My Family History

My family history starts off with my maternal grandmother’s story that starts off in the mid 1770’s in Chihuahua, Chi, Mexico. There my so many great grandparents I don’t know exactly, but they were married in a small Catholic Church. One of their descendants was Justa, my great-great grandma. At the age of about 20 she became a natural citizen. She married a man named Luciano. His father’s name was Francisco and he had lived in Safford, Texas. The more likely reason he lived there was because that part of Texas resembles Italy. More than likely where my great-great-great grandfather’s family was from. An interesting story about my 4^thgrandfather is that as a little boy he was stolen by Native Americans and lived with them for about 7 years. When he returned to his family he always wore a bandanna to remind him of what he went through. He also sat or slept on the floor, even as an adult. He was said to have spoken some dialect of Native American.

One of Justa and Luciano’s children is my great-grandma, Valentina Rede and she was born on February 14, 1918 in Artesia, New Mexico. She was one out of ten children and her father was a ranch handler. She wrote me a letter a few years back talking about her childhood. She said she went to school ten miles away from her home in a one room school house where you had to actually build a fire. All of their sons had enlisted for the war so my great-great grandparents moved to Monterrey, California where they purchased a ranch.

When she was in her teens she married my great-grandpa Carlos Hernandez on a snowy day in winter. When my great-grandfather enlisted in World War II and my great-grandmother missed her family who lived in California so she decided to move there. She only took two suitcases and some mementos and was never happier. From there they moved to Salinas, California, where her father built her a house there. They had eight children, four sons and four daughters which one is my grandma, Alicia. Once they outgrew the house they built another house next door but still kept the old one. Both of the houses still stand and my great-grandma still lives in the house. In 2004 my great-grandpa Carlos passed away.

When my grandma was 16 she married my grandpa Domingo Sr. Reyes. When they were still a young couple they lived with my great-grandparents. They raised their three oldest children, my Tia Deborah, my Tio Anthony and my mom, Anthony’s twin, Alexandria. When they saved enough money they move to another house where they then had three more boys, Raymond, Robert, and Domingo Jr.

My grandparents were very hard working people. They both worked sometimes two jobs and still managed to raise a total of six children. How they did it I really don’t know, it just took a lot of rules and values. My grandparents actually knew Cesar Chavez. He actually visited her family’s house, with the children upstairs of course, and talked to both of my grandparents about their opinions on the farm workers.

My grandparents made sure their children were sent to school, but when it came to grades it couldn’t matter much. That didn’t stop my mom who graduated with credits to spare and was the first one to graduate from community college and in fall 2010 my mom will be graduating from UNM. She works very hard and works some more.

She married my dad, Robert, who is Irish, in September 1992. He was born to Margaret and Groden O’Donoghue and has four half siblings and one sister, who passed away at the age of two. My grandma’s family, the Hollands were from Germany and came to Ellis Island in 1922 while my great-grandma, Lavinia Holland, was pregnant with my grandmother. From there they moved to Philadelphia. She was married before my grandpa where she took the name Margaret Jackson and they had four children, one son and three daughters. He suddenly passed away. My grandpa’s parents were from Ireland who came to Ellis Island because of the potato famine. They took work on the railroads and one my great-grandpa was the mortician. He is actually in the history books in the library in Iowa. We are the proud O’Donoghues and we’re very proud of our Irish-Catholic Faith. My grandma Margaret passed away in 1960 and left her five children behind. My dad’s fondest memories of his mom were her reading the bible to him, which I have. My dad’s four older half-siblings were put into foster care because my grandpa was not their biological father, but my dad still has kept relationships with them throughout the years.

My parents lived in Des Moines, Iowa to take care of my dad’s father, Groden, who had Alzheimer’s. When he passed away in 1993 they moved back to Sacramento, California where they had three daughters, myself, the oldest, MaryMargaret and Gillian.

In July of 2003 my family decided to move back to my mom’s roots in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was a new start for my family. Unfortunately, at the beginning of 2006 my dad left us and put the responsibilities to raise me and my sisters on my mom. We haven’t talked to him since. My mom now is going to college and still manages to raise us. She is legally blind but that does not stop my mom from overcoming obstacles. She raises us to do extremely well in school and still go to college no matter what we major in. She is personally my hero and the greatest family of all.