Friday, December 13, 2013

Hallelujah! Abata Maltos is Ours!!!

We were in ancestry limbo. Again.

We had a document showing that Antonia Maltos was the godmother and namesake of our grandfather Jose Maria's second born son.  But we needed more evidence to link Jose to Antonia and her mother, Abata. We wanted to prove that "our Jose Maria" was Jose Miguel de Jesus Maltos of the Mexican baptismal record in church records of El Rosario.
 
As it was, we had built two trees and were hoping they were really one tree. Were they related in the way we hoped they were? Was this a presumptuous reach? We were beginning to wonder if we were wasting time researching these San Francisco folks who bore our family name.

There were things in common between these Maltos folk. There were differences too. 
Antonia Maltos Davis and her mother Abata Maltos were city mice never seeming to stray far from what we now know as North Beach San Francisco. They were grocers and shoemakers and dressmakers and bookkeepers. 

Who we knew our Maltos folks to be were country mice. They were miners and hod carriers and teamsters, adaptable types who traveled from the hills of New Almaden, across the valley and into the Sierra foothills reinventing themselves along the way. They didn’t seem to be from the same tribe. Maybe these Maltos weren't related at all.


Could we prove a link between our Jose and Antonia and her mother Abata? We 
thought about church records in San Francisco. Maybe we would find evidence of a relationship in property records. We were stumped.

One night, our cousin Janice solves it. She has found THE document that cinches our hopes. The telling receipt is from the J S Godeau Mortuary, San Francisco for the funeral of Abata’s grand daughter, Angela Acosta Zaravia. It is signed by, guess who? ANTONIA MALTOS. And, down at the very bottom of the image of the newpaper is a funky little  clipping that confirms our belief these two tribes are really one  tribe. That our Jose is, in fact, is the exact same Jose Miguel de Jesus Maltos, son of Maria Abata Maltos of El Rosario, Sinaloa Mexico. 


We have still to check the church records and the property records and hunt for a couple more obituaries. But now we proceed without reservation, feeling quite certain our great grandfather Jose Maria Maltos' mother's name is Abata Maltos. Abata is our great, great, grandmother. 

Hallelujah and welcome to the table!


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