe's Mexican American community, I began expanding this research to other towns in southern Arizona. In 1999 I received a six-month fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which supported initial development of a biographical database of Hispanic settlers in Arizona. The database now has records of more than 18,000 Hispanic individuals who lived in southern Arizona before 1900. Since June 2000, this database has been accessible to researchers at the Mexico/Arizona Biographical Survey Website.