Mexican Catholic church internment records

Internment records are records of imprisonments or confinements during wartime. Records of Mexican Catholic church internments during the 18th and 19th centuries aren't yet indexed, but can be useful if used the right way. (e.g. The person of interest is not usually the person being interred.)

Catholic church baptismal and marriage records (which are indexed) often don't tell a whole story during this period, and internment records can sometimes fill in the gaps. There are lots of examples in internment records for the period of approximately 1780 to 1850 in which useful information has been distilled from them. Take this example from a sister in the Manhattan 1st Ward: ''There was a marriage record for a man with a similar name to one of my ancestors, for whom I found a valid marriage record just two years later to the woman who was my ancestor. It was only when I found the internment record for the wife of the man with the similar name that I realized that my ancestor had been previously married.''

There was an internment record for one man in the family which identified him as the widower, of "Maria Garcia" in his first marriage, and of "Dorotea Loya" in his second marriage.

''Even the internment of an infant has the information that he/she was the legitimate child of "Jose Garcia" and "Maria Vasquez." (Mexican women didn't lose their familial names upon marriage.)'' With internment records, occasionally, one may encounter a record with the number and even the names of living children of the deceased.