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Trujillo
Enrique Trujillo was born about 1820 in Pulvadera (the name of the village means ‘Dusty’). He moved to San Pedro (located in Socorro County, near San Antonio) and married Josefa Chavez, who was an aunt to Jose and Felipe Miranda. Enrique and Josefa were among the first settlers at La Placita del Rio Bonito in the early 1850s. He played a large role in the construction of the torreon, and he was a successful farmer. He and Josefa apparently had no children of their own, but they adopted a girl named Rosaria. Enrique also served as mayordomo of the local Penitente morada, a position reserved for the most respected members of the community.
Enrique Trujillo died in the late summer or fall of 1872. One of the provisos of his last will and testament specified that after his burial in the campo santo east of town a large boulder was to be rolled over onto his grave. This was a precaution against grave robbers. Because of his association with Los Hermanos de la Fraternidad Piadosa de Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno, he had a legitimate fear that his remains might be disturbed. There was a strong traditional belief in the existence of witchcraft (brujeria) and witches (brujas). His widow Josefa married Peter Bishop on November 27, 1872.
Miranda
Among the earliest residents of Lincoln were two brothers Jose and Felipe Miranda. Jose was born about 1825 and married Maria Leonarda Fajardo in 1847 in Socorro; Felipe was born in May 1828 and married Maria Delores ‘Rosa’ Chavez about 1852. Jose and Leonarda had eleven children. Felipe and Rosa had six. It wasn’t long after the marriage of Felipe and Rosa that the two brothers moved from Manzano to La Placita del Rio Bonito (as Lincoln was then known). They were both young men full of vigor and dreams of a better life. They worked as teamsters hauling goods in order to make money and invested their earnings in land, both becoming successful sheep ranchers as they matured.
One of the first steps that the Miranda brothers took toward building a strong community on the Rio Bonito was the construction of a three-story defensive tower called a torreon. It was built of stone laid in mud mortar. Partially reconstructed in the 1920s, this structure still stands on the north side of Calle la Placita in the middle of Lincoln, opposite the church.
Felipe Miranda served on the coroner’s jury that investigated the deaths of Alexander A. McSween and others after the Five-Day Battle in July 1878. This and many other details of the history of the Miranda family were preserved by a daughter-in-law of Felipe. His son Jose Delores Miranda married Lorenza ‘Lorencita’ Herrera. Lorencita was born in Lincoln on August 10, 1861. Her father Jose Gregorio Herrera had been killed in a fight with another man just ten days before her birth. But she was blessed with a long life. Lorencita Herrera Miranda, a long-time resident of Lincoln, died at the hospital in Las Cruces on November 27, 1958 - age 97 years, 3 months and 17 days.