Dredging Stories from Ditches, Looking for My Father (A Series of Cuentos, Part 1)

Published in

GSHA Nuestras Raices Journal

Volume 26, Issue 3   Fall 2014

                                                                                                                                                                                    

Dredging Stories from Ditches and DNA:

Looking for My Father

(A Series of Cuentos)

Copyright July 2013 by Karen S. Córdova
 

[First published in La Sierra: Voice of Costilla County, 26 July 2013: 2+]

 

Who would have thought way back then and way back there that the old stories would keep her bones from aching?

–Rigoberto Gonzáles, Crossing Vines

 

El Huérfano

Like some of you, I was born in the land of the orphan. The llano fed by the orphan river, but not shaded at all by the lone butte called El Huérfano in Southern Colorado. Masochistic prairie speared by thousands of little snakes. Mis abuelos called them culebritos, and you would, too. Imagine squirming tails hanging from dark clouds, mouths open mid-sky. Aching to strike. Others standing upright like the devil himself, exposed and evil bright. This place, where wily silver veins war with themselves, naked in the sky, was the chosen land of my recent Martínez antepasados.

 

Before I go further, here’s some of my genealogy, snaking like Y-DNA from son to father to grandfather and on, the way many Nuevo Méxicano acequias  are nursed by los ritos  which, in turn, are fed by El Río Grande, flowing from el norte in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico.

 

I asked cousins to join me to learn about our grandfather’s DNA. Five of them were intrigued by my request. This is our group: brothers Louis Martínez (Pueblo, CO) and Bob Martínez (Taylor Ranch, NM); their niece, Donna Romero (Westminster, CO); sisters Patricia Martínez Neeman (Westminster, CO) and Cathy Martínez Pavlick (Billings, MT); and me, Karen Córdova (Irvine, CA). I am grateful for their collaboration. Each of us spent approximately $35.00 for a test that otherwise would have cost one of us $200.00 or more.

 

Louis’ DNA sample was used for the 67-marker test. The haplogroup results were R1b1a2 (R-M269). Among other projects, we joined the New Mexico DNA Project (a must), the Martínez DNA Surname Project, and the Baca DNA Project.

 

A deep clade test has not yet been done. There will be an upgrade to a 111-marker test within the year, because I am intrigued by the current results. “Intrigued” is the wrong word. I am both shocked and curious, even fascinated. That snake DNA doesn’t lie. But I am not afraid of what I’ll learn if I pull the DNA tail, shake it upside down, and catch secrets and clues that fall from its mouth. I want to know the truth about who I am.

 

Our focus was our grandfather, Juan Andrés Martínez, a rancher and businessman from Huérfano County, Colorado. Here is a segment of our male genealogy paper trail:

 

Name	Birth	Death	Spouse
Louis Michael Martínez	(still living)
Francisco Esias Martínez	(still living)		María Consuela Romero
Juan Andrés Martínez	2/4/1899 Malachite, CO	5/11/1991 Walsenburg, CO	María Martha Archuleta
José Cipriano Martínez	9/28/1859 Costilla, NM	8/30/1905 Huerfano, CO	María Ysabel Naranjo
José Rafael Martín	7/5/1820 El Rancho,    Taos, NM		María Francisca Romero
José Francisco Martín	9/25/1794 San Francisco (San Juan Parish), NM		(1)María Ysabel Cortés (2) María Josefa Romero
José Joaquin Martín	ca. 1750 (There is debate about who his parents were.)		María Candelaria Chávez

 

Now, back to my stories. I wish this one wasn’t true. My great-grandfather, José Cipriano Martínez, was a successful sheep rancher. He owned thousands of sheep. But financial success didn’t save him from jealous culebritos, vying for his life. He died from a bite of a sky snake, striking the Huerfano prairie, on August 30, 1905. He was buried a month before his 46^th birthday. Two young sons, Moises and Rafael, were on the prairie with him, but their lives were spared—el culebrito had been satiated by consuming the life of Cipriano, his horse, and his dog. Mi abuelo, Juan Andrés, was only six years when he lost his father. Family members tell variations of this story to this day. My own mother infused fear of lightning into my being.

 

Cipriano’s wife, María Ysabel Naranjo, was widowed and left to raise ten children, when she was 39 years old. Two other children had already died. Isabel never remarried. She lived to be 91.

 

Another family story—short, but telling—goes something like this:

Isabelita, you are still young. You are beautiful.

You own a wealth of land.

Why have you never remarried?

Great-grandma replied, undoubtedly thinking not only of the twelve children she bore, but also of the prospects of raising an additional dozen: ¡Ni pendeja!

For now, like a hungry—no, greedy—trucha, this is a big enough bite of my mother’s father’s father’s line. Each name has many stories, and I am trying to grab even a few, as this river tumbles my way. ¡Cuantos cuentos! And most should be told. But, first, I have to find them. Maybe under the rocks on acequia walls. Maybe you can help me. Could we share cleaning the acequia de cuentos like our ancestors cleaned their ditches, as a group, followed by sharing cuentos with chile, fresh from the harvest? I want to talk about the way to cook new beans from the San Luis Valley, each one passing the test of an abuelita’s eye before diving into boiling water. I want to taste calavasitas, not zucchini or yellow squash, but our own buttery Southern Colorado calavasitas that put other squash-cousins to shame. However, time is short and I can’t talk about food now. And excuse me, I can only share a few stories during these few minutes we have together, today. Here is the important one, and I need to tell you now. I will spin more during our next visit. I trust that life itself will provide the wool for me to twist many more cuentos. When it does, I will gift you with a skein or two.

Mi primo, Guillermo, is more than hungry. He should be. Can you believe, a primo who has never tasted blue corn from the cob or a Rocky Ford cantaloupe, a manito (pal) who has never dipped his toes or fingers in an acequia? I will ask him if he knows that an acequia is more than a ditch. The acequia is life; we would have died if our abuelos had not been magicians of ditches. I know that. You know that. But Guillermo was an orphan. A lucky orphan, I must add, because a loving family snatched him (legally) from a Florence Crittenton home for unwed mothers in New Jersey.

 

So why is an Italian boy from New Jersey in my placita of a story? DNA. He is a close match, a zero-boned match to my Martínez line. Who knew that when I begged cousins to split the cost of testing a DNA swab (I’d already paid full price for testing three other swabs) from my cousin Louis Martínez’s inside cheek that I would find more cousins, one looking for his father.

 

Some might say this is proof of what mi tía, Della Velarde, tells me when I ask her why our name changed from Martín to Martínez:

 

Mi hijita, it must be because there were so many of us.

 

Guillermo looks for his father the way that Chimayó chile roots sense something in red, ancestral holy dirt, something urging them to unfurl and dig yet another inch more, and yet another inch more. In the dark. Feeling their way toward something it don’t rationally know is water.

 

Isn’t desire for family just like that? We genealogists crave the familial dead, whom we have never met. Imagine if it were possible that one of your cherished antepasados could still be alive and, if you looked long enough and smart enough, you could hold their hands. Then imagine Guillermo.

El Huérfano on the prairie, north of Walsenburg, is the remains of a volcano. The butte is a surprise, like a sand-covered knee thrust up by a child play-buried on an otherwise flat beach, thrust exactly where you’d least expect it to be. Like genealogy research. Especially like learning about genealogical DNA results.

 

As an avid amateur genealogist, I might as well be Guillermo, even though I know my father and I were fortunate to have known both grandfathers. My grandfathers’ fathers were introduced to me, long after they died, by extraction books and a few family stories. I so loved gaining their acquaintance and trust that I believed anything signed by a priest on every baptismal record. I worshipped microfiche films and sang alabanzas to The Master Genealogist and Family Tree Maker. I still revere all of these, light candles to them at night. However, I now also know this, first hand: paper records are sometimes used to bury family secrets, but DNA is a living knee able to thrust upward and dislodge the ground of accepted beliefs. Like El Huérfano.

 

This story is certainly about Primo Guillermo looking for his father but, like all of our individual stories, he is a cuentito within a family of cuentos. The larger volcano was this: our Martínez DNA is a 0-Step match, not only to Guillermo and several other Martínez males, descending from José Joaquin Martín, but to a few men with a Baca surname. We are a 1-step, 2-step, and 3-step match to even more Baca men. According to Ángel de Cervantes, project coordinator of the New Mexico DNA Project, our Martínez DNA does not correspond to the DNA of Hernán Martín Serrano. Ángel says we are descendants of one of the illegitimate sons of Josefa Baca.

 

I am therefore hopelessly aligned with Guillermo. He is looking for his father. I am looking for the reason why (and who and when) our paper trail Martínez line is a Baca DNA line. Whatever I discover, I will continue to honor the Martínez patriarchs, who raised another man’s child as their own.

 

I am in the beginning stages of compiling a spreadsheet of paper-trail genealogy, comparing Baca and Martínez lines that are a 0-step, 1-step, and 2-step match from ours. Louis’ Family Tree DNA Kit number is 287109. “Guillermo” is Bill Trignano. The Italian parents who adopted him named him “William”. Bill’s Kit number is 247985.

 

If you suspect you may be part of our close-DNA-cousin group, or a descendant of José Joaquin Martín, and you want to become more involved, please contact me at kscordova@aol.com or 949-786-9282 and/or Bill Trignano at bill@trignano.com or 973-214-0367. In the next article in this series, I will identify other men, who lived in the 17^th or 18^th century, whose descendants’ DNA I’d love to see in the New Mexico DNA project.

 

I asked Bill to read this story and either give me permission, or a refusal, to reveal his quest in a published article. He was wholeheartedly supportive and asked me to use his real name and contact information. Bill also said:

 

“My adoptive parents are now deceased, and I will gain nothing by hiding or keeping secrets. Quite the opposite, I would rather more people know and maybe someone would have some information about my father. Time is running short for me. My birth mother died 5 days before 9/11 (2001), ten years before I found her. My father would be about 77 years old now. I pray he is still alive.”

 

Note that Bill’s birth mother’s family has embraced their newly found family member.

 

If you want to have your DNA tested, go to <www.familytreedna.com>. Then, from the Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) website, join the New Mexico DNA Project. FTDNA regularly features discount offers.

More stories to unfold in life and in future journals.

 [Editor’s Note: No Spanish to English translation in this article at the request of the author, it is a prose poem;

please refer to a dictionary: printed or online for translation.]

 

Sources

1. Martínez family stories

2. Ángel de Cervantes, personal conversations, May-July 2013.

3. Martínez, Maria Clara (extracted by), San Miguel de la Costilla: Baptisms 1865 –1880 (and) Marriages 1865 – 1900.

4. Moises Cornelio Martínez, “Jose Cipriano Martínez (b. 28 Sep 1859, d. 30 Aug 1905)” Martínez/Rivera Ancestry: Huérfano, CO., Union, NM. 16 July 2013 <http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/m/a/r/Moises-C-Martínez/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0008.html>.

5.  Thomas D. Martínez, ext. & comp., San Juan delos Caballeros Baptisms: 1726-1870, baptism database of archives held by the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and the State Archive of New Mexico, April 29, 1994.

6. Thomas D. Martínez, ext. & comp., Taos Baptisms: 1701-1860, baptism database of archives held by the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and the State Archive of New Mexico, June 24, 2003.

7. William Trignano, personal e-mails. May-July 2013.

 

 

 

 

Obituary

María Elvera Albert Córdova

(1906 – 2007)

 Elvera Albert Cordova died on Sunday, November 25, 2007 at the age of 101 at the Walsenburg Care Center.  She was a daughter of explorers and early settlers who gathered near the Huerfano and Cucharas Rivers before this prairie county had a name.  Huerfano County was her life-long home. 

 Maria Elvira Albert, later known as Elvera, was born on January 24, 1906 in Pryor, Colorado.  Her parents were Juan Nepomuceño Albert, a carpenter, and Genoveva Espinosa, a homemaker.  Her known brothers and sisters were John David, Thomas, Frances, Dolores, Theodora, Rose, and Tila .

 

Elvera always remembered from where she came and proudly told her children and grandchildren about her  heritage.  However, in her latter years, she could not remember all of the stories she told them when she was younger.  She said ¡Tantos anos!  Indeed, all oral histories can soon be forgotten if not written down.  Her own life intersected the days of both horse-and-buggy and high-tech electronics.  She was a child when she first heard an airplane.  She was terrified.  Over eighty years later, when shown a picture of her great grandpa, John David Albert, on the internet, she was fascinated by what she called Karen’s Little TV.

 

The Juan Nepomuceño Albert family home had a dirt floor which was kept from getting dusty by sprinkling water on it.  They owned a covered wagon in which she remembered taking rides.  The Alberts later moved to a farm in Cucharas where Elvera remembered playing with many cousins.  A favorite game was pretending that rocks were building blocks.  One of her household chores was throwing beans in the air (threshing). 

 

The greatest tragedy of Elvera’s life was the death of her mother, Genoveva, during the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918.   Her grandmother and sister also died the same week.  Those deaths seared Elvera’s heart, burning January into her memory as the loneliest month of the year throughout her life.  She was just a girl of twelve when La Grippe stole her mother and left her as the eldest female in the home.  She was suddenly responsible for maintaining the household. Though she ached to learn, she was only able to go to school through third grade.  However, lack of an extended formal education didn’t stop her innate curiosity and intelligence from growing, helping her to persevere.  Elvera loved to work, and especially liked to cook and garden.

 

For a time the teenaged Elvera worked as a cook in the nine-room boarding house on Third Street built by Mrs. Gilligan. It was here that she met Jacobo Jake Cordova whom she subsequently married.  She became a miner’s wife, suffering hardship with an iron resolve cushioned by her faith.  When the mines closed, she had their mining camp house moved to its present location on East 7^th Street.  She, her husband and their eldest son, Moses, dug the basement by hand.   Elvera bore five children including Moses who now lives in Tustin, California with his wife Rachel.  Floyd and his wife, Marge, live in Parachute, Colorado.  Donald Red lives in the Walsenburg family home.  Jacob Jr. died when he was two weeks old.  Adrian died when he was five months.  The family knew poverty, but Elvera squeezed from it all that she could.  From this she developed character.  She did not waste even a few celery leaves many years later.  The dried leaves could be used for a future soup when there might be no fresh celery in the house.

 

Elvera’s garden thrived in neat rows and furrows under her care.  Fruit trees provided shade during the day as well as ingredients for luscious pies for evening dessert.  When the weather and times were generous and bright, the household table was blessed by the garden’s bounty and Elvera’s thoughtful and surprisingly sophisticated cooking skills.  However, her youth and young married life were spent in the isolated pioneer era when Colorado winters lacked modern conveniences and sinfully harsh mining conditions lacked conscience.  There was little food and even less opportunity, but adversity never stopped her from trying to make the best of what she had.  Elvera said she was taught about the use of medicinal herbs by a visitor from Mexico.  She went to the mountains and prairies and picked the herbs herself.  From these she made salves and teas to treat a variety of ailments.

 

Though poor and uneducated, Elvera was curious, intelligent, and determined.  Her son, Moses, often told his family, We were poor, but I didn’t know we were poor.  Moses absorbed his mother’s example.  He used his tenacious work ethic to plant his own garden, often admonishing his children and grandchildren to plant seeds if they want something to grow.  His garden is his company, one of the top 500 Hispanic businesses in the United States.  Moses never went to college.  He learned his lessons from the nuns at St. Mary’s, the U.S. Navy, and especially from his mother who used her garden and kitchen as laboratory for learning about life.  Food for the family was material for her art.  Indeed, no restaurant in Santa Fe makes better chile, calavacitas, tortillas or empanaditas.  Her homemade wine always received an appreciative nod or smile from those fortunate to have tasted its potent sweetness.  Six of her seven grandchildren have many memories focused around her table. Donald’s children—June, D.J. and Sandy, who died on November 7, 2007—were the main recipients because they live in Walsenburg.  Moses’s children—Karen, Mark and Matthew—all lived in California as children and could not visit often.  Nevertheless, all were deeply impressed by their grandmother’s culinary skills.  Eduardo is still a young boy and wasn’t yet born when his grandma would spend the day churning butter, baking bread, and making tamales.

 

Before her final decade, Elvera was involved with clubs, church activities, and crafts.  She had many friends.  Her niece, Rose Ann Vigil, was devoted to her.  Rose Ann and her husband, Dave, are thanked for all they did to help the woman they called Aunt, though Elvera was really Rose Ann’s first cousin.  However, they mixed fun with devotion, experiencing first hand Elvera’s luck playing Bingo and skill handling a poker hand.  Their families were so close that Rose Ann’s parents, Celestina Sally and Joe Martinez, are buried next to Elvera and Jake.

 

Elvera’s husband, Jake, died on January 11, 1990 when Elvera was ninety years old.  She did not do without in her last years, but often said about her difficult past, Those were not the good old days.  These are the good old days.  In fact, she was self sufficient until her late nineties.  Elvera continued to regularly visit the old people in the nursing home on West 7^th Street, often bringing packages of home-cooked food as gifts.  She was a regular attendee—and winner—at local Bingo games.  She looked forward to visits from her grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren: Elizabeth Rivard (Karen); Mark-Thomas and Crystal Cordova (Mark); Emily, Matthew Moses and Jacob Cordova (Matthew); Dylan and Derrick Tenorio (June); Jesse and Michael Martinez (Sandy); and Deliah and Trinity Cordova (D.J.).  Sometimes she was asked, Grandma, why do you think you’ve lived so long? One immediate answer was, I never stop moving.

 

In 2005 Elvera became part of the Walsenburg Care Center community.  Many, not only her own grandchildren, then began to call her Grandma out of sincere affection. Grandma often expressed the desire to live to be 100 years old.  On January 24, 2006 a party, including a band and dance, was thrown to honor her centurarian achievement.  During the birthday celebration week, she met her five-month-old great-great grandchild, Jacqueline Rivard (Elizabeth), who lives in Irvine, California.  Grandma did her best to retain her sense of humor and good manners until the last week of her life.  Through extremely frail and ill, she sometimes thanked the nurses for turning her while in bed so she could be more comfortable.  On the day of her death, she laughed with Stephanie Baca on their ride from the hospital to the nursing home.

 

Grandma cherished her faith until her last days.  During a serious illness in 2005 when hospital staff informed family she was at death’s door and Abuelita herself said, Vamos a la Luz, a great lesson was learned about hope and never giving up.  Elvera lived for 2-1/2 additional years.  God wanted her to stay with us a little longer before finally going to the Light last week.

 Fern Sandoval, Bryan Ortiz and the entire staff of the nursing home are thanked, not only for the excellent physical care they gave our mother and grandmother, but also for their extraordinary warmth and kindness towards her.  One of Elvera’s nieces, Stephanie Baca, works for the Walsenburg Care Center provided an almost daily, loving family presence.  The family also appreciates Dr. Neece for the care he gave Grandma during her last years.  We also thank the doctors, especially Dr. Cluff, nurses and staff at Spanish Peaks Regional Health Center. 

Elvera Albert Cordova had a rich heritage that also needs to be shared since it concerns the history of Walsenburg.  Her great-grandfather was the mountain man and Colorado pioneer, John David Albert. Written family records state that John was a guide for Kit Carson.  John was also the sole survivor of the Taos Massacre at Turley’s Mill in Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico during the War of 1847.  An act of arson destroyed the distillery. Tom Tobin did ride nearby and see the fire, but John David was actually in the mill during the conflagration.  John refused to submissively die.  He broke through a wall in the burning building and somehow evaded blasting bullets, intending not only to live, but to also warn others of the exploding war. With resolve beyond what most people would think a human being could muster, he made his way to Pueblo, Colorado in five harsh winter days.  Of course, luck played a part, but luck would not have joined the high stakes game without John’s indomitable action and intention. He protected himself from a cold January death by killing a deer, covering himself with the carcass, and eating the raw flesh.  People who saw him with the dead animal’s antlered head atop his own were terrified and fled, thinking him the devil incarnate rather than a freezing man.  John moved his family from Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico to southern Colorado.  His ranch in San Pedro is still owned by descendants. 

John David Albert’s first wife, known as Maria Juliana Leon, was Elvera’s great grandmother.  Maria Juliana was raised as the daughter of Don Miguel Antonio Leon.  Plaza de Los Leones was named after him.  However, Juliana, daughter of Maria Ysidora Vigil, was born with her mother’s last name.  Ysidora was both Spanish and Picuris Pueblo Indian.  Maria Ysidora later married Miguel.  Some believe Juliana was adopted by Miguel Leon and that her biological father was the explorer and mountain man, William Pope.  Pope settled in Northern California after living in Taos.  Pope Valley, near the famous Napa Valley, was named after him.  To this day, some descendants of Juliana and John David still call Juliana Popé.  Her padrino was William Workman, a famous early English settler of Southern California. The family was also close to John Rowland and Tom Tobin. Juliana was English, Spanish and Native American—a true child of the three cultures that co-existed in Nuevo Mexico during the nineteenth century.  Grandma corrected others who called her great grandma, Juliana.  She’d insist they call her Julianita.  Maria Juliana clearly must have been a tiny woman like Elvera.

John David Albert moved from northern New Mexico to the San Luis Valley.  He lived in the Culebra District and was a judge in the 1861 Colorado Territorial Election.  Maria Juliana died and was buried at the church of Saints Peter and Paul.  John David re-married, moved to Huerfano County and had additional children.  Historical accounts disagree about how many wives and children he had.  Whether he had two wives or three; twenty-one, twenty-six or another number of children, he certainly had a full house.

John built the fort at Plaza de los Leones at the intersection of the banks of the Cucharas River and what is now Main Street in Walsenburg.  He had a home there, and was also one of the first settlers in Cucharas where he had a farm and was the first postmaster.

Elvera often talked to her family about her mountain man great-grandfather.  She said, He was a German. Her ancestors, in fact, were one of the first German families to settle in the United States in the oldest part of Philadelphia called Germantown.  They came to the new world with Francis Pastorious seeking religious freedom.  They risked their lives for the hope of living in a democracy.  Their hope grew roots.  Their story is a part of the story of the beginning of the United States of America.  Johnnie Albert’s own father died in the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812, the war memorialized by The Star Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key.  Other ancestors, along with sons of William Penn, were original settlers of Reading, Pennsylvania.

Elvera’s maternal line included the family of Teodoro Espinosa who came from the Mora Valley in New Mexico to live in the new village of Cucharas.  That family also descended from several who walked from Zacatecas in 1598 with Don Juan de Oñate as part of the first permanent European settlement in what is now the United States, 22 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.  Further in the past, Elvera’s Spanish New Mexican ancestry can be traced to the 14^th century with direct ties to the noble Spanish Serna and Italian Spinola families.

 And so the arms of Elvera Cordova, a 4’10” woman who weighed less than 63 pounds at the time of her death, were strong and wide enough to both mother her own the best she could, and also to reach out beyond their lives.  With her stories and embodied character, it is as if she stretched her left hand into the past of her ancestors and, with her right hand, held tight onto ours.  Her actions and stories are legacy.  By telling amazing accounts of long-dead people, she brought them, for a moment, back to life.  The stories were examples of how the strong of spirit lived in the wild west, in the land that once was a province of Spain.  If closely heard, one could use those tales as tools to emulate and benefit both oneself and others.  She spoke of grit and courage beyond what some might think a human being could enact and endure.  She spoke of perseverance, pursuit of the creative, kindness, love and delicious home-made food. Her stories will reach beyond our own great grandchildren’s future.   

Funeral mass was held at St. Mary’s Church on November 29 followed by burial at St. Mary’s Cemetery North.

 

 

© 2007 Karen S. Córdova

 

Originally published in December 2007 in the Huerfano World Newspaper, Walsenburg, CO.