Historian and bibliophile Federico Gómez de Orozco was born in Tlalpan, Mexico in 1891 and died on July 18, 1962 in Tizapán, D.F. He was a recognized researcher and professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM) and taught 16th-17th century Spanish colonial history as well as paleography at UNAM and at the School of Anthropology. With great interest in European colonization in the West and Southwest territories, he built a large collection on the history of Mexico and California. His personal library in his home in Tizapán contained pictographs and documents in relation to Indigenous and European colonial history.

Gómez de Orozco was great friends with colleague Manual Toussaint, a Mexican art historian and academic with whom he founded the Art Laboratory of the UNAM. He was also a member of important national societies such as the Sociedad de Geografía y Estadística, Society of America, and Société des Americanistes y Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.

Most of his published works include scholarly articles, monographs, prologues, bibliographies, and magazine articles. The documents in this collection come from an early collection of Gómez de Orozco, but he collected more material over the course his life. Most of his collections remain in Mexico and are kept in the Biblioteca del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.