Linda Huesca TullyLeave a comment on Clues on the Ancestry Trail – Part 2 of 10Baron

Clues on the Ancestry Trail – Part 2 of 10


The Carpenter of Mission San Jose

Joseph Edouard Baron (1825 – 1921) *

Signature page of a legal settlement executed on July 22, 1852, by Father John Nobili, S.J., Eduard Baron, and Jules Audrain. Image courtesy of Archives and Special Collections, Santa Clara University.

If you’ve ever explored your family tree, you’ve probably stumbled across someone who left few to no breadcrumbs on the ancestry trail. Maybe you gave up your search, or you were content to have just found their name as a link to someone else who was, shall we say, a bit more intriguing.

For me, such was the case with Eduard Baron*, my husband’s great-great-grandfather. Gradually, though, the mystery of how he was connected to Mission San Jose led me back to the archives at Santa Clara University to learn more about him.

It had been thrilling to see Eduard’s signature, but the document he signed was a legal settlement that left more questions than answers. Dated July 22, 1852, it also was signed by Jules Audrain and Father John Nobili, a priest of the Society of Jesus, who was acting on behalf of the Bishop of Alta and Baja California.

So what brought Eduard and Jules to Mission San Jose, and what kind of work did they do there? Had Nobili hired them?

I returned on a cold February morning in 2018 to Santa Clara for the answers, poring over correspondence and documents from the Papers of John Nobili, S.J., a part of the Inventory of Presidents’ Papers. Most of the letters were in Spanish or French, with a very few in English and one in Latin. They were about a little-known episode at Mission San Jose that had involved my husband’s great-great-grandfather, Eduard Baron. But how? It would take far more than a single afternoon to study and analyze the information.

With the archivist’s permission, I photographed some 43 documents and went home to read and translate many of them into English, a task that took a couple of months to do in between family life and a hectic work schedule. As I pieced together the bits of information I already had on Eduard and the events mentioned in the Santa Clara documents, a clearer picture of him and his story began to emerge.

Between 1850 and 1851, Eduard Baron had to admit that the long journey from his native France to California in search of gold had not gone as he expected. He had left his family in 1848, sailing across the Atlantic Ocean and traveling overland to the West Coast, one of tens of thousands of immigrants who hoped to strike it rich in the gold fields of California.

A statue of Saint Junípero Serra, founder of the California Missions, greets visitors to the Mission Gardens. Linda Huesca Tully, 2018.

Although some of the Argonauts struck it rich in the Sierras, most were not so lucky. Some, broke and broken by their fruitless efforts, returned to their homelands in dismay. Others, who were more enterprising, if not downright greedy, capitalized on low supply and high demand for everyday necessities and charged exorbitant prices for food and supplies at the rate of whatever amount desperate new arrivals could pay. Still others refused to look back. Pioneers in both spirit and action, they forged their own destinies, finding or creating opportunities and settlements.

Eduard, like many 49ers, likely found little or none of the coveted precious metal during his foray. The only prospecting he faced now was what to do next with his life at the ripe old age of 23.

It did not take him long to realize that there was more money to be had in building new towns and homes to keep up with the influx of settlers arriving daily in California. San Francisco’s own population, at 459 in 1847 when it was known as the town of Yerba Buena, had exploded to 34,000 almost overnight. Sensing his carpentry skills were a lucrative commodity, Eduard made up his mind to return to San Francisco. He was joined by a fellow French expatriate and carpenter, Jules Audrain.

On their way back, they stopped at Mission San Jose, about halfway between the Bay Area and the California gold fields. The town that had sprung up around the mission had become an important trading post and layover point for travelers going to and coming from the gold mines through Mission Pass along the Diablo mountain range. There, they could find lodging at one of two hotels and buy fresh fruit and meat and pelts from the coyote, deer, elk, bears, mountain lions, and cattle roaming the lands.

Overlooking the San Francisco Bay and the lush valleys surrounding it, the growing mission settlement was not a bad place to contemplate the future. The natural beauty of its setting and its mild, Mediterranean-like climate, unlike the changing, sometimes extreme weather of the Sierras and the damp fog and wind of San Francisco, appealed to the two young men, and they chose to go no further. The decision would alter their own lives and the history of the mission.

Header image: Signature page of legal settlement executed on July 22, 1852, by Father John Nobili, S.J., Eduard Baron, and Jules Audrain. Image courtesy of Archives and Special Collections, Santa Clara University.

* Note: Historical documents reveal that after arriving in the United States from France in 1849, Joseph Edouard Baron dropped his first name so that he was known as “Eduard, ” a simplified variation of his name that left out the “o” from the French spelling. In Arizonan and Mexican historical documents, his name took on the Spanish version of “Eduardo.” This article uses his preferred name, Eduard.

Work Cited

Mission San Jose Business Contract. July 22, 1852. Archives and Special Collections, 3DB01, Papers of John Nobili, S.J. 1851 – 1856, Santa Clara University.

Next: Part 3: A Hard Offer to Refuse

To read all the episodes in this series or to find other stories about the Baron family, click here.

Copyright ©  2021  Linda Huesca Tully

Linda Huesca TullyLeave a comment on More than Meets the Eye – Part 1 of 10Baron

More than Meets the Eye – Part 1 of 10

The Carpenter of Mission San Jose

Joseph Edouard Baron (1825 – 1921)*

Mission San Jose. Copyright Linda Huesca Tully, 2021.

Everyone has a story.  Whether you discover that story depends on how much effort you’re willing to put into getting to know that person.  And if you take the time and dig deep enough, you might find that the seemingly most ordinary person is surprisingly extraordinary.

Something about Eduard Baron* told me his was an unfinished story.  My husband’s paternal great-great-grandfather, he left his native France as a young man for San Francisco in 1848 in search of gold.  He settled in the Santa Clara Valley, married, had five children, and became an American citizen before moving his family to Arizona.

Yet despite his having lived within driving distance of our home, first in Washington Township and later in San Jose, the details of his life in those places eluded me for years.

Late one Saturday night a few years ago, I stumbled on Eduard’s name in an online index mentioning a business contract and receipts for work that he and a fellow carpenter had performed on the church and house at Mission San Jose. The receipts were part of the Inventory of President’s Papers, Papers of John Nobili, S.J., at the Santa Clara University Archives.

The other carpenter had a familiar name:  Jules Audrain.  I had seen Jules’ name before in the 1852 California State Census, indicating he and Eduard lived in San Jose.  Wondering if he was a cousin or a friend of Eduard’s, I had tried learning more about him but came up dry.  Yet here was his name again as one of the signers of the receipts.

There was a third signer whose name I did recognize:  Father John Nobili, S.J. 

Father Nobili, a Jesuit priest and one of the giants of the early days of the Santa Clara Valley, not only had been president of the California missions at one time but also, and more significantly, founded Santa Clara College, known today as Santa Clara University.

In French and dated December 14, 1852, the business contract and receipt were part of a collection of his personal papers.

As soon as I could arrange it, I took an afternoon off and scurried over to the university library, a short drive from my office.  It didn’t take the archivist long to find the legal-size green-gray folder containing the papers, which were in French.  I gave silent thanks for falling in love with the language years before and eagerly began translating the contents into English.

That’s when I discovered the document was more than just a series of paystubs.  It was a legal settlement for a little-known event that would come to be known as the Mission San Jose Scandal.

* Note: Historical documents reveal that after arriving in the United States from France in 1849, Joseph Edouard Baron dropped his first name so that he was known as “Eduard, ” a simplified variation of his name that left out the “o” from the French spelling. In Arizonan and Mexican historical documents, his name took on the Spanish version of “Eduardo.” This article uses his preferred name, Eduard.

Next: Part 2 – Clues on the Ancestry Trail

To read all the episodes in this series or to find other stories about the Baron family, click here.

Copyright ©  2021  Linda Huesca Tully

Linda Huesca Tully4 Comments on The Catholic Educators in our LivesSchiavon Uncategorized

The Catholic Educators in our Lives

When I was very young, I was certain that one of the highlights of my mother’s high school career was that she got to paint the big toe of her high school’s patron, Saint Thomas Aquinas, on a life-size mural inside the school entrance sometime in the mid-1940s.  She was proud of her small contribution to the memory of a beloved saint that she and her classmates hoped would inspire the quest for learning by future generations of Catholic girls on Chicago’s South Side.

They could not have had a better saint for that cause. Aquinas, one of the greatest theologians and philosophers of the Catholic Church, believed in the moral dimension of education and the obligation of teachers, as role models for their students, to help others seek truth by way of experience and understanding.

Aquinas Dominican High School, a beautiful brick structure on the South Side of Chicago, closed nearly 40 years later due to declining enrollment and rising costs.  Still, the legend of that toe and the saint to whom it belonged followed me throughout most of my life in one way or another.

My mother loved her school and its namesake so much that when I started first grade at Saint Philip Neri School,  just next door to her alma mater, she gave me a small wooden statue of him, holding the Summa Theologica.  It has endured several big moves, a corner breaking off its pedestal at some point, and today it has pride of place on a bookcase in my office.

A photo of my mother’s memorable teacher, Sister Rose Francis, O.P. a member of the Adrian (Michigan) Dominican Sisters.  Photo from the 1959 Aquinas High School yearbook, “Taquin.”

Most of us have a favorite teacher or two, people we remember throughout our lives who made a difference to us. Today, on the occasion of Catholic Schools Week, I want to share my heartfelt thanks to and fond remembrances of these educators, some of whom have gone to their heavenly reward and others who are still with us, all of whom meant a lot to my family and me. Thanks to her experiences, my mother, Joan (Schiavon) Huesca, instilled in my sisters and me a love of education and an appreciation for the value of Catholic education in particular.  One of her teachers, Sister Rose Francis, an Adrian Dominican nun, had a huge influence on her.  To hear my mother say it, Sister Rose Francis was one tough cookie who was as much feared as she was loved by her students for her passion for teaching. Continue reading “The Catholic Educators in our Lives”

Linda Huesca Tully7 Comments on History is Our Story, tooUncategorized

History is Our Story, too

History classes bored me when I was young. They seemed too focused on battles, dates, and dry facts and names that meant nothing to me. Aside from those who interested me, such as Galileo Galilei, Henry XIII, Marie Curie, Abraham Lincoln, and Charles Lindbergh, most of the people in my history books had no seeming relevance to my life.

Stories were more up my alley: fairy tales and myths, fiction and non-fiction, biographies, and family stories. Reading about people, their experiences, and their feelings was my escape from the world. Listening to family stories around the dinner table brought me back into it, wide-eyed and rapt in wonder at the marvelous things my grandparents, great-grandparents, and aunts and uncles had seen, done, and thought, at times practically in my own backyard. The idea that these people made me who I am has spurred a curiosity to learn as much as I could about them, and so began my lifelong love of genealogy.

History becomes more relevant and interesting when you have a personal connection. As we try to make sense of the world of our forebears, we begin to understand that their stories and the historical events and people behind them are also part of our own story. As American historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has written, “The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject filters his own changing self-image.”

With a growing curiosity to uncover more about my family and their stories, I paid closer attention to the surroundings and events that affected their lives. My youthful boredom with history transformed into a fascination with it and its relevance to my life and those before me as I began to look in new ways at my ancestors’ lives and motivations in the contexts of their time and place in the world.

Although as a California resident I knew a fair amount about the Gold Rush of 1849, it took on personal meaning through the family stories of my great-great grandfather, William Constantine McGinnis, who found gold, fell ill, and had to be nursed to health by his wife, Margaret McCoy, who sailed from New York to San Francisco around Cape Horn to be by his side.

I learned of the immigrant’s perspective on the same period from my husband’s own great-great grandfather, Joseph Edouard Baron, who left his family in the south of France during an economic depression to seek his fortune in California.

When we moved to Gilroy, about 30 miles south of San Jose, I set my sights on visiting the local historical society and museum. It was there I ran across mentions of two men named Tully, my husband’s surname. One was an ancestor, the other possibly his cousin. Both were early settlers. Researching their places in the history of Gilroy gave me added appreciation for my newly adopted hometown and surrounding area.

Our children didn’t have much of a chance to dislike history. I took every opportunity I could to connect them with historical events. They knew the stories about their Hoppin pilgrim ancestors; their ancestor Zachariah Riney, who taught Abraham Lincoln to read and write; and their Grandpa Welner “Bing” Tully being stranded in an airfield in Burma during World War II. History came alive for them and helped them gain a wider perspective of the world and how they fit into it.

In 1957, my father-in-law, Welner C. Tully, attended the opening and dedication of Tully Elementary School, named for his grandfather, Charles Hoppin Tully, an educator; and (adoptive) great-grandfather, Pinckney Randolph Tully, merchant and two time mayor of Tucson. 62 years later, two generations of Tullys journeyed to the school to pay our respects.
In 1957, my father-in-law, Welner C. Tully, attended the opening and dedication of Tully Elementary School, named for his grandfather, Charles Hoppin Tully, an educator; and (adoptive) great-grandfather, Pinckney Randolph Tully, merchant and two time mayor of Tucson. 62 years later, two generations of Tullys journeyed to the school to pay our respects.

Last March, on a family history sleuthing trip to Tucson, Arizona, my husband, our son Kevin, and I snapped pictures of each other in front of Tully Elementary School, named for my husband’s second and third great-grandfathers, Charles Hoppin Tully and Pinckney R. Tully; and gazed up at the ceiling of the old Presidio, made up in part from freight boxes from Tully & Ochoa, their mercantile company.

Charles H. Tully, an educator and journalist in early Tucson, understood well that the current events of his time would become the history of the future. In the late 1800s, he became the treasurer of the Arizona Historical Society, founded by Arizona pioneers committed to documenting the history of the Arizona territory for future generations. His own letters, in the society archives, give insights into the events, culture, and values of the day.

Recycled freight boxes from Tully & Ochoa, the largest freight company in southern
Arizona in the mid-19th century, form the ceiling planks of the Tucson Presidio.

If you don’t know any stories about your ancestors, start where you are. Ask a parent, a grandparent, or an uncle about their life or a recollection of how a historical event impacted them. Record their stories, in writing or electronically, to preserve the details. Ask a lot of questions. And prepare to be amazed.

Like us, our ancestors did not live in a vacuum, and we cannot learn about them without learning about the times in which they lived. Their dreams and struggles, their triumphs and tragedies, and their character and attitudes were shaped in some way by the historical forces that affected their everyday lives.

If we are to make sense of their lives and of who we are, because of, or in spite of them, we need to embrace their historical and cultural context, just as our own descendants will need to do years from now to understand us.

History may be about the past, but it is our story, too, and it is up to us to know and preserve it for future generations.

************
Copyright ©  2020 Linda Huesca Tully

Linda Huesca Tully6 Comments on Echoes of our AncestorsHuesca Schiavon

Echoes of our Ancestors

Gilbert Cayetano Huesca (1915 – 2009)
Joan Joyce (Schiavon) Huesca (1928 – 1987)

Gilbert and Joan Huesca. 1958, Chicago, Illinois.


If you’ve ever thought about writing down your family stories, don’t overthink it or wait until the “time is right.”  Just do yourself and your descendants a favor.  Get busy and start writing.

Though I have been writing this blog for a dozen years, it took me six years until I was able to write about my parents, Gilbert and Joan Huesca. By then, my mother had been gone for  25 years, and my father had been gone for three. It is not easy to write about someone you love and miss deeply, so I expected to write three or four stories at the most over a couple of weeks.

But first I struggled with all the reasons not do it.  The hardest part was the sadness I felt when I sat down to write my parents’ stories. When you sit down to write about someone you miss so much, you risk letting your emotions get in the way and quelching your efforts from the start.  While it might be easier to sidestep the sadness by not writing about them at all, it was also healthier to work through it.  Moreover, it was reassuring to think there would be a lasting record of their lives, something that could endure, even if one day my memory were to fade.

Continue reading “Echoes of our Ancestors”

Linda Huesca Tully2 Comments on Amanuensis Monday: “Nuptial Blessings of Our Very Illustrious Lord”Huesca

Amanuensis Monday: “Nuptial Blessings of Our Very Illustrious Lord”

Marriage Record of
José Cayetano de la Trinidad Huesca (1815 – after 1860)
María Josefa Rodríguez (1821 – 1897)

My paternal great-great-grandfather, José Cayetano de la Trinidad Huesca. Date unknown.

[Note:  Amanuensis is an ancient word meaning one who performs the function of writing down or transcribing the words of another.  Derived from the Latin root manu-  , meaning manual or hand, the word also has been used as a synonym for secretary or scribe.]

The above photograph (or is it a drawing?) of my great-great-grandfather, José Cayetano de la Trinidad Huesca, holds pride of place on a wall in our home.  Under his watchful gaze are photographs of his son, José Enrique Florentino Huesca, his grandson, José Alberto Cayetano Huesca, and his great-grandson – my father –  Gilbert Cayetano Huesca, along with others of our extended family.

My father received a 12″ x 24″ oval version of this portrait of Cayetano, as he was known, and another of his son, Enrique, from cousins during a visit to Jalapa, Veracruz, in the 1980s.  It may be a crayon enlargement, which was a technique used to enlarge a smaller photograph.  It is hard to date the portrait, but based on his graying hair and the fact that crayon enlargements were available beginning in the 1860s, I would estimate him to be about 45 – 50 years old.

His lively eyes and his slightly parted lips suggest he wants to share something with us – perhaps the wonder of witnessing the growth of his eight children, or the joy he felt as he finished some of the wood furnishings he crafted for the grand Cathedral Basilica of Puebla in his profession as a carpenter.  Maybe he wants to share the insights he has learned about faith and family and life, insights into the wisdom and values that have flowed through the veins and permeated the conversations of subsequent Huesca generations to the present day.
Continue reading “Amanuensis Monday: “Nuptial Blessings of Our Very Illustrious Lord””

Linda Huesca TullyLeave a comment on Happy Birthday, Mamma!Huesca McGinnnis Schiavon

Happy Birthday, Mamma!

Joan Joyce (Schiavon) Huesca
   1928 – 1987

My mother, Joan Huesca


Today, on this Fourth of July, as the United States turns 242 years old, my mother, Joan (Schiavon) Huesca, would have turned 90.

We lost her 31 years ago this Fall.  Sometimes it seems as though I saw her only yesterday. Other times it feels like it was a lifetime ago.  But I always smile when I think of her on this day.

Having a birthday on Independence Day was an important part of my mother’s identity.  She used to say she was born with a bang; her uncle John McGinnis was so excited that he set off firecrackers under some of the overpasses in his neighborhood to celebrate.  As a little girl, she believed for many years that all the parades and firecrackers were just for her.
Continue reading “Happy Birthday, Mamma!”

Linda Huesca Tully3 Comments on It’s an Honor to Meet You…Huesca Tully Uncategorized

It’s an Honor to Meet You…

(Originally published April 23, 2013, and updated June 1, 2018)

I am a proud member of Geneabloggers Tribe, and before that a member of its predecessor,  Geneabloggers, Thomas MacEntee’s web-based group of family history writers and genealogists.  It includes over 3,000 members – that’s 3,000 blogs –  from all over the world.  I joined in 2012 but have been fortunate enough to read hundreds of inspiring stories by some very talented people.

Thomas’ website was a rich repository for genealogy news, research and tech tips, writing prompts, and links to some of the best articles about genealogy you could read on the web.  One of the popular features on the site was called “May I Introduce to You…” written by fellow blogger Gini Webb of Ginisology.  Gini’s profiles on Geneabloggers were always a good read, like her blog.  Her interviews introduced me to fascinating new blogs, some of which I now follow regularly.
Continue reading “It’s an Honor to Meet You…”

Linda Huesca Tully13 Comments on He Gave Not Some, but AllSchiavone Uncategorized

He Gave Not Some, but All

John Francis Mattarocchia (1948 – 1969)

John Francis Mattarocchia, 1948 – 1969, from the Virtual Vietnam Veterans Wall of Faces

I spent Memorial Day this year with my cousin, John. I came across him about eight months ago for the first time in the way distant cousins sometimes meet these days, on the Internet.   His name had just popped up, as names do, in the course of researching my mother’s Schiavone family history.  But I was with him in name only, because he was killed in action in the Vietnam War 49 years ago this month.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, as the eldest of four sisters, I was a young teenager with limited exposure to the war other than my parents’ conversations at the dinner table, my classmates’ occasional references to their brothers’ draft numbers,  and the latest developments on the six o’clock news.  Not until I grew older did I read numerous accounts of the conflict, many of them first-hand.  But I never knew anyone personally who had been there, odd as it might seem.
Continue reading “He Gave Not Some, but All”

Linda Huesca TullyLeave a comment on Letter to My Great-Great GrandparentsBennett O'Grady Perrotin

Letter to My Great-Great Grandparents

Charles Jacques François Perrotin.        1884, New York

Catherine (O’Grady) Perrotin.         1884, New York

My Dear Great-great Grandparents, François and Catherine,

A reminder popped up on my calendar today that you, Francois, died of meningitis 127 years ago, on May 26, 1891. It prompted me to reflect on your lives and the values you imparted to your descendants, now seven generations strong. As one of those descendants, I write to let you know of the special place we have for you in our hearts even now.

So much of who we are, we owe to you

So much of who we are and why, we owe to you. I can think of three of my father’s brothers, three of my cousins, two of my nephews, and one of my sons whose faces mirror yours, François. Catherine, your name has been passed down to so many women in our family – it is the name I chose for my Confirmation. And your fair features have endured, from my great-aunt Blanca on down, through my paternal aunts, cousins, and even in my immediate family, exquisite reminders of your grace and beauty.
Continue reading “Letter to My Great-Great Grandparents”