Scope and Content Note
The collection of Henry Albert Monday (1876-1944) consists of manuscript and published material that relates chiefly to Mexico in the period 1522-1935. Prominent among the manuscripts are legal and financial records including contracts, powers of attorney, promissory notes, tax and expenditure accounts, and reports. Personal papers include correspondence, notes, and government and commission reports. Printed items consist of codes of laws, grammars and vocabularies, medical books, music, and newspapers. Most of the material is in Spanish but there is a small amount in Nahuatl, and there are some photocopies. The collection is organized in seven series: Viceregal Administration, Audienca, Catholic Church, Colonial Noninstitutional, Independence and National Period, Central America, and Microfilm of Material Retained by the Donor.
Although the provenance of individual items as well as the collections policy of Monday cannot at this time be documented, evidence suggests that he acquired the bulk of the collection between 1918 and 1930 and that it reflects his interest in Mexican historical figures, the Catholic Church, colonial elites, the Emperor Maximilian, and Indian culture. Born in Kaufman County, Texas, in 1876, Monday apparently developed his historical interests after moving to Mexico in the early 1900s to work as a doctor in Oaxaca. Sometime between 1916 and 1920 he moved to Mexico City and began a medical practice there, ultimately becoming chief surgeon and medical adviser in the American Hospital. Through his friends in Oaxaca (most importantly, General Guillermo Mexueiro), his practice, and his active participation in the Masonic Lodge and affairs of the American community in Mexico City, Monday was able to meet many prominent Mexicans, including General Alvaro Obregón and members of his official family. By the time he died in June 1944, Monday was reputed to have one of the largest private collections of manuscripts and antiquities in Mexico City. His care of the material is evidenced in the collection by occasional bookplates, autograph notes, and the small circle labels on the covers of volumes that carry his identification numbers.
The collection has been organized into several series, the largest of which relates to the Catholic Church. This series contains a large number of records concerning the Dominican Order in the Diocese of Puebla. Primarily bound documents, they include extensive legal papers relating to such matters as intra-order disputes of the mid-and late seventeenth century, church-state relations, and the Inquisition. Topics include a conflict between the province of Santiago of Mexico City and its offshoot, the province of San Miguel and Santos Angeles of Puebla, over division of property and control of the Colegio de San Luis, as well as an extended dispute over the election of provincials and priors of the convent of Puebla between 1661 and 1717.
The Catholic Church series also contains material concerning the relationship of the Dominicans to the economic life of Puebla during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Unlike many other organizations in the Catholic Church, the Dominicans did not depend on the receipt of interest from passively managed endowments for their support. Rather, like the Jesuits, they supported themselves by actively managing both endowments and real property. Thus their records include extensive documentation of their financial dealings and titles to both urban and rural property. There are a number of large volumes containing promissory notes, contracts for censos, capellanias, and other endowments, as well as payments on these items.
Also among the Dominican-related materials are the papers of three seventeenth-century benefactors, Francisco de Aguilar, Domingo de la Edeza Verástegui, and Juan de Narváez. Although Edeza Verástegui’s papers relate primarily to his bequest, the papers of the other two include a considerable amount of correspondence and legal material that offer insight into their lives. Narváez’s documents, for example, include details of merchant partnerships and correspondence with hacienda administrators from the sixteenth century. Also of value for the social history of Puebla is the book of professions of the Dominican convent of Puebla that is complete from 1611 to 1732. Among non-Dominican materials in the Catholic Church series are such items as a manuscript copy of the 1639 history of the Franciscan province of Michoacan by Fray Alonso de la Rea, the books of acts for several cofradias, a volume of reports from the mid-eighteenth century concerning finances of the Cathedral Chapter of the Archdiocese of Mexico City, a three-volume work on the rules for ringing the cathedral bells, and a volume of informaciones for those competing in oposiciones a familiaturas in the Colegio de San Pablo of Puebla between 1712 and 1765.
Notable items in the Catholic Church series include volumes of tax and expenditures records for the corregimiento of Mexico City during the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century, a book detailing the payments of pensions by the abastecedor de carne for the city from 1726 to 1749, and a summary of all cédulas and mercedes granted to the city, or referring to it, between 1522 and 1775. The section on reports contains a bound volume of official orders and reports on the promotion of hemp and flax between 1783 and 1786, and the section on Indian villages includes three volumes of indexes and document summaries created in the 1850s by a privately employed researcher detailing colonial documents related to property titles of Indian villages.
Contained in the Colonial Noninstitutional series are printed works as well as manuscript items. Among the more significant pieces is a volume of titles for the Tenoría Hacienda.
The Independence and National Period series contains a volume of broadsides and circulars issued by the government of Agustin de Iturbide between January and July 1822, the manuscript of a proposal by Manuel Orozco y Berra for a new political division of Mexico, a large group of photographic negatives pertaining to the household and family of Emperor Maximilian*, two volumes of reports of the Mixed British-Mexican Commission on Claims in 1889, and issues of the official newspaper of the Republican government of Oaxaca, La Victoria, in 1864. It also includes private correspondence of Félix María Calleja del Rey, Augstín de Iturbide, Alvaro Obregón, and other figures of Mexican history.
*Although the negatives have been transferred to the Prints and Photographs Division, some have been printed and retained with the collection.
The Central America series consists of only two items: a group of notarized receipts dated 1535-1545 from Santiago de Guatemala, and papers related to a plan to settle and fortify the port and river of San Juan in the province of Nicaragua, 1821-1823.
The collection is augmented throughout by photocopies of material collected by Monday but retained by his daughter, Virginia May Monday de Ovalle, at the time the collection was purchased by the Library. This material is also available on three reels of microfilm, shelf number 18,663, and listed as the final series of the collection, Microfilm of Material Retained by the Donor.