Original Jesuit Reports on Spanish Duchess's Properties in Colonial Mexico

[Mexico]: [Atrisco, Duquesa de]:

Administracion de Rentas de la Excma. Senora Marquesa de Astorga, Duquesa y Senora de Atrisco [manuscript title].

New Spain: 1752-1756. [1, Title leaf],[18]; [1, Title leaf], [37]pp. of manuscript. Gathered signatures, stitched. Minor foxing and edge wear. Very good. Untrimmed. Item #13010

An informative pair of documents from colonial Mexico containing an account of the rents collected during the administration of the estate of the Duchess de Atrisco over almost a four-year period in the middle of the 18th century. The first document contains records from August 1752 to December 1753, and the second document continues the records from January 1754 to February 1756. The accounts were maintained by a pair of Jesuit Fathers, Juan Maria Casati and Juan Joseph de Villavicencio, whose duty it was to maintain the estate; Casati compiled the earlier document while Villavicencio was responsible for the latter. 

Each record includes a description of the properties being rented, the amount of rents collected and still owed on said property, royalty charges, and amounts still owed on said charges, and expenditures, along with a "Sumario de Datas de esta quenta" and a resolution of the charges and credits on the account. The later report was executed on "sello quarto" stamped paper with the seal of King Ferdinand VI, who ruled Spain from 1746 to 1759. One particularly interesting expenditure mentions "freightage on the packing cases containing the money." A meticulously compiled and research-worthy pair of documents from New Spain detailing the accounts of a noblewoman's estate in Mexico. The Duquesa of the moment seems to have been Ana Nicolasa de Guzmán y Córdoba Osorio y Dávila, fourth Duchess of Atrisco.

This collection appeared as item 2101 in Maggs Bros. landmark Bibliotheca Americana et Philippina, Part III, catalogue #442, in 1923..

Price: $2,500