‘Spiritweavers’

WOMAN'S GENEALOGY PROJECT DIGS DEEPLY INTO FAMILY'S PAST
By MARY JEAN PORTER
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

Twelve generations of grandmothers: Can you imagine the details of lifetimes stretching back-to-back more than 400 years?

That's what Puebloan Charlene Garcia Simms is trying to do with her genealogy project, "Spirit Weavers: A Twelve Generational Study of India/Hispana Grandmothers."

She says she wants to do more than list their names on a chart: "I want to put flesh on their bones."

Garcia Simms has been hooked on genealogy for about 15 years, says it can get "very complicated and convoluted. These grandmothers gave me the best organization possibilities in my story.

"I was curious as to what kinds of lives my grandmothers lived - hardships, challenges, joys, even of the simplest kind. I want to talk about the time periods when the women were alive. I try to find their voices."

COURTESY PHOTO/CHARLENE GARCIA SIMMS
Carlota Cordova Manchego and her husband, Tranquilino Manchego, at their home in Garcia in the late 1950s.

She adds: "I love mixing the history and the genealogy. You can get the ‘bottled’ version in the mail, but I take a lot of pride in doing the real genealogy."

Garcia Simms estimates she has two more years of work - she needs to verify some sources - before publishing her study. She began the project after reading about her own ancestors and Garcia, the small town in the San Luis Valley where she was raised, in other writers' works.

She and her husband, Eduard Terrones Simms, have published several genealogy- and history-oriented books under their imprint, El Escritorio.

Garcia Simms got further incentive to learn about her female forebears when she came across a list of more than 750 "notable American women" and only six of them had Hispanic surnames.

"That's less than 1 percent," she says. "It made me a little mad, but my husband said, ‘If books haven't been written about them, you need to get them out there.’ ”

So, one by one, she has identified the grandmothers on her father's side, going back all the way to 1598 when Maria de la Cruz and her husband, Juan Perez de Bustillo, came north out of Mexico with the Juan de Onate expedition and settled in New Mexico.

"Maria de la Cruz's role in my line of grandmothers is very important because it provides a starting point for me in this country," Garcia Simms says. She estimates Maria de la Cruz was born in about 1565.
Nemecia Cordova and her husband, Jose Jesus Cordova, in their 50th-anniversary photo taken in 1935.

In her search she's gotten acquainted with several of the women: Nemecia Cordova, her great-grandmother, born in 1870; Maria Dolores Varela, her great-great-great-grandmother, born in 1828; and Josefa Lujan, her great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, born in 1748, who was from Picuris, N.M., and was indigenous.

Cordova was born in Garcia, a small town on the Colorado-New Mexico border that formerly was called Plaza de los Manzanares. It was settled in 1849 by people coming north from Taos.

Cordova's parents were landowners and her father grew beans, wheat and corn. Her family moved back and forth to Conejos and to Fort Garland (which was known as El Rito de los Indios). When the family returned to Garcia in 1882, Mormon settlers were passing through the area and this made a lasting impression on the girl.

"They were going to different places," she said in an oral history dictated when she was 95 years old. "Some went to Manassa, others to Eastdale, and still others to Richfield. . . . There were so many that their wagon tracks were so deep that they looked like a ditch. When they were passing, I would climb the roof of the house so I could see the wagons. When I would climb down I would go to the wagon tracks and sink to my knees."

Cordova had 17 children, five of whom died at a young age. Her husband was Jose Jesus Cordova.

Garcia Simms' grandmother, Carlota Cordova, was born in 1887. She married Tranquilino Manchego and their son, Carlos Manchego, is Garcia Simms' father (her mother is Pablita "Pauline" Martinez).
This photo of Nemecia Cordova's house in Garcia was taken on a winter day in the late 1980s.

"I was blessed with two families," Garcia Simms says. "I was born in San Luis but my parents came to Pueblo. My dad worked at the mill and we lived in Salt Creek. The story goes I couldn't take the heat in Pueblo as a baby so my Aunt Irma (Carlos' sister) came and took me to the valley and, in time, kept me to raise as her own. She and (her husband) Gilbert Garcia didn't have any children. This was common in the Hispanic culture.

"Most of my cousins left and I stayed behind (in Garcia). I lived the last of the old-fashioned ways. So now I can sort of capture them in some of my poetry and my writings. I love to capture the characters of some of the people who lived there.

"I feel really lucky to have been left behind, to get a glimpse of the old ways."

Garcia was a town of about 200 people when she lived there, and the school and the church were the focal points of the community, Garcia Simms says. She left after graduating from high school.

Hard work and deep religious faith are what she remembers most clearly about her grandmother - values that were shared by all the grandmothers.

"My grandmother was such a hard worker. She would prepare everything so we could survive the winters. All summer she'd work in the garden; she canned and dried everything. My grandmother was in charge of plastering the house. Her house had the typical tin roof with adobe walls. I don't know if the house is still standing.

"I always remember her working. Even when she was resting, she would be doing needlepoint. In Spanish she would say, ‘I'm resting but making adobes.’

"All the grandmothers I write about had to be tough to survive this harsh land. They worked right with their husbands and they had so many children. A lot of women died in childbirth but these women lived longer lives than expected. My great-grandmother lived to be 96; my grandmother died when she was 72, but she was a smoker who died of lung cancer.

"They were extremely religious. My grandmother had an altar and she'd pray every day at 2 o'clock. I find the religion (element) with all my grandmothers. The priest came only once a month and you'd better be ready."

COURTESY PHOTOS/CHARLENE GARCIA SIMMS
Clorinda Manchego Valdez and her husband, Ramon Valdez, stand in front of the Manchego home in Garcia in the early 1930s. Clorinda was the daughter of Carlota Cordova Manchego and Tranquilino Manchego.

Garcia Simms has used a variety of resources in her work, including records kept by the Catholic Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the special collections of the Pueblo City-County Library District, numerous books including one written by Joe Marquez of Denver, her second cousin once removed, who obtained the translated oral history of Nemecia Cordova from her grandson, Johnny Cordova, who did the interview.

She first met Marquez in the late 1980s at a meeting of the Genealogical Society of Hispanic America in Pueblo.

"He said he was doing genealogy of the San Luis Valley, of Garcia where my family was from. He had a list of all my grandmothers. We realized that my great-grandmother and his grandmother were sisters. I never knew she (his grandmother) existed.

"New Mexico was isolated for hundreds of years - from 1598 to 1848. Because of this isolation, you run across these common ancestors."

Garcia Simms chose her title because the grandmothers "were the weavers of my spirit. They gave me a sense of belonging, they gave me a sense of self-esteem. I believe that I am part of them and they are part of me. I really think we are woven into each other."

In addition to learning about her ancestors, the project has given her a record she can pass on to her own three children, the next generation.

"I think you need to know where you came from. It gives me a special feeling."

A LOOK BACK

12 generations of Charlene Garcia Simms' grandparents - past to present

    1. Maria de la Cruz (born about 1565) and Juan Perez de Bustillo
    2. Ana Perez de Bustillo (about 1585) and Asencio Arechuleta
    3. Juana Arechuleta (about 1610) and Matias Lopez del Castillo
    4. Ana Lopez del Castillo (about 1630) and Juan de Herrera
    5. Eugenia de Herrera (about 1660) and Antonio Cordoba
    6. Francisca Torres (1702) and Tomas Cordoba
    7. Josefa Lujan (1748) and Manuel Cordoba
    8. Maria Dolores Villalpando (1786) and Estanislado Cordoba
    9. Maria Dolores Varela (1828) and Jose Valentin Cordoba
    10. Maria Consolacion Garcia (1850) and Pablo Cordoba
    11. Nemecia Cordova (1870) and Jose Jesus Cordova
    12. Carlota Cordova (1887) and Tranquilino Manchego

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