Pedro de Zamora

  Noted events in his life were:

• Background Information. ²⁵²
According Chávez's Origins of New Mexico Families, p. 77, Pedro Zamora served as the Alcalde Mayor of Oaxaca, New Spain, about 1570 before moving to Mexico City in the neighborhood of San Sebastián.

• Background Information. ²⁵⁰
Zamora-Montoya a Promising Lead

María de Zamora (ONMF: 77), wife of Bartolomé de Montoya, was identified by Chávez as being a daughter of Pedro de Zamora and Agustina de Abarca. Chávez's source indicates that Pedro de Zamora was a former Alcalde Mayor of Oaxaca before coming to reside at Mexico City in the neighborhood of San Sebastián. Among the prominent citizens of Oaxaca in the sixteenth century were members of the Pérez de Zamora family. Members of this family went by these interchangable surnames: Zamora, Pérez, Pérez de Zamora, and González.

In the latter part of the 1500s there was a Pedro Pérez de Zamora of Oaxaca who was described as being "en corregimiento," which indicates he was somehow involved as a city official. His uncle Luis de Zamora (aka Luis Pérez de Zamora held various alcaldías mayores for as many as thirty years in the latter half of the 1500s.

Pedro Pérez de Zamora was married at Oaxaca and was a son of Alvaro de Zamora (aka Alvaro Pérez de Zamora). Alvaro Pérez de Zamora was a son of Alonso Pérez de Zamora, a conquistador de México. Alvaro's wife was doña Catalina de Ocampo, the third child of don Sebastián de Saavedra and doña Catalina de Ocampo. (Sebastián de Saavedra was a native of Sevilla, and a son of Sebastián de Saavedra and doña Isabel de Sanabria, native of Carmona \emdash belonging to the Sanabria and Sotomayor familes of this town).

Batltasar Dorantes de Carranza recorded the following infmation about the Zamora family: "Alonso Pérez de Zamora y Alvaro Pérez, padre y hijo, fueron de los primeros conquistadores de esta Nueva España; dejo muchos hijos e hijas pobres, y estan despseidos de pueblos, que son los peñoles de Oaxaca y otros que le dieron en la Provincia de Guatemala".

Was Pedro de Zamora (identified as Alcalde Mayor de Oaxaca and father of María de Zamora) related to the Pérez de Zamora clan? Was this Pedro de Zamora the same person as Pedro Pérez de Zamora? Further research into the genealogy of the Pérez de Zamora family, and into the records from sixteenth century Oaxaca may help to answer this question one way or the other.

Dorantes de Carranza added this additional information in his account of people of Nueva España that may prove useful in any further Zamora family research: "Alvaro de Zamora dejo un hijo y dos hijas; el hijo [Pedro Pérez de Zamora] casó en Oaxaca; tiene en la real caja 130 pesos y 200 fanegas de maíz en el pueblo de Tepozotlan. De esta caas proveen a Pedro Pérez de Zamora, en corregimiento, y a Luis de Vargas, su cuñado, en corregimiento, por hermano. De esta casa pretende Atanasio de Salcedo, por hermano: todos tres pobres: de esta casa no se prover a otro". This information indicates that Alvaro de Zamora had one son and two daughters. The son was Pedro Pérez de Zamora whose brother-in-law (cuñado) was Luis de Vargas. Apparently, Luis de Vargas was married to one of Pedro's sisters and Atanasio de Salcedo was married to the second. All three were considered poor.

Furthermore, Dorantes de Carranza gave this information about the father of Alvaro Pérez de Zamora:

14. Casa de Alonso Pérez de Zamora, vecino y conquistador de México.

Jorge González…………..hijo

Luis de Zamora…………..hijo

Alvaro de Zamora………..hijo

Andrés Pérez Meléndez, por la mujer……….nieto

Legitimos

Beyond Origins, Researcher: José Antonio Esquibel

Source: Batlasar Dorantes de Carranza, Sumária relación de la cosas de la Nueva España, Editorial Porrua, S.A., México, 1987, 145, 265 & 374.

Pedro married Agustina Abarca in Oaxaca, Nueva España.²⁵⁰ (Agustina Abarca was born about 1544 in Ciudád de Méjico, Nueva España.)