Paul M. Roca papers and photographs

Paul McClennan Roca (1912-1979) had a strong bond to the areas of the American Southwest and Northern States of Mexico. His Chilean grandfather, Miguel G. Roca, settled in Mexico where he married Josefa Samaniego y Bustamante de Haro who was from a long-standing family linked to the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua. Their son, Lautaro Roca, met and married Stella McClennan in Mexico. Lautaro was a silver-mine operator and Stella was an art teacher who worked with the children of a hacienda owner in Durango. They were eventually forced to move due to the political unrest of the Mexican Revolution and physical limitations resulting from uncooperative weather. The Rocas re-located to Nebraska, Stella’s home state, where Paul M. Roca was born. The Rocas eventually returned to the Southwest and settled in Tucson, Arizona where Paul M. Roca grew up and attended public school. Roca was a 1933 Honors graduate of the University of Arizona and in 1941 graduated with distinction from the George Washington Law School. Roca, a prominent lawyer, co-founded the firm of Lewis Roca Rothgerber in 1950 and practiced law in Arizona until the time of his death in 1979.

Roca spent a great deal of his lifetime collecting books and manuscripts related to the Arizona, Southwestern history, and the history of the Jesuit years in Sonora and Chihuahua. During most of the 1930s and 1940s, Roca was the chief administrative assistant to U.S. Senator Carl Hayden who had a significant influence on Roca’s interest in the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico. For over 20 years, Roca traveled back and forth between the United States and various locations in Northern Mexico to document Jesuit churches and church ruins. He wrote two books related to this subject. The first was published by the Arizona Pioneers’ Historical Society in 1967 and the second was published by the University of Arizona Press in 1979.

At the time of his death, Paul M. Roca had been working on a third manuscript relating to Jesuit churches in the Chínipas Mountains in Chihuahua. The photo negatives related to the unfinished manuscript were donated to the Arizona State Museum.