52 Ancestors #9 Jose de Jesus Quinteros

Jose de Jesus "Jesse"
Quinteros, Apr 1941,
age 31,Temple, TX

This week's post is kind of a follow up to last week's post about my Tia Barbarita. While I was going over what I knew about her, I found some new information about my Tio Jesse I had never seen before. It was his alien statement in regards to the selective service. It was both an interesting & an enlight-
ening document he filed in 1943 in order to claim exemption from military service in the US Armed Forces during WWII.

Tio Jesse was the second of three surviving sons of Rafael & Domitila Mendez de Quinteros. He was born in Sept 1910 in El Fuerte, Rio Grande, Zacatecas, Mexico (there have been various dates in September given for his birth date). His family moved to Texas when he was ten years old. He married a widow, Barbarita Pedroza de Garcia, & had six children. He adopted & raised as his own her children by her previous two marriages. He spent his entire adult life working for the Santa Fe Railroad doing track maintenance as an assistant foreman of one of the many rail crews in Temple. Tio Jesse's family lived in one of the Santa Fe Section Houses in Temple (their particular house is no longer standing) which were provided for members of the rail crews & their families.

1940 Temple, Bell Co., Texas Census showing the family of Jesse & Barbara Pedroza de Quintero

The 1940 census found Tio Jesse & his family living in Temple on 17th Street. This was one of the section houses & the home his parents would die in within the next year. Tio is indicated as the person who gave the census taker the information for that year's census. Living in the household is his wife Barbara & children Jonita, Augstina, Faustina, Margaret, Erlinda, Tilta & Jose (some of these names are wrong & two children are missing because they hadn't been born yet). War broke out in Dec 1941. His younger brother Rafael was drafted briefly in 1943 & in Dec 1943, Jesse filed the following paperwork to gain exemption from military service.

Page one is just a brief basic information page. Page two goes more in depth, asking for date & place of birth, his alien registration number, citizenship, marital status, employment & residence information. Most notably, it details where all Jesse has lived since his family moved to the US from Mexico in Dec 1920. I had heard that the Quinteros family had lived in Coleman, Coleman Co., Texas briefly before moving to Belton, Bell Co., Texas from my paternal grandfather & it was gratifying to see it documented here. The bottom of page two asks where Tio Jesse entered the US (Eagle Pass, Texas) & when. Page three covers Tio Jesse's employment with the Santa Fe Railroad & the kind of work he did for them. It states that he has received no education while in the US, nor has he served in the military. It states he is a perm-
anent resident & intends to remain in the US (Apparently things were a lot easier in the age before green cards & visa applications. I know that Tio made atleast one trip back home to Zacatecas, Mexico during the 1940's because he is documented as having crossed the border at Laredo when he was returning home). The bottom of page three gave some information about my paternal grandfather Rafael that I had heard before but not known the specifics about. Tio Jesse stated that the only member of his family to serve in the military was his younger brother Rafael. He entered the service in 1943, exited in 1943 & attained the rank of private during his brief period of military service (I had heard my grandfather was drafted & served briefly, but I didn't know when or where or how long. I have seen only one photo of him in uniform & only knew his service wasn't long enough to earn him an american flag or military honors at his death). The final page, page 4, covers his family & political ideals. It lists the names of his mother & father & that they are deceased (it also gave their occupations). His wife Barbara is listed as well as his children. At one time or another, Tio Jesse was a member of the Red Cross (which is news to me). He indicates he understands & upholds the government of the US & has no affiliation with any type of subversive organization, nor believes in anarchy. Page four ends with his statement that he objects to serving in the military & that he fully understands the nature of the document & statements he is making & that they were read to him & understood by him in English. The page is notarized by W.S. McGregor, a licensed notary public of Bell Co., Texas & bears his signature. It was filed with Local Selective Service Board on 17 Dec 1943 in Temple, Texas.

I would love to find something like this on my grandfather or Tio Pancho but have not. Tio Jesse was my favorite of my father's uncles when I was growing up & finding this document both validated some of things I had heard & gave me better insight to him as a person. I close this week's post with Tio's baptism & birth documents from Rio Grande, Mexico & the border crossing document that was filled out when he returned to Texas in 1944.

 

Sources:
Mexico, Zacatecas, Civil Registration, 1860-2000, Río Grande, Nacimientos 1909-1911, Img #322, pg #32
Mexico, Catholic Church Records, Zacatecas, Río Grande, Santa Elena de la Cruz,
Bautismos L. 24-31 1909-1915, Img #226, Record #100, pg 53
"Texas, Marriages, 1837-1973," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/F6BK-8TL : accessed 01 Mar 2014), Jesus Quintras and Barbareta Pedroza, 01 May 1933, Bk 30, Pg 26, 848.
"United States Census, 1940," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/KWNV-Q75 : accessed 08 Mar 2014), Jessie Quentero, Temple, Justice Precinct 5, Bell, Texas, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 14-28, sheet 6B, family 125, NARA digital publication of T627, roll 3984.
Ancestry.com. U.S., Alien Draft Registrations, Selected States, 1940-1946 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.

Original data: Alien Registration Forms, compiled 1940–1946. Selective Service System, Arkansas State Headquarters. ARC ID: 576612. Records of the Selective Service System, 1926–1975, Record Group 147. The National Archives at Fort Worth. Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.A.

52 Ancestors #8 Barbara Pedroza Franco de Quintero

Barbara Pedroza de Quinteros,
estimate photo was probably
taken sometime during the
Mexican Revolution

Tia Barbarita was un-
doubtedly my favorite of all my father's paternal aunts. When I finally decided to write about her in my blog this week, I took a moment to review what I knew about her. I knew her parents & that she came from Jalisco, Mexico; I knew she had been married multiple times & I knew she had at least one child by each spouse. She only spoke Spanish (at the time, none of us spoke the language), so my family often had to pantomime in order to get her to understand what we were trying to get across to her. She spent the majority of her life as a wife, mother & homemaker, but her life was not always an easy one.

Baptismal record of Barbara Pedroza de Quinteros,
Sta Thereza, Union de San Antonio, Jalisco, Mexico

She was born on 4 December 1901 in Santa Thereza, Union de San Antonio, Jalisco, Mexico to Francisco & Panfila Franco de Pedroza. Her baptismal record in the parish of Senor de la Ascension records that her grandparents were Silvestre & Anastacia Vasquez de Pedroza & Silvero & Mauricia Rodriguez de Franco.

The Pedrozas had lived in Jalisco for many generations, but around 1915 or 1916, they decided to move their family to Texas. It seems that they wound up in Bell or Milam Counties, Texas because on 30 Nov 1916, Barbara was married at the age of 15 to Marcos Pacheco in Buckholts. They had one son, Jose, together about 1918. At some point during all this, they must have returned to live in Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico where Marcos was from. In April 1919, she, her parents, her son & her husband Marcos returned to Texas via Laredo. The Manifests of Statistical and Some Nonstatistical Alien Arrivals at Laredo, Texas records that she can neither read nor write & that she is entering the US for the purpose of accompanying her husband who is looking for work.

Border crossing card of Barbara
Pedroza de Pacheco,
Laredo, Texas

They must only have been back in Texas for a year or so when some-
thing happened to change their life together as a family. It is not known whether Marcos died or simply left, but on 17 Nov 1921, in Bell Co., Texas, she was remarried to Basilio Garcia. They lived next door to her parents in temple & had four more children: Felipe, Ascension, Angelina & Faustino (aka "Frosty"). Basilio worked as a laborer on the Santa Fe railroad there in Temple. On July 4 1931, he was injured in a work related accident & died of internal hemorrhaging on 5 July 1931. He was laid to rest at Hillcrest Cemetery, one of the best known cemeteries in Temple.

Two years passed & eventually she met Jose de Jesus (Jesse) Quintero, son of Rafael & Domitila Mendez de Quinteros (there is a long standing family debate among some in the family about whether our family name is supposed to have the s or not. I suspect that the s was added at some point & our name originally did not have it. I have seen our name spelled both ways, sometimes even within the same document; although, I have seen it spelled most often with the s rather than without it). Tio Jesse worked for the Santa Fe Railroad also & later retired from there. They married on 1 May 1933 in Bell Co., Texas & had six more children together: Margarita (Margaret), Herlinda (Linda), Domitila (Tila), Amelia (Molly), Daniel & Jesse.

Marriage certificate of Jesse Quinteros & Barbarita Pedroza

My memories of Tia Barbarita are of visiting her & Tio Jesse as a child. When I was little, I thought she lived in the kitchen (& maybe that is not far from the truth) because I never recall seeing her anywhere else. She made her flour tortillas by hand (I enjoyed scarfing them as fast as she could make them). She & Tio Jesse made the best tamales (according to my mother since I don't remember them) in great big canning pots. She kept a couple of pet parakeets in a cage that sat on a chair in the kitchen. I took Spanish in junior high & high school & I recall one trip to Temple when I wanted to impress her with what I had learned in class (which wasn't very much). I asked her for a glass of milk in Spanish & her eyes lit up to hear me speaking the language. She said something I didn't understand (this would have been in the fall, so we hadn't been in class long enough to learn more than the basics) & she was disappointed to learn that what I had said was the extent of my comprehension of the Spanish language. It would be a few more years until I would be fluent enough in Spanish to carry on an actual conversation. =(

I didn't see either Tio Jesse or Tia Barbarita for many years after that. I last saw Tio Jesse when he was at a Temple Nursing Home in December 1992. Tia Barbarita was living with one of her children by then. Tio Jesse passed away on 3 Dec 1993. Tia Barbarita survived him by four more years & passed away at the age of 96 on 16 Dec 1997. Both were laid to rest side by side at Bellwood Cemetery in Temple.

Sources:
Mexico, Jalisco, Catholic Church Records, Unión de San Antonio, Señor de la Ascensión, Bautismos 1899-1905, pg 141, Img #300
"Texas, Marriages, 1837-1973," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/F6BK-2LV : accessed 01 Mar 2014), Marcus Pacheco and Barbarita Pedrozo, 30 Sep 1916, vol V, pg 110.
Ancestry.com. Border Crossings: From Mexico to U.S., 1895-1964 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006.
"Texas, Marriages, 1837-1973," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/F6BJ-V4T : accessed 01 Mar 2014), Bassilia Garcia and Barbarita Pedrosa, 17 Nov 1921, certificate #1826, pg 480.
"Texas, Deaths, 1890-1976," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/K33W-TPX : accessed 01 Mar 2014), Basilio Garcia, 05 Jul 1931; citing certificate number 142, State Registrar Office, Austin; FHL microfilm 2135603.
"Texas, Marriages, 1837-1973," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/F6BK-8TL : accessed 01 Mar 2014), Jesus Quintras and Barbareta Pedroza, 01 May 1933, Bk 30, Pg 26, 848.