• Born: 1645, Bernalillo, Nuevo Méjico, Nueva España ³¹⁰
• Marriage (1): Lucía Hurtado de Salas in 1673 in Atrisco, Nuevo Méjico, Nueva España
• Marriage (2): Elena Ruiz Cáceres
• Died: 1712-1716, Atrisco, Nuevo Méjico, Nueva España at age 67

  Noted events in his life and other information:

• Web Reference: The Atrisco Land Grant.

• Information: 1680-1729. ²⁵² A captain by 1680, he fled the Indian Rebellion with the Rio Abajo people, but was the only one among the leaders who voted to turn back and help the Santa Fe colonist. Unlike the reset of the Chaves family, his uncle Pedro's family, and his first cousin, Fernando (the Sargento Mayor) of Taos, he did not try to impede the resettlement of New Mexico, nor did he ask to return to New Spain.

He passed muster in September, 1680, as a married man with four small children and two servants, and was described in 1681 as a settler willing to return, thirty years old, married, and having a good stature with a fair and ruddy complexion.

His wife, as learned from post-Reconquest sources, was Lucia Hurtado de Salas, who fled with him and their four little children in 1680. They returned with a much increased family in 1693. This is the most important Chaves family, being the only one to return with Vargas, and is thus the parent stem of succeeding generations in New Mexico.
Origins of New Mexico Families, pgs. 20-21.

During the 1680-1693 exile at Guadalupe del Paso he took part in the futile Otermin Expedition, and was one of the Regidores of the colony, and with the arrival of Governor Vargas he became one of his councillors. In the grand "ENTRADA" into Santa Fe, December 16, 1693, Don Fernando led with the Royal Standard as Real Alferez, but soon after moved to the ancestral lands at Bernalillo; here and at San Felipe Pueblo he maneuvered the colonists and Indians so as to forestall disaster during the uprising of 1696, though he had to disagree with Vargas as to tactics; subsequently he vanquished the Jemez Indians at San Diego Canyon, when they fled into the Navajo country. Governor Vargas, taken ill during an Apache campaign in the Sandias in 1704, was carried to Bernalillo where he made his will and die, presumably in the Chaves house, for Don Fernando and his eldest son, Bernardo, signed as official witnesses of the last will and testament.

By 1707 he and the family had moved to Atrisco, while Bernard and his young family remained at Bernalillo. At Atrisco Don Fernando made his last will on February 11, 1707, but he was still living as late as 1712. By 1716 he was referred to as dead.

His widow, Lucia Hurtado de Salas, lived with some of her sons until her death on February 3, 1729. Their ten children are named in their father's will in this order: Bernardo, Pedro, Antonio, Isabel, Francisco, Luis Nicolas, Maria, Catalina, and Pedro Gomez Duran. The four eldest had been born before 1680 in the Sandia-Bernalillo area; the rest at Guadalupe del Paso.

Before his marriage Don Fernando had a natural daughter, Clara de Chaves, mother not known, who became the wife of Juan de la Mora Pineda.

Of his three daughters, Isabel, married Jacinto Pelaez, and then Baltasar de Mata; Maria, wife of Antonio de Ulibarri, died without issue: and Catalina became the wife of Matias de Miranda.

Origins of New México Families, pg. 160-161.

• He appeared on the census in 1684.
1684 family of 9 persons. Has 20 fanegas of corn for provisions. decent clothing. children naked. Owns 7 horses, a saddle, fire-arm and sword.

• Land Grant: 1692, Atrisco, Nuevo Méjico, Nueva España. ²⁵⁰
From the Atrisco Land Grant: "Don Fernando de Cháves requests …the tract is also on the Rio Grande, commonly called Atrisco, also of agricultural land with its acequia madre and this one in from the bluff where there is an old house in which Juan de Perea lived going down the riverside as far as some corrals which Colonel Juan Dominguez, my brother-in-law, had and on said tract my father, Don Pedro Duran y Chaves, lived and also some other persons by permission."

~Beyond Origins, Vol. 2

Researchers: Gerald Mandell and Margaret Buxton

Sources: Spanish Archives of New Mexico, Series I, Roll 37, frs. 727-728 (U.S. Surveyor General records, Court of Private Land Claims, Atrisco Land Grant); Margaret Buxton, The Other Luna Family, privately published.

Fernando married Lucía Hurtado de Salas, daughter of Andrés Hurtado Captain and Bernardina de Salas y Trujillo, in 1673 in Atrisco, Nuevo Méjico, Nueva España. (Lucía Hurtado de Salas was born in 1653 in Santa Fé, Santa Fé, Nuevo Méjico, Nueva España and died on 3 Feb 1729 in Atrisco, Nuevo Méjico, Nueva España ²⁵².)

Fernando also had a relationship with Elena Ruiz Cáceres, daughter of Juan Ruiz Cáceres and Unknown. (Elena Ruiz Cáceres was born in 1649 in Nuevo Méjico, Nueva España ³³¹ and died after 1682 ³³¹.)