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| Mary Reymunda circa 1907 |
I imagine Mary Reymunda Luera - Maltos de Garcia sitting in Judge Beldon's San Jose court room watching her husband Urbano Garcia on trial for murder. The year is 1886…. The headline in the San Jose Evening News asks, “Was It Self Defense?". The jury will decide. Mary Reymunda must be sick with worry.
Mary Rey is no stranger to tragedy. Her father
Gomecindo Luera went off into the Almaden night twenty years previously, never
to return. He left three-year-old Mary Rey and her mama Senona Diaz Luna de Luera
abandoned in the mining town of New Almaden to fend for themselves. After a decent period of waiting, Senona solved the problem of supporting
herself and her daughter by marrying our
Maltos great grandfather, miner Jose Maria Maltos.
Mary Rey's mother Senona went onto have seven children with Jose Maria Maltos. She must have grown up in this household being the big sister. Mary Remunda married at 20 and was a bride of three years when she stood in the San Jose court. Urbano Garcia's trial unfolds in March 1886 in a series of articles in the San Jose Evening News telling of a shootout in the street over a bar squabble.
A few months later Mary Rey will read in the same newspaper that the body of her disappeared papa has been found deep in a shaft in the New Almaden Quicksilver mine. Gomecindo Luera had been shot in the head. Witnesses on the night of Gomecindo's murder tell the tale of his mining partners. It appears that these unhappy miners, settled their differences with Gomecindo with a bullet. Someone getting the last word with gunfire appears to be a theme in Mary Rey's life.
Mary Rey's mother Senona went onto have seven children with Jose Maria Maltos. She must have grown up in this household being the big sister. Mary Remunda married at 20 and was a bride of three years when she stood in the San Jose court. Urbano Garcia's trial unfolds in March 1886 in a series of articles in the San Jose Evening News telling of a shootout in the street over a bar squabble.
A few months later Mary Rey will read in the same newspaper that the body of her disappeared papa has been found deep in a shaft in the New Almaden Quicksilver mine. Gomecindo Luera had been shot in the head. Witnesses on the night of Gomecindo's murder tell the tale of his mining partners. It appears that these unhappy miners, settled their differences with Gomecindo with a bullet. Someone getting the last word with gunfire appears to be a theme in Mary Rey's life.
The women of New Almaden lived with the men who
spent their days deep in the earth digging cinnabar ore, rocks laced with
mercury, a dangerous metal. Mercury mining was a brutal business demanding tough, crazy
men who worked in the dark breathing dust, explosives and uncertainty. These men drank and fought and they sometimes
killed each other with their pistolas. For the women it was either live with
these men, or starve without them.
Nobody knew this better than Mary Rey.
Linda Allison
April 7, 2015
Sources: Thanks to Veronica Jordan for discovering Mary Rey's story in the San Jose Evening News and bringing it to our attention.
Wow. What a fantastic story! Great job pulling all those parts together.
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