I recently came across another awesome resource to help you in your Mexican Genealogical research. This resource will help you locate Mexican towns whose name might have had changed after 1888. It will also help you get more details about the towns your ancestors used to reside or live at. The resource I am talking about was written back in 1888 by Antonio García Cubas and it is titled “Diccionario geográfico, histórico y biográfico de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos” (in english “Geographical, Historical and Biographical Dictionary of the United States of Mexico”).
The importance of locating towns is imperative when it comes to Mexican Genealogy Research since without a geographic location it will be very difficult to locate documents about your ancestors. In my previous post “Website to Help You Find Where Your Ancestors Where From In Mexico” I describe how you can locate current cities and towns. The problem is that cities and towns do get their names changed. “Geographical, Historical and Biographical Dictionary of the United States of Mexico” will help you locate these towns. Once you locate your ancestors town you will have a description as to what state and municipality it belongs to, thus giving you an idea where to continue to search for documents.
There are two places online that you can check this resource out by yourself and I list them bellow including a screen shot of each. I also tried to search for the PDF version of this resource but unfortunately there are only two volumes online. If I ever find them all on PDF I’ll post them in another post.
Digital Library of Daniel Cosio Villegas:
The above is a screen shot of the repository that holds the five volumes of this resource. What is great is that it contains a list of all the cities and towns for easy browsing.
You can visit it by using this link: http://biblio2.colmex.mx/bibdig/dicc_cubas/base3.htm
Digital Collection of UANL
The above is another repository that has this resource online. The only unfortunate thing is that is is very difficult to locate anything but you never know maybe you may prefer it.
You can access it here: http://cdigital.dgb.uanl.mx/la/1080011597_C/1080011597_T1/1080011597_T1.html
I hope that this resource is useful to you. Please let me know int he comments if it was or if you have used it in the past let me now what you think about it.