Mattos Maltos : Labels Make You Blind....

When the Boys in the Band photo arrived I had the odd sense I’d seen it before. I had. In fact, I owned it.  This picture had been sitting my bookshelf for years embedded in the pages of Cinnabar Hills, the Quicksilver Days of New Almaden   

I owned this book by coincidence. It was part of a collection that was assembled years ago by my designer husband William Wells. Before I knew him Bill had learned a lot about the mines at Almaden when he and his colleague, Claudia Jurmain, worked on a history exhibit proposal for the Quicksilver Mines of Almaden. Another odd coincidence as the threads of the past and interwove and tangled with the present. 

My copy of Cinnabar Hills was threadbare, tattered and missing chunks because Bill had removed photos. I went back, picked up the book and thumbed through it. Sure enough, there was my grandfather on page 105. Juan was there in the same photo Jim Riley had sent. I had looked at the photo before, but I had not SEEN it. 

I hadn’t seen it for two reasons. One I was not expecting to find Grandpa Juan sitting on my bookshelf. Juan was a miner's son, not a president, dignitary or outlaw. There was no reason to expect to find him in print.  The other reason was Juan Maltos was captioned Juan Mattos. I had missed him completely him because his name was misspelled.

I had believed the label and was blinded to the fact. 

Led astray by a label... How many times do we let this happen in life? Black, white, mulatto, natural, organic, 100 % double your money back, Good House Keeping Seal of Approval, pure bred, half breed, Mexican, Yankee, Californian, legitimate, illigetimate, native, male, Maltos, Maltos, Mattos, Malto, Malta, Maltoz, Matta. 

So today's lesson: Look past the labels to see the truth. 

Source: Cinnabar Hills, the Quicksilver Days of New Almaden, Milton Lanyon, Village Printers, 1968

Thanks to an Angel

When we met Jim at the Santa Clara Library he didn’t talk much. He just went to work quietly…tenderly opening old file folders full of yellowed newspaper clippings and leaflets.  Knocking on the door of St. Joseph’s Cathedral. Plowing through dingy films of beautifully scripted latin baptismal records made nearly 150 years ago. He headed to History San Jose archive with names and birthdates of our long lost familia Maltos in hand. And he got results!

Jim Riley became our genealogy angel. Having pushed up against the brick wall for a couple of months Jim’s contribution to our search felt like a kind of divine intervention. He found stuff! Cool stuff. Facts that connected us to a real time and place. A flesh and blood mining community in the hills of New Almaden.

We were delighted to learn that our abuelo, Juan Maltos, was a member of the New Almaden Brass Band. That’s him about age 18 right smack in the middle of this portrait Linda and I are calling “The Boys in the Band.” 

Jim had advised us to “go lateral” in our search for family. Now we definitely had somewhere to go with the names of Juan’s band mates.  The names Paredes, Gonzales, Martines, Mercado all began popping up in census records, over and over.  Certain names persisted over time and geography first in Santa Clara county, then later in Calaveras county.  We are grateful to discover the neighbors, godparents, and close friends of the family. And, an extra bonus has been meeting the “owners” of family trees who also know these folks and sharing information and stories with them. 

Source: Santa Clara City Library Genealogy Collection, Mary Hanel Librarian, Jim Riley, genealogist. 

Speaking with the Spirits

 

Hitting the brick wall" Stella and I hit the wall early and often in finding our Latino origins. WHERE did our great grand parents come from? It’s so frustrating to have a burning question…. with no answer and no apparent way to get an answer.

What we knew about our mother's Maltos family was almost nothing.  We knew our mother's father was named Juan Maltos.  Sometimes he was called Jack.  Sometimes he was called was John. We were told he was from Almaden near San Jose.  He was a miner in Calaveras County. He was a store keeper in Stockton. He cooked "Mexican" food. He was a "good cook" unlike our mother's mother Lillian Zoa Dionne who was French Canadian and didn't care about food

Lillian spoke French. Juan spoke Spanish, but mostly English. Our mother, Marie, spoke neither and understood both. Marie was a Californian.  

“But WHERE did the Maltos come from?” I would ask Marie. 

"I don't really know.” she would answer.

"How can you not know?" I demanded, over and over.    

Her response :"You have to remember our father died when we were girls. Just 15 and 16.  He wasn't around to ask.  My mother didn't … well, we didn't talk about those things." 

For decades…. no clues.  The brick wall. 

Starting with what little we knew,  we collected addresses, certificates, voter registrations, grave markers.  Our cousin Janice joined in the search. Actually Janice may have been the one who nudged us into the search.  We discovered the names of our great grandparents:  Jose Maria Maltos and Senona Diaz. 

We have shreds of evidence on which we build the stories of their lives.  But the big question remained…. WHERE did they come from? And WHY?

Still the brick wall. 

We sisters were discouraged. We had lists. We had consulted, collected, gone online, emailed, researched and still we were stuck. 

"Let’s ask the ancestors to speak to us. Direct.

They are Mexicans probably (though some suggested they came from Chile or Malta.)  El Dia De Los Muertos is coming.

Let's send a message to them and ask for their help. “Speak to us.... make yourselves known."   
"Ah, ok. How do we do that?" Stella wondered.

"...an altar. You're good at building altars....like they do for Day of the Dead in Mexico," suggested Linda.

"OK. Lets do it and see what happens,"  Stella replies.

So we have.

We made our request.

And now we wait for their replies.

At least, now we don't feel so stuck.

Linda and Stella Allison 

October 2013