San Miguel County NM Archives Biographies.....Montoya, Lorenzo abt 1835 - 1916
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Richard Gehling GehlingR@aol.com February 19, 2010, 9:33 pm

Source: Memories of Max Montoya, 14 May 1985
Author: Max Montoya

    It is thought that Lorenzo Montoya was born Lorenzo Jaramillo about the year
1835 in the village of Las Dispensas, NM, a little mountain village located in
San Miguel County about twelve miles northwest of Las Vegas, NM.   Later in life
- sometime after 1880 - Lorenzo is said to have changed his family name from
Jaramillo to Montoya (the maiden name of his mother), because another individual
in the area was also named Lorenzo Jaramillo, and the local post office often
got their mail mixed up.  From then on he was always known as Lorenzo Montoya.

     During the early years of the Civil War Lorenzo and his brother, Julian,
joined the New Mexico volunteers to help counter the invasion of Confederate
General Sibley.  By mid-February of 1862, General Sibley had marched his 2,500
Rebels out of Texas and up the east side of the Rio Grande to a ford near the
town of Valverde, north of Fort Craig, NM.  A Union Colonel named Canby left
Fort Craig with 3,200 U.S. Army regulars and New Mexico volunteers (among them
Lorenzo and Julian Jaramillo) to try and prevent the Confederates from crossing
the river.

     The Battle of Valverde began on 20 February 1862.  At first the Union
forces drove the Rebels back, and Canby ordered a cavalry charge against the
Confederates' left flank.  But the main Confederate line answered with a frontal
assault, capturing six artillery pieces and breaking the Union battle line. 
This soon caused a rout.  Sibley was about to order another attack, when the
Union Colonel sent a white flag asking for a truce so that the bodies of the
dead and wounded might be removed.  The Union army had suffered 203 casualities,
the Confederates 187.  Among the Union wounded was Lorenzo Jaramillo.

     In order to recover from his wounds, Lorenzo returned to his family in Las
Dispensas.  By the early 1870's, he had married a local teenager named Sabina
Gomez, who was twenty years his junior.  Over the ensuing years Sabina gave
birth to four girls and one boy.  The girls were named Rafaelita, Inez,
Theodorita, and Patricia.  The boy was named Esteban.

     Sometime before 1880, Lorenzo and Sabina moved their growing family to the
nearby mountain village of Sapello, where they were to spend the remainder of
their lives.  When the federal census taker stopped by on 10 June 1880, he found
five people living in the household: Lorenzo, who was still using his family
name of Jaramillo, was 45 years of age and a farm laborer; Sabina was 25 and
keeping house; of their three children, Rafaela was 6, Esteban 3, and Inez 1.  

    The house the family lived in at Sapello was built of adobe: two bedrooms, a
kitchen, and a hallway.  At the back of the house was a storeroom, where they
stored their vegetables and grains such as corn, wheat, beans and peas.  They
owned a small farm just a a few miles from town.  In the spring the family would
move to the farm, and after the harvest in the fall they'd move back to town for
the winter.  They would bring back with them several loads of grain and
vegetables, so much so that as one wagon was pulling up to the door another
would be waiting to unload.  During the winter, Lorenzo would at times sell some
of the surplus, although he would accept no money from the very poor.  Lorenzo
would also trade wheat at the mill for flour, so that about the only staples he
had to buy were coffee, sugar and salt.

     Lorenzo was a deeply religious man, a Roman Catholic, who every night
before bedtime would kneel and pray the rosary with his family.  He is said to
have been one of the very few in the village who could read and write.  He also
helped the local townspeople with their legal papers, and sometimes served as a
lawyer in their defense.

     Sabina passed away in 1916.  After her death, Lorenzo went to stay with his
daughter Theodorita and her husband Renaldo Vigil, who lived close by.  Six
months later, Lorenzo himself passed away.  He and Sabina were both buried in
the Catholic Cemetery at Sapello, NM.

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