A Seamstress in San Francisco

We believe this is young Antonia Maltos circa 1868

Antonia Maltos was our great grand aunt. Born in Mexico around 1849, she was the sister of our great grandfather, Jose Maria Maltos. His christening on 9 October 1838 is registered in the baptisms at the cathedral of Nuestra Senora de Rosario in El Rosario, Sinaloa, Mexico. We are still searching for Antonia’s baptismal records. 

El Rosario was a colonial silver mining town. Nearby Mazatlan served as the port from which Mexican miners looking for jobs in California would depart. It is likely that the need for skilled miners in California and the volatile political climate of Mexico motivated the Maltos family to leave their country. According to their reports in the 1900 U.S, census, both Antonia and Jose Maria arrived in San Francisco in 1865 probably with their mother Maria Abata Maltos born 1805. Antonia was nearly 16 years old. Jose Maria, age 27, went to work in the quicksilver mines of New Almaden, a bustling company town in the Santa Clara hills south of San Jose. He soon married to raise 8 children in Spanish Town, New Almaden with his wife, Senona Diaz Luna de Luera born 1836 in Mexico.

Antonia and her mother appear to have remained in San Francisco making their new lives in what we now know as North Beach, a predominately Mexican neighborhood at the time. In July of 1871 Antonia, now a young woman, traveled the 65 miles from North Beach to New Almaden to become godmother to her nephew and namesake Antonio Maltos. San Jose could be reached by the SF&SJ railroad, a three and a half hour trip. The remaining 16 miles to New Almaden’s Spanish Town was a lurching ride by stagecoach.

 In this portrait made at Jacob Shew’s San Francisco Studio circa 1875, Antonia’s young nephews, Antonio and Juan Maltos are dressed in beautifully tailored wool suits. We like to imagine Antonia stitched those tiny outfits for the little boys. 

The 1877 San Francisco city directory shows that 28 year old Antonia lived with her mother at 1716 Stockton Street, a few blocks from the very heart of the Barbary Coast. History tells us theirs was a lively and sometimes dangerous neighborhood. Antonia and her mother probably heard mass in Spanish at the newly established Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe Catholic Church on the corner of Broadway and Mason. 

Antonia’s profession was “seamstress.” Women who did this work earned wages hand stitching simple garments such as skirts, nightgowns and undergarments. As fashion went, San Francisco was no Paris. In 1860 writer, Ada Clare, described the city’s costumes in this way ”It is hard to tell what are the exact fashions here. Dresses are worn of every kind of stuff….and made in every conceivable way.” For a middle class woman it was quite common to have an out-of-fashion dress, often of silk, made into a more up-to-date one. We imagine that over time Antonia became skilled in transforming old garments as well as constructing from new materials. The new, less voluminous, dress styles of the 1880s made it possible to refashion an en vogue dress from the ample yardage of an old dress. What we now call “upcycling” was a way to find fabric in a city that imported new materials from around the Horn.

By 1880 Antonia had married and she and her husband, Mexican born Louis Davis, ran a grocery store at 720 Broadway. A few years later their daughter, Louise, was born. When, sadly, in 1885 her husband died, Antonia continued to work as a grocer. After a few years she and her mother relocated to 1006 Pacific St. It seems likely that as a widow with a toddler and an aged mother Antonia remained close to home returning to the trade which she had honed before her marriage. The 1888 San Francisco city directory lists Antonia   now a “dressmaker”, a distinction which indicates she was able make patterns and offer custom work with more sophisticated skills than those of a seamstress.

As a dressmaker, the young widow’s income would have increased by 2 or 3 times that of a seamstress.  Many seamstresses fitted clients in their homes and brought the garments back to be sewn at night. Fitting was a fine art, and the styles of the times demanded serious fitting skills and attention to detail. Antonia’s role as a dressmaker allowed her access to the homes and lives of her clients and the news of the neighborhood and could provide lots to talk about while the Maltos women stitched at night. 

Antonia’s niece, Angela Acosta Zaravia born 1873 in Mexico, stands for the photographer in her perfectly fitted day dress the tailoring and detail of which rival the skill and labor required to make a man’s suit. 

Angela Acosta Zaravia, and her husband Francisco Zaravia pose in their wedding finery (circa 1890). Antonia and Angela were close and it seems likely that Antonia fitted and crafted this lovely gown.

  
By 1900 Antonia’s mother, Maria Abata, had died.  Antonia continued working as a dressmaker and her 17 year old daughter Louise was a telephone operator. Living with them was Antonia’s recently widowed niece, 29 year old Angela Acosta Zaravia who just five years later would succumb to heart disease.

On April 18, 1906 Antonia and her daughter Louise were awakened by the Great Earthquake. They were jolted from their beds at 1018 Clay Street, a few blocks from the site of one of Arnold Wenthe’s famous Great Earthquake photos. They survived. Though the destruction of their home sent them out of the heart of the city and away from the Spanish speaking neighborhood which was their first home in California to live on the Avenues.
Did Antonia continue her sewing career out on the Avenues? Who wore her clothes? Did she ever own a sewing machine?  

Oddly, when my sister and I first came to live in the San Francisco bay area, we too made money by sewing  clothing.  Years later we were shocked to find we had ancestors that lived their lives in North Beach. Then we knew nothing of these latina ladies who supported themselves with needle and thread. We had no direct stories, no photos and no artifacts from Antonia, Abata, Angela or Louise. Our great grandfather’s name and occupation, Jose Maria Maltos, a miner from New Almaden, were our only known facts.  The scraps of facts, the threads of history that we have discovered have come together to weave this story of Antonia and her Maltos family. 

Antonia died 20 December 1930 at the age of 81. Her daughter Louise appears to have lived the rest of her life in San Francisco and never married. Antonia is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery beside her mother Maria Abata Maltos, daughter Louise Davis and niece Angela Acosta Zaravia.  

We continue to search for more bits and pieces to help us understand the fabric of these women’s lives as seamstresses in the city of San Francisco. 

Stella Allison, July 2015 

Sources: Photos from the collections of Patrick Killeen and Lori Johnson

Ada Clare, About Fashions, found in No Rooms of Their Own: Women Writers of  Early California 1849=1869, Ida Rae Egli

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