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The earliest known inhabitants of New Mexico included ancestral Puebloans, the Mogollon culture, and ancestral Ute. Navajo and Apache arrived in the 15th century, followed by Comanche in the 18th century. In 1848, New Mexico became a part of the United States. Two years later, in 1850, Congress created the Territory of New Mexico, setting up a territorial government within a year. New Mexico entered the Union in 1912.
This guide offers a selection of resources and strategies for New Mexico local history and genealogy research. These include the print and digital collections of the Library of Congress, as well as external repositories and web sites key to finding forebears in the Land of Enchantment.
The Library of Congress has one of the world's premier collections of U.S. and foreign genealogical and local historical publications, numbering more than 50,000 compiled family histories and over 100,000 U.S. local histories. The Library's genealogy collection began as early as 1815 with the purchase of Thomas Jefferson's library.
