The Misfortune of Urbano Garcia

Urbano’s unfortunate incident began over beer.  " I would be a cabrone if I did not pay you the four bits I owe."  This rebuttal is not enough for the bar keeper Juan Fiero who grabs Urbano by the collar refusing him both beer and credit.  Urbano Garcia the saddle maker is drinking before noon in a New Almaden saloon. He needs another beer, but he's out of money. A scuffle ensues. Fiero, the proprietor, orders Urbano out, or he “will pull him out by his tongue.”

Hot heads. Hot words followed. An hour later Garcia and Fiero draw pistols in the street. Fiero fires the first shot. Urbano ducks, the shot misses. Urbano returns fire. More than a dozen bullets fly in the street in front of the saloon. Urbano walks away leaving Fiero bleeding in the road.

Urbano is charged with shooting the barman on December 7, 1885, and then released on a $1,000 bond. Things get worse when Fiero's wounds turn critical.   Urbano is rearrested. His bond is raised to $10,000.   Fiero dies a few days later of his gunshot wounds. Now Urbano is really in trouble. He faces a new charge of murder.

Urbano Garcia hires attorney W.G Lorigan as his defender. Unable to raise the bond money Urbano languishes in jail.   Here Urbano spends Christmas, New Years and Valentines Day. Not until March 11 1886 does his trial begin. The San Jose Evening News Reports about "The Almaden Shooting" in a series of articles:

 Urbano Garcia - View media - Ancestry.com

On March 12 the paper asks: "Was it Self Defense?"  The account of Urbano’s trial proceedings are published in the San Jose Evening News. It begins: 

“On Trial for Murder: The Story of the Death of Juan Fiero at Almaden The trial of Urbano Garcia, charged with murder, commenced before a jury in Judge Belden's Court to-day.”  Here is the full account:

Apparently Urbano appeared a remorseful and sympathetic young man. Perhaps it was the sympathetic testimony of Urbano’s witnesses Marcello Soto, Juan Hernandez, and Librado Hijar in testimony to his good character. The attorney Lorigan pleaded his case. Perhaps it was the skill of his lawyer that saved his neck. Mr. Lorigan was a new trial lawyer when he took Urbano’s case, but he went on to become “one of the best lawyers in the city” and eventually a judge. Or maybe the jury was hungry and wanted to go to lunch. Whatever the reason the jury retired at twelve o’clock and returned after a few minutes with the verdict of “Not Guilty.”

Urbano’s young wife Mary Reymunda Luera Maltos, must have breathed a sigh of relief. Not only had Urbano dodged Fiero's bullets, be he also dodged a murder conviction. The San Jose paper reports “Fiero’s Slayer Free.”  This headline was not exactly a celebration of his innocence, reporting Urbano Garcia free and now tainted with the label “Slayer.”

The next year records Urbano the saddle maker living in San Francisco’s North beach on the same street as his in-laws. Perhaps “Slayer” was too heavy a title to carry around in a small town like New Almaden. Whatever his reasons Urbano left Almaden and his troubles behind to try his luck in the big city.

San Jose Evening News, March 13, 1886

The Trials of Mary Rey

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.

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.

  

Maltos.... and more

Juan Maltos 1869-1936

When we began this blog my actual sister Stella (and Search Sister) and I thought it would be about our Maltos kin. She named this blog "Historias Maltos", Maltos Stories. Our blog was built to record the steps in uncovering the origins of our moms's mysterious latino father, Juan Maltos. 

Juan, John or Jack (as he called himself) died young. Born in New Almaden in 1869 His daughter Marie Maltos was only 16 when he breathed his last breath in 1936.  She had some vivid memories about this entrepreneurial papa who owned gold mines, a grocery store, was a good cook, a photographer and spoke Spanish and English. But she had no real information about his past, save he was born in New Almaden from a miner family.

 As we began our search for Juan we thought that this was about Maltos stories. 

Then we discovered it was also about Lillian Dionne, our French Canadian American Grandma. It was about Diaz, Luna, Luera, Zamora, Sambrano, Paredes, Berryessa, Martinez, Selaya, Rodrigruez, Boxall, George, Henry, Martinelli, Killeen, San Julian, Avila, Davis, Craig, Zaravia, It was about the husbands and the wives, the kids, the neighbors, the god parents. Sometimes it was even about the assassins and their attorneys.

Maltos does not even begin to describe the territory that we would cover as we looked into our history which is intertwined with the history of California and Mexico.... but it was a good place to begin.

Linda Allison

March 25, 2015

Photo Source: Hand tinted photograph from collection of Juanita Maltos Rogers

Face to Face with Jose Maria Maltos

Today our long lost cousin Patrick Killeen gave us a tour of his mother’s, Leona Novak Killeen's, photo albums. Flipping through the books we come across this portrait. We have looked at hundreds of photos this afternoon, but this one stops me dead in my tracks. 

“Who’s he?"  I ask.  
“I have no idea" Patrick answers. 

The photo is big... it looks old. It is one of those photos that looks like it was enhanced with soft pencil. It’s printed on heavy card stock. The edges look hacked, like they have been cut from another picture.

Could this be?

I flip and read the inscription on back. Goosebumps.

Could this REALLY be?

I elbow Stella sitting on the couch besides me. 

"Do you think? "

"Jose Maria?" she says. 

"YEAH, I think so too...."
WOW!  We have never laid eyes on our great grandfather who traveled from Mexico to work in the quicksilver mines at New Almaden in the 1860s. So this is Jose Maria?

We both squint at the notes on the back.

Mrs. L Rodriguez, 411 South Yosemite St, Stockton
“Please take good care of father photo”

"To Emma, Father Picture from Lupe 

 Dec. 24, 1933

Keep always with you"

Lupe has got to be our great aunt, Guadalupe Maltos Rodriquez. We know that she lived on Yosemite Street in Stockton, California . “ Emma” must be Emma Maltos her niece. This photo was given to Emma on Christmas eve 1933 with the message :"...take good care of father photo” 

Jose Maria Maltos was Lupe’s father.... This is OUR GREAT GRANDFATHER.  

Finally! a face to go with the name. 

March 11, 2015

Adios Mexico

 

Watercolor: Matzatlan 1850 , Edward Gennys Fanshawe ,  British National Maritime Museum 

Yesterday Stella sent this image. ‘Dreamy, isn’t it”, she says.

And that’s precisely what it is. It sets me to dreaming... musing, wondering.

I wonder if this is the port where our great, great grandmother Bata Maltos set out from. Was it also the departure point for Jose Maria Maltos, her miner son, and Antonia Maltos, her daughter, on her way to the northern frontera of California and a cool foggy life of a San Francisco seamstress 

Mazatlan. Hot, steamy, busy Pacific port.

Was it where Charles Craig, perhaps father, of Antonia met Bata? Or did they meet later in San Franciso? Or in San Jose? So many Sans.... So many questions.....

Matzatlan is a fabulous harbor. Long, protected, spacious. Not to long ago husband Bill and I entered the calm Bahia Mazatlan on a princess, a Norwegian cruise ship.  Mariachis met us with exuberant music.  People swarmed off the boat between the stacks of cargo containers. The scene was all color and noise and confusion. We watched from the rail, knocked out by the savage humidity and heat.

Was this the same steamy weather in which Bata departed her Mexican life? Did she want to go or did she have to go? Did she like the freezing fog of her adopted North Beach home? Or did she dream of Mazatlan?

Mazatlan.  So many things to wonder about. 

Linda Allison

February 23, 2014

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!

Padre Ignacio Illegible

I am beginning to hate padre Ygnacio Salindoz.  Year after year he writes the entries in the Baptismal Book for Iglesia Nuestra Senora del Rosario.  1834, 1836…1840… His handwriting was squirrely to begin with. Then it deteriorates to unreadable.  He writes in Spanish. He uses abbreviations. LA suspects him of being on too good terms with the communion wine.   He does not date his entries…he says things like solemnly baptized “in the same year.” I want to murder him. Alas, he is already dead. Long gone, at least a century past.

I am trying to find an entry belonging to Abata Maltos, suspected great great grandmother. I am digging through a Mexican Baptismal Book from Rosario, Sinaloa, Mexico. Of course it is a miracle it exists in digitized form so I can scan its entries from my laptop. But it is not easy…The pages are smudged. The ink bleeds through the old pages. It is dim. It seems impossible.

Abata's name is lost in a squiggly landscape of almost four thousand mamas who bring their babies to the cathedral. It is a beautiful church with a stately altar decorated with the gold of this colonial mining town. Abata is buried in more than four hundred pages. I dig. Excavating like a miner.

I estimate where the year might fall in this 450 page book

I anticipate where October might be.

Hours go by. Then entire afternoons.

Cursing Padre Y...

Until finally Abata  is found!!

Bata Maltos…. and her son “natural” Jose Miguel de Jesus Maltos baptized October 9, 1838. I am as pleased as any miner striking gold.

But no thanks to Padre Ygnacio.