The Sebastian Martin Serrano Grant¹: A brief history.

Capitan Sebastian Martin Serrano

A vast expanse of some fifty thousand acres, which would one day include the location of Los Luceros, was granted early in the eighteenth century to a descendant of one of New Mexico's first families, Capitan Sebastian Martin Serrano. Sebastian's great grandparents, Hernan Martin Serrano (a native of Zacatecas in Mexico) and Juana Rodriguez were among the original settlers of the 1598 Oriate colony established near the San Juan Pueblo. According to the 1597 muster roll, Hernan was the sargento of the expedition. A resident of Santa Fe in 1626; at seventy years of age he was considered an ancient settler.

Hernan's son (Luis Martin Serrano) and wife Catalina de Salazar lived at La Canada, where Luis served as alcalde mayor before the Pueblo Revolt. Hernan's grandsons returned with the Reconquest of 1693 to become the progenitors of a large New Mexico family. Among them were Luis's son and daughter-in-law (Sebastian's parents), Pedro Martiti Serrano y Salazar and Juana de Arguello, who resettled in the La Canada area. In 1726 Ana Maria Martin, a granddaughter of Pedro's brother, Domingo Martin Serrano, would marry into the Lucero family.

The double name Martin Serrano was eventually lost leaving the surnames Serrano and Martin appearing alone. In the nineteenth century the "Martins" came to be known by the Spanish plural, Los Martines. The later change to a final "z" turned the name into a patronymic that was also the name of other families first appearing in New Mexico with the 1693 colonization.

Among the fourth generation of a family that thrived in New Mexico as political and military leaders, Sebastian Martin Serrano was a well-known figure in his own right. Made a captain in 1708, he gained renown as an Indian fighter in campaigns waged chiefly against Apaches. In 1714 he was alcalde at Santa Cruz, although he was already in possession of the enormous grant that bears his name (Spanish Archives of New Mexico. His wife, generally known as Maria Lujan, was the daughter of Fernando Duran y Chavez and Elena Ruiz Caceres, who were settlers in New Mexico before the Pueblo Revolt. Maria's father, unlike the rest of her family, survived the uprising but did not return with the Reconquest and his lands in the Taos valley were held by his son-in-law, Sebastian.

Sebastian Martin Serrano Grant

At some time before 1703, the lands along the Rio Grande and north of San Juan Pueblo were claimed by a trio of men: Joseph Garcia Jurado, Sebastian de Polonia, and Sebastian de Vargas. When they failed to occupy the grant within the required time, they lost their right to it. Thus, in 1703 the brothers Sebastian and Antonio Martin Serrano petitioned for the land for themselves, their brothers, and a brother-in-law, Felipe Antonio Cisneros, who was married to Josefa Lujan, the sister of Sebastian Martin Serrano's wife, Maria Lujan.. In 1705 the grantees were placed in royal possession of lands, which extended roughly from the San Juan Pueblo north to Embudo and from the mesas a short distance west of the Rio Grande east to the river that ran between the Picuris Pueblo and Chimayo.

Sebastian, Antonio, and his brothers moved to the grant as required and commenced to improve and develop it. In 1707 Josefa Lujan, by then the widow of Antonio Cisneros, sold her husband's share to her brother-in-law Sebastian for 150 pesos, since, as a widow with minor children, she had no means of settling it (SANM I: 484). A few years later the grant was revalidated based on Martin's occupancy of the property since 1703.

In 1727, the minor children of Josefa Lujan (Esmerejildo Cisneros, Felipe Cisneros, and Juana Cisneros) laid claim to the irrigated farm land their mother had sold to Sebastian Martin Serrano twenty years earlier.. They received a piece of land located in the settlement of Nuestra Seilora del Soledad (Our Lady of Soledad) and bounded on the south by the town of San Juan, so they could erect a house and plant grain. In 1751, Martin Serrano deeded 1,640 varas (linear unit of measure of about 33 inches per varas) of land on the east end of the grant to twelve colonists who proposed establishing the town of Las Trampas.

Martin descendants continued to occupy the grant, so that when an heir, Mariano Sanchez, petitioned the surveyor general in 1859, his claim was accepted in full on the grounds that Sebastian Martin Serrano and his heirs had enjoyed uninterrupted possession of the land from the date of possession until 1859, except the portion deeded to found Las Trampas. The grant was duly confirmed in 1860 and, as surveyed in June 1876, was found to contain 51,387.2 acres, for which a patent was duly issued in 1893.

Puesto de Nuestra Senora de la Soledad del Rio Arriba

To settle the grant Sebastian Martin Serrano brought his family from the Santa Cruz area to a new location near the Rio Grande, a short distance north of the San Juan Pueblo. In 1712, he described his activities developing the grant: "I have broken up lands, opened a main ditch from the Rio del Norte for irrigating the land, built a house with four rooms, and two strong towers for defense against the enemy in case of an invasion, being on the frontier". The family settlement he founded eventually included a private chapel and the dwellings of other relatives. It was called Puesto del Nuestra Senora de la Soledad del Rio Arriba (Outpost of Our Lady of Solitude of Rio Arriba) after the saint to whom Sebastian dedicated the family chapel.⁶ In subsequent Spanish Colonial records, the community name is often shortened to Soledad or, more ambiguously, Rio Arriba.

In 1744, when Fray Miguel de Menchero reported on the province of New Mexico to Church authorities, he noted that there were 505 Spanish families living above El Paso del Norte comprising twenty-five hundred people (a ratio of approximately five individual per family). At the "hacienda and ranches of Nuestra Senora de la Soledad," he found forty families (or about 200 people) employed in agriculture, raising cattle and sheep.

By 1748 La Soledad, along with Abiquifi and Chama, had been abandoned for fear of Ute Indian attacks similar to those that had wrought havoc the previous year. Nevertheless, by 1750 these communities, including Soledad, had been resettled. The Spanish census of that year listed Capitan Sebastian Martin first among thirty-five households of Nuestra Sefiora de la Soledad del Rio Norte Arriva (sic). Family members included, Maria Luxan (Lujan) as well as Antonio and Francisco Martin, presumably sons. In addition, twenty-one servants were listed only by first name (Olmsted, Spanish and Mexican Censuses, 33-35). In 1752 the partido (district) of La Soledad contained 140 people (Jones 124).

Sebastian Martin died between February and December 1763, and his wife two years later, leaving seven living children. Her will states that she possessed a house of twenty rooms, half of the orchard with sixty-three fruit trees, and a little garden adjoining the house, which faced north. She asked to be buried near the steps of the church in San Juan.

In the latter decades of the eighteenth century, Soledad continued to be worthy of note, but unexceptional, among the places of habitation located near the river between San Juan and Embudo. In 1774 an observer found "some Spanish families at the Hacienda de la Soledad del Rio Arriba del Norte.... [doing] the same sort of work as those of the places already mentioned;" namely, "sowing all kinds of grain and herding sheep".

Two years later, on a tour of inspection, the meticulous observer Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez found fifty-one families (299 individuals) inhabiting a number of ranchos at "Rio II] Arriba" (Soledad). The river was used to irrigate fertile lands that provided copious harvests, and there were as well three or four little fruit orchards of apples, peaches, and apricots at Rio Arriba.

The small, eponymous, adobe chapel dedicated to Nuestra Senora de la Soledad was then under the patronage of Sebastian's oldest son, Marcial. Dominguez. He was generally not impressed with conditions in New Mexico but described the chapel in detail: It faced west and measured fourteen to sixteen varas in length by five varas in width and six in height. A "poor" window on the Epistle side faced south. The door was squared with one leaf and a key, and the roof of wrought beams. A small belfry held a brass bell. As was the custom, there was a little cemetery in the churchyard.

By 1782, another ecclesiastical geographic description of New Mexico rates Soledad worthy of a mention by location: "La hacienda and ranchos of Nuestra Senora de la Soledad del Rio Arriba lie twelve leagues (5000 varas per league) northwest from Santa Fe...It has a Chapel".

Eventually the names Soledad and Rio Arriba (referring to a community) fell into disuse, and the exact location of Sebastian Martin Serrano's frontier outpost is not precisely known today. It is understandable that Sebastian Martin Serrano's large complex with its large, multi-room home, towers, and nearby chapel so precisely described by Dominguez in 1776 has been identified with the most impressive historic building in the area today, the main house of the Los Luceros Ranch.

However, a careful examination of available evidence indicates that Soledad, while reduced in importance, survived into the mid-nineteenth century as one among a number of small, closely related river communities, including Los Luceros, which were located on the Sebastian Martin Serrano Grant. For example, birth and marriage records find descendants of Sebastian Martin Serrano living at Soledad, or Rio Arriba, into the 1850s, including the Sanchez descendents of Sebastian's oldest son Marcial and Cisneros descendents of Antonio de Cisneros. In 1844, when the Mexican government organized new jurisdictions, Los Luceros was made the capital of the northern district and the seat of Rio Arriba County. Other communities listed in order moving upriver were San Juan, Rio Arriba (italics added), Joya (now Velarde), and Embuda (sic). Thus Rio Arriba (Soledad) and Los Luceros are apparently distinct, if nearby, communities.

As to actual location, there is some indication that Soledad was closer to San Juan than the Los Luceros Ranch is today.' In 1727 land deeded to the Cisneros heirs in the settlement of Nuestra Senora de la Soledad was described as bounded by the town of the natives of San Juan de los Caballeros on the south and the land of Sebastian Martin Serrano on the north. Dominguez in 1776 describes Rio Arriba as just a league north of the San Juan mission, or approximately 2.6 miles, somewhat closer to San Juan than the present location of Los Luceros Ranch. Soledad is sometimes identified with La Villita, a small community just north of Alcalde.

^1. History of the Los Luceros Ranch: Corinne P. Sze. PhD. - Research Services of Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico.