The Boys in the Band Talk

Clay Wombles's crew of Royal woodcutters about 1900. (Womble at the extreme left; Camilio Dutil third from left; Jack Maltos in foreground with dog; Dave Cabrera, Phil Swank, Joe Huber, Ed Olsen and Juan Paredes are present.

Later on the same page the author refers to nearby residents, Antonio (brother of Juan Paredes) and Matilda Paredes and Andres Sambrano and wife Ysidra and Andres' stepfather Patricio Avila (the man of the famous photo)

When we built our Day of the Dead ancestor shrine we framed some of our old family photos.   Jim Riley, our genealogist advisor had suggested that we “go wide” in our search so we widened our invitation including  the names of friends, and neighbors to the shrine. 

We added the names from the "the boys in the band" photo ….  The whole crew from the New Almaden Brass Band: Arnold Vincent, Juan Paredes, Cruz Mercado, Andres Sambrano, Henry Vincent, Dan Flanagan, Antonio Paredes, Feliciano Martines, Juan Mattos (Maltos), Joe Varrote, Adolph Martinez, Amado Gonzales, John Luxon,  

Then magic happened…even before the shrine was done the boys in the band began to talk.  

An intuition nudged Stella to pick up Madam Felix's Gold, a book we had about the mines of Calaveras County. She found this page with the picture of our Grand father. Standing next to our grandfather, Juan Maltos were some of the same boys in the band. Paredes and Sambrano.

The sisters Allison were astonished and amazed.   The boys in the band grew up, moved out of Santa Clara County and went north to Calaveras. They were lumber cutters together. Probably harvesting oaks for the building the Royal Mine. Neighbors and pals still.

Do we believe in magic?

The unfolding of our family story is magical. We began with almost no information about our Latino forbearers. Now we know more about Grandpa Juan than our mother Marie Maltos. 

Slowly we are fitting together scraps of facts and slivers of stories.   Gradually a picture of a person comes together, a portrait of a time and place. We build a story of how we came to exist in our time and place.

Over time we conjure answers to our ancestral questions out of the ether.

What could be more magical?

Source: Madam Felix's Gold: The story of the Madam Felix Mining District, Calaveral County, California, Williard P Fuller Jr., Judith Marvin, Julia G Costello, Foothill Resources, 1996.