Hispanic Immigration to the United States

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Many immigrants have come to the United States from Hispanic countries. Some Hispanic immigrants arrived before and during the colonial period and many continue to arrive everyday. The resources on this page may help you in your search for the city and country of origin of your Hispanic ancestors.

Spain
The ultimate destination for most Hispanic researchers is to trace their ancestry back to Spain. The majority of settlers in the colonial period came to the Americas from Spain. For those who came very early on there are a few websites and books with indexed information. The majority of this information comes from the Archive of the Indies located in Sevilla, Spain. While the records are not extant you may find information about immigrants who came between 1492 and 1790 in the following resources:

Portal de Archivos Españoles PARES has an online inventory of the holding of all the major archives and Spain and throughout Latin America. You may access the inventory of the Archives of the Indies through their website. Among the categories of the Archivo General de Indias or Archive of the Indies the following may contain information about early immigrants from Spain:


 * Casa de la Contratación 1492-1795
 * Catálogos de Pasajeros a Indias 1509-1701
 * Papeles de Cuba 1712-1872
 * Patronato Real 1480-1801
 * Ultramar 1605-1895

To search the PARES website, click on the words Búsqueda Sencilla (simple search) or Búsqueda Avanzada (advanced search).

Búsqueda Sencilla

In the field Buscar enter the name of the person you are searching. You can enter a date range to search in the fields desde (from) and hasta (until). You may also choose to search Todos los registros (all records), Registros digitalizados (digitized records), or Registros no digitalizados (records not digitized). Once you've entered your search criteria, clic on the word Buscar to initialize your search. Use the button Limpiar formulario to clear the search form.

Búsuqeda Avanzada

You can use the same options as the Simple search but you also have options to filter your results by Filtro por archivo (Archive), Filtro por signatura (Call Number), or Filtro por índices de descripción (Description Indexes).

Under the option Filtro por archivo you may choose to limit your results to just the Archivo General de Indias.