Earlier today I received the following email from Crispin Rendon. It is his review of the just released book named, Nuevo Leon: Causas Criminales 1600 to 1900 it literally translates to Nuevo Leon: Criminal cases 1600 to 1900. After you read the email you can read my opinion about the book.
Email from Crispin Rendon:
This email is going out to everyone in my genealogy address book.
I think some of you may be interested.
There is no need to respond.
Nuevo Leon Crime Book Review
Nuevo León: Causas Criminales 1600 a 1900
Book in pdf format sold at $73.32 U.S. Dollars (I used PayPal)
The book was sent as an email attachment (no shipping fee required)
For further information contact
Benicio Samuel Sanchez
Genealogista e Historiador Familiar
Email: [email protected]
This book is 568 pages without an index but could have been 200 with some judicious formatting changes.
This book is a listing of criminal cases from the Mexican State of Nuveo Leon.
A total of 1,106 criminal cases dating from Nov 23, 1621 to Apr 19 1897
1600s(186 cases)
1700s(456 cases)
1800s(464 cases)
Each case is laid out in the follow data fields:
Fondo, Seccion de Fondo, Serie, Titulo, Lenga, Luga, Fecha, Fojas, Coleccion, Volumen, Expediente, Folio, Notas, Descipcion.
All of the Lengua fields have “ESPAÑOL” and all of Coleccion fields have “CAUSAS CRIMINALES”. (Word Bloat?)
24 records have no title or description given.
Inconsistent use of accents marks make a pdf reader Seach feature a hit or miss.
If you search for Valle de PILON your search will miss VALLE DEL PILÓN
Descriptions are short and may be identical to the title field.
The large Genealogia logo watermark found centered on each page is sure to annoy most readers
This book could benefit from some more editing.
Why is this book important?
I see it as a valuable resource.
Today, we learn about crime from newspapers, television and radio. Why is it presented to us at all?
I think it is because we want to know about it! If daily crime is not enough for us, we read crime novels.
I read the whole book in two days. That is more crime than you will every find in a crime novel.
There is little or no genealogy information in this book but I found some of the people presented in this book also in my genealogy database. Some were criminals and others victims.
One women, appearing in this book also will be found in my soon to appear “Families of Salinas Victoria” book. She beat her servant to death.
Juliana de las Casas, who is an ancestor to thousands of people in my database, appears as a victim.
There are few other cases of people found in my records.
The bottom line is if you want to know more about any of these crimes you have the details in the book for how to find it in the archives.
Best Regards,
Crispin Rendon
My Opinion:
I hope that this email either helps you decide as to weather buy the book or not. A few days ago I saw Benicio’s post on his website and thus was excited just by the name of the book, but then when he showed a sample of one of the entries I made up my mind to not even bother with it. Since I immediately recognized that it had the same format from the Archives of Monterrey Website. You can get the link on my previous post Archivos Historicos de Monterrey – Historical Archives of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico but, I might be mistaken.
Once you are at the Website for the Monterrey Archives, you can select Spanol as Lengua and then Colleccion Causas Criminales and finally press buscar and you will get the hundreds if not thousands of cases not just of Monterrey but surrounding localities such as Cerralvo.
What I am really exited and can’t wait for is Crispin’s book, Families of Salinas Victoria. His books are the best! Please leave your comments on the comment section.
