Lost Boys? : Juan and Antonio Maltos

"Who are THESE little boys?", we ask.  

Stella and I are sitting in our long, lost cousin Patrick's Killeen's living room in Pacifica.  It is a special day,  our first visit with him in decades. The sisters are on a mission to recover our ancestors, living and dead.   We are rooting Patrick's pile of inherited famiiy photos. "I have NO idea", he replies.  

 "#@!!??  NO IDEA?", we plead .  

No caption on the backside. No notes....  Still there are clues. These little boys are definitely Latino so that limits them to the Maltos side of Patrick’s family, his other side is clearly Irish.

What else do we know for sure?

* Patrick's family photos were passed down from his grand aunt, Emma Maltos, to his mother Leona Novak then to Patrick. It’s highly likely that these Latino boys in Patrick’s photo box are kids from the Maltos side of the family.  

* The entire box of photos are family. This collection contains no random collector photos. All the memorabilia is restricted to  relatives and their travels. 

 *One of them bears resemblance to slanty eyes of grandpa Juan Maltos.

* It appears that these boys are ages about three and five.  

* Juan Jack Maltos was born in 1869 his brother Antonio Maltos was born in 1871 (following this line of thought would date the picture about 1874...

* Flip the photo and the back shows the photographer is Jacob Shew at 513 Montgomery in San Francisco. 

* More photo research tells us Jacob Shew made his reputation making portraits. He left his mark in San Francisco in the later half of the 19th century.  

Source:  Pioneer Photographers of the Far West:  A Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865                  

By Peter E. Palmquist, Thomas R. Kailbourn, Page 494.

* The dates fit. The boy's ages are is within the time frame of Jacob Shew’s Photographic studio operation at Montgomery Street.

* Grandma Abata Maltos San Francisco North Beach household was within walking distance to the studio. Not a far jaunt, even for little boys.

We imagine a story like this: Perhaps young Juan and his brother Antonio were visiting Grandma Abata Maltos in San Francisco and they had their picture taken in the studio on Montgomery Street.   We can see a lot of care when into those little boy's small suits. Aunt Antonia (who was also godmother to Antonio and present at his baptism in San Jose) was a seamstress.  It’s easy to imagine she and Abata made those little suits. Some things we know for sure. Some things are a guess... and we imagine the rest.

  Linda Allison July 2015

Viewing the Past

Stella is out walking the dog near St Mary’s Cemetery, Oakland, CA. She emails:

"... I passed by St. Mary's cemetery. Earlier last year I walked the grounds and determined that this is the plot where Francisco Zaravia is buried. I imagine that Abata, Antonia, Angela and Louise may have stood on this very spot on the day they buried him."

Francisco Zaravia, husband of Angela Maltos Acosta, died of angina pectoris or heart failure in April of 1894. He was 34, a shoemaker who had come to California 8 years earlier from Mexico. Angela his young wife was only 21. We feel lucky to possess a portrait of this young couple in their wedding finery. Angela’s dazzling white wedding dress is clearly cut, fitted and sewn by a master dressmaker … very likely Antonia herself.  

I imagine them standing on this hillside on a cool April day. Three widows; Angela now in black, Antonia 39 and widowed nine years earlier, her mother, Abata Maltos now 84 years of age and also a widow and Antonia's 14 year old daughter Louise. This must have been a day of great sadness for the Maltos widows. So much loss.

Today it is the first week of November… the week of All Souls Day. Stella and I share the sense that October and November are months that the spirits of the departed speak the loudest. When they speak we listen. Our grand aunt Antonia Maltos Davis and her kin are missing in the family lore. The search sisters know her only by excavating her records and piecing together the facts of her life from census records and newspaper clips... and trying to imagine what it was like to stand in her shoes.

Antonia Maltos Davis: Dressmaker to the Rich and Infamous

San Francisco Call, Volume 108, Number 71, 10 August 1910

Mrs. Antonia Maltos Davis is called to court in San Francisco to testify.  The question put to Antonia : was the heiress Maria Conception de Laveaga of sound mind? Or was Maria dim, feeble-minded, and deranged?  Our Antonia says she was of sound mind.

The circumstances tell us our dressmaking grand aunt Antonia was a master seamstress.  Maria Conception, her client,  with her multi-million dollar fortune could afford the best. Antonia testifies in her defense. When Antonia spoke in court Maria Conception had already died in Madrid. Her body had been brought home to San Francisco. Her de Laveaga brother and sister were squabbling over who would  inherit her millions. Maria C. spoke mostly Spanish,  her affairs were handled by her brother Miguel. Sister Ignacia, aka. Nacha ran her household. We know the de Laveagas were no strangers to court. A years long battle raged when the de Laveaga family banded together to disinherit Anselmo, their brother's son who was the result of a liason with the housemaid.

What we do know about the De Laveagas is that they migrated from Mexico, from an area around Mazatlan. The De Laveaga patron owned a rancho of many acres on the way to the town of Rosario where the Maltos clan were born.  We know that Antonia's family and Maria Concepcion's families moved north to seek their fortunes in California about the same time.   Antonia becomes dressmaker to the De Laveagas in San Francisco of the 1860's.

Coincidence? More? Perhaps we will never know. 

Apparently the dressmaker's testimony didn't have much effect on the judge.   Judge Coffee after 212 days and 18,000 pages of court testimony deemed the dead daughter Maria Conception De Laveaga impaired and incapable of making her own handwritten will without "undue" influence. Nacha, the big sister and her lawyer husband lose their claim and are forced to split the family fortune with the other relatives.

I wonder if our Antonia, the dressmaker was paid for her time in court?