Gomecindo Luera's Widow

Alas, lost Gomecindo.  Vanished one winter evening in 1866 from Spanish Town in New Almaden  . The San Jose paper reports in 1885, " his wife never saw him again and refused to believe he had deserted her."   

Twenty years later Gomecindo found, deep in the New Almaden mecury mine with a bullet hole in his skull. 

Source: Cinnabar Hills, The Quicksilver Days of New Almaden, Lanyon and Bulmore

 What did Senona do while waiting for Gomecindo to come home those months after he disappeared in 1866?  She and her baby daughter Mary Reymunda Luera lived in a company town in a miner's cottage. It is not likely that the New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Company  was willing to support a woman whose husband had abandoned his wife and job.    Senona Luna de Luera, no doubt had to scramble to make a way for her tiny daughter and herself in a town of miners. What could she do?

Maria Senona Diaz Luna Luera got herself a new husband, Jose Maria Maltos. How this happened we will never know. In the year Gomecindo's body discovered the 1870 census records show she was living with Jose Maria in a miner's housing in New Almaden's Spanish Town.  By that time Jose Maria Maltos and Senona had produced seven children, our grandpa Juan Maltos among them.

If Gomecindo hadn't taken a bullet in the head, would we exist? 

Perhaps Gomecindo's tragedy was our lucky shot.