Wedding Anniversary

I’ve been meaning to post some great photos of my grandparents’ wedding, along with other old photos that relatives have shared with me since my Grandma Rise died nearly two years ago. Today, which would have been grandparents’ 73^rd wedding anniversary. The first photo (below) is a portrait of the wedding party. My Grandma wrote a note on the back, which is shown below in this image, to her sister, Pita.

 My Grandpa Carlos died in 1980, and Grandma Rise always called me every year on March 14. She called to remind me that we share this special day, and she would often cry as she thought about all the years without her husband.

Grandma Rise March 14, 1942

I’ve written about their marriage in 1942. My Grandpa, his two brothers and my Grandma’s brother all took a quick break from military training in Texas to get to Las Vegas for the wedding. They quickly returned to Texas, and all but my Grandpa left for the invasion of Sicily in 1943 and America’s entrance in the European theater of World War II. My Grandpa would join them in France after he completed his training to be an officer.

I was fortunate to receive the following photos of my Grandma from some relatives:

Grandma Rise (Date Unknown)

Grandma Rise (Graduation from high school)

Grandpa Carlos, Grandma Rise, Cousin Mary Sue, my Dad, Gil Sr.

Grandma Rise (top row, second from right) with some of her sisters and others)

New DNA Results

I took another DNA test, this one offered by Ancestry.com, after a cousin took the same test. I already knew quite a bit about my genetic genealogy after taking the DNA testing offered by Family Tree DNA, which has a New Mexico Project that includes more than 2,000 participants. The difference is Family Tree DNA tests Y-DNA, showing my paternal lineage, and MT-DNA, showing my maternal lineage. The test offered by Ancestry.com shows ethnic and racial makeup of participants based on both parents.

So, based on what I already knew, my results weren’t surprising. I knew from DNA and from the paper trail of my genealogy that I descend almost exclusively from Spanish and Native American ancestors – at least during the past 400 years, with some Portuguese and French mixed in. But it was still interesting to see the results in black and white. And it took me some time to fully figure it out.

My results broke down my ethnic heritage based on three primary regions: 32 percent Native American; 30 percent Iberian Peninsula (modern day Spain and Portugal); and 16 percent Italy and Greece.

I was a little surprised that Native American was the largest percentage, and that Italy/Greece was significant. But after thinking about it, my paternal Y-DNA tied me to the original Chaves family in New Mexico, which descended from Spain, and going further back several centuries, to the Visigoths, an East German tribe. The Visigoths migrated south through Europe and eventually sacked the Roman Empire which is probably why I have the DNA connection to Italy and Greece. The Visigoths eventually made their way to the Iberian Peninsula.

 

Visigoth Migration Pattern

Further complicating things, or possibly simplifying them, my maternal family also descends from the Chaves family, which is proven through genealogy and DNA. So that explains why nearly half of my DNA is connected to the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and Greece. And a third of my DNA is Native American, which is probably typical of most native New Mexicans who trace their heritage to the Spanish colonial period of the 1600s. I know from my mt-DNA (my mother’s mother’s mother’s mother, etc.) that I descend from the Chichimecas of North-Central Mexico.

The other benefit of this DNA test is that it accurately predicted I am the 1^st cousin to Mike Chavez, the cousin who took the test before me. Since so many people are signed up with Ancestry.com, it’s also not surprising that there are 5 second-cousins who took the test; 45 second-cousins; hundreds of third-cousins and thousands of 4^th- and 5^th-cousins.

You’d think I might be done with the DNA testing. Far from it. My daughters want to get tested, which would reveal their maternal ancestry. I also want to test my father-in-law, Joe Casaus, to see what the Casaus DNA reveals. And I have cousins who want to get tested, and I’m hoping to get my only DeTevis great-uncle tested to see his ancestry.

And I’m sure DNA testing will continue to evolve. It’s just a matter of being open-minded and adapting to new discoveries.

Sister Mary Robert Otero

(Courtesy: Loretto Archives)

After a lot of searching, I finally discovered some details of the life of Sister Mary Robert, my Grandpa Louie’s aunt on the Otero side of the family.

I thought it would be easy to at least find an obituary for a Catholic nun. But when I struck out, I turned to a handful of friends – a reporter in Las Cruces, an editor in Santa Fe and an archivist who usually finds things that I can’t find on my own. Still, no luck.

Eventually I went back to read historical information about the Loretto Sisters, knowing that my great-grandmother, also an Otero, and my great-Aunt, got their schooling from the Loretto Sisters in Santa Fe. I finally decided to simply call the Loretto community in El Paso, where I knew she spent much, if not most of her life. Someone in El Paso suggested I contact the archives at the Loretto Mother House in Kentucky. And bingo.

It turns out that Sister Mary Robert devoted 60 years of service to the El Paso Loretto community. The community celebrated her six decades of service in September 1984; a few months later, in April 1985, Sister Mary Robert passed away at the nursing home run by the Loretto Sisters, called Nazareth Hall.

 

Sister Mary Robert at the Loretto Sisters Community in El Paso, TX (Courtesy: Loretto Archives)

Sister Mary Robert was born Eloisa Otero in Cubero, NM on March 27, 1902. I had previously learned, and the Loretto Sisters records confirm, that Eloisa was the daughter of Miguel Otero and Maria Guadalupe Jaramillo. But her parents died when she was a child, and she was raised for a few years with her Uncle Melquiades Otero (my twice-great grandfather.) So, while she was my great grandmother Eliza’s cousin, they were probably more like sisters.

Eloisa took her first vows on April 26, 1924 when she was 22 years old, and from then on, she went by Sister Mary Robert. According to a feature article about her life in 1986, Sister Mary had prayed to be missioned to some small house. Rather, her first and only assignment was to El Paso.

 

Sister Mary Robert

My mom had told me she always remembered Sister Mary being with a friend named Sister Casianita when they visited Albuquerque. Sister Casianita Heaton used to joke, according to those who interviewed her, that Sister Mary Robert always waited for her next assignment. “Yes, Robert has been here all these years – waiting for further orders,” sister Casianita said.

Sister Mary Robert described her first impression of El Paso as “a pile of sand,” probably not unlike her home village of Cubero. “We had the academy building, but that was all, and the chapel there wasn’t quite finished when I came. We used the present community room and also a study hall for a chapel.”

Sister Mary Robert spent much of her time in El Paso caring for the boarders’ dining room, according to the article about her. She eventually took over the sisters’ dining room when the academy closed.

Sister Mary Robert recalled in the article how she was “taught the ropes” by Sister Carmen, and she was initiated in the kitchen by Sister Petra. Later, she learned from Sister Felician Goebel how to “make favors, centerpieces, and to create the other special effects for graduation dinners and similar festive events.”

“A group of us once had a party in the cupola of the academy building,” Mary Robert recalled. “I don’t remember much about it except that we took a big pot of coffee all the way up there!”

When asked for an article about the number of girls for whom she provided the touches of home in the boarding school, Sister Mary Robert only smiled, saying that she had just done her job.

For the 1984 ceremony that celebrated her 60 years of service to the El Paso Loretto community, at each table rested a small cardboard shoe, filled with mints. According to the article that described the ceremony, the shoes “symbolized the thousands, perhaps millions, of steps Sister Mary Robert had walked in her six decades of work in the Loretto, El Paso, dining rooms. The sisters surprised her with liturgy and festive dinner – with roses from the garden, special songs, dining room decorations, a scroll of tributes, and Mary Robert’s favorite dishes on the menu.”

Butch

My Gallegos cousins from Arizona recently shared some great photos with me. Not only were the photos new to me, they surprised my Dad, as well.

The photos were sent by Barbara Gallegos, my Dad’s cousin, who discovered them with her sister, Mary Sue, or Marissa Curnutte. Barbara and Marissa are the daughters of my Dad’s Uncle Clemente Gallegos.

Barbara and Marissa always refer to my Dad as Butch, as he was known when he was younger. The only other people I’ve ever heard call my Dad by the name “Butch” were my Grandma Rise and my Dad’s cousin Peggy.

The first photo of my Dad and his cousin Mary Sue when they were young children immediately grabbed my attention. I had seen my Dad as an infant and when he was old enough to play Little League. But I had not seen him as a toddler, probably 3 or 4 years old. My wife, Yvette, had a stronger reaction than I did. She thought my Dad, Gil Sr., had the exact same chubby cheeks that our second daughter, Isabella, had at the same age. Everyone has always associated Bella with my Dad’s side of the family – first, because of her dark skin, straight black hair, and a wicked sense of humor she surely inherited from my father and my Grandma Rise.

The second photo was just as surprising, but more so to my Dad. The photo of my grandparents and my Dad and Mary Sue must have been taken shortly after my Grandpa Carlos returned from World War II in Europe. My Dad was taken aback when I showed him the photo. He said he had never seen a photo of his mother at that age, aside from her wedding photo just a few years earlier.

The third photo is a picture of my great-grandparents, Luis and Victoria (Trujillo) Gallegos. They were the parents of my Grandpa Carlos.

The fourth photo shows my great-grandparents with my Dad’s sister, Martha, following her First Holy Communion. This photo also grabbed my Dad’s attention because he recognized the painting of his Dad hanging prominently on the wall over the brick fireplace in his grandparents’ Las Vegas home. He remembered the small portraits tucked into each corner of the framed painting, including a baby picture of himself, just like it was yesterday.

The fifth and sixth photos are images of a newspaper article, surely from the Las Vegas Optic, that highlighted my great-grandparents’ Golden Anniversary.