Mission Sacramental Records

As all Roman Catholic clergy are obliged to do, the priests who staffed Mission Santa Clara kept meticulous records about the sacraments at which they officiated.

• Baptismal records usually contained:
• • name of the person baptized
  • names of his or her parents and godparents
  • baptized person's place of birth
  • any other information the priest thought relevant
• Marriage records often contained:
• • names of both sets of parents of those being married
  • names of the official witnesses of the sacraments
  • in some cases, names of the witnesses who testified that the couple was able to enter into marriage according to the norms of Catholic sacramental theology

• Burial records are often filled with tragic accounts of the deaths of many native children
  

Painting of Santa Clara Mission in 1849, by Andrew P. Hill. SCU Library

Over the past few decades, mission sacramental records have proven to be of inestimable value in helping scholars reconstruct the rhythms of life in pre-1850 California. These different kinds of records offer clues about daily life at Mission Santa Clara.

Careful examination of these records has enabled anthropologists to recover the size and location of a number of indigenous villages, and thus has immeasurably increased our knowledge of native California before the arrival of the Spanish in 1769. Our understanding of the patterns of authority and deference in the Hispanic community has similarly been enhanced by a careful study of these records.

On the pages linked in the left column we will look at the first and last records for each of the sacraments included in the collection.

Page updated September 23, 2010