San Miguel-Sandoval County NM Archives Biographies.....Trujillo, Leanore 1854 - August 1923
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Richard Gehling GehlingR@aol.com February 24, 2010, 11:15 pm

Source: Memories of Max Montoya, 1977
Author: Richard Gehling

     Leanore Valenzuela was born in 1854 in Algodones, a small village in
Sandoval County, some 15 miles east of Albuquerque, NM.  There she grew up in
the company of two sisters: Anastasia, the eldest, and Delores, the youngest. 
Leanore herself was the middle child.  While yet a teenager Leanore got into
trouble for beating up a Frenchman.  The story was later told by her grandson,
Max Montoya:

     "When she was a young woman, my granma and her younger sister were walking
to the grocery store, and had to walk past a saloon.  Two men were loitering in
front of the saloon.  One of them, a Frenchman, was drunk, and as they walked
past he made a nasty remark.  My granma went back and slapped him down.  She
then got on top of him and beat him up.  His name was Luis Tishay (I don't know
how to spell it, but it ryhmes with 'hay').

     "The Frenchman's lawyer sued her for assault.  My other granpa, Lorenzo
Montoya, represented her in court.  The Frenchman's lawyer asked her why she
knocked his client down, sat on top of him, beat him with her fists, and called
him an S.O.B.  She replied that she called him an S.O.B. because those were the
only words she knew in English.  The Frenchman lost the case.  My granma paid my
granpa Montoya a hog for going to court and representing her."

     Leanore was first married to a young man with the family name of Martinez.
 With him she had a son named Ceferino and a daughter named Delfinia.  After her
husband's premature death, Leanore moved her two children to Las Vegas, NM,
where she met and married her second husband, Juan de La Cruz Trujillo, about
the year 1880.

        After their marriage, Juan and Leanore Trujillo moved their combined
family of four children into a little three-room house on 9th Street near the
normal college (now called Highlands College), where teachers were trained.  The
surrounding area was known locally as the Chihualita Barrio, one of five such
Spanish speaking districts in the "Old Town" area of Las Vegas, NM.

     As time went on, the Trujillo family grew to include another son named
Manuel as well as four other daughters named Victoria, Regina, Gertrudes and
Lucy.   
     
     Besides rearing the nine Trujillo children, Juan's second wife Leanore
found time to do housework for some of the richer families in Las Vegas.  "By
the time we moved to ninth street into one of her apartments," her grandson Max
Montoya later wrote, "my granma never worked anymore, but since she had done
housework for the well to do people, she was well known by them.  Most of the
time these people would give her used clothing, and she would store it in trunks.

      "Every summer she would make 2 or 3 trips to Anton Chico, to Dilia, and
other villages and trade clothing for produce. People at the villages already
knew her, and when she would arrive they'd flock around the covered wagon to see
what surprises she had. She would not set a price on anything. People would just
choose what they wanted, like a dress or blouse or maybe a pants, tie or hat,
and give her a chicken or corn or green chile or maybe fruit. She would accept
anything that was edible. Many a time she would come home with a wagon loaded
with green chile, melons, watermelons, peaches, apples, apricots, and plums.

    "Then she would gather us kids to go around town selling until she would
sell what she wanted. Like we would sell a bucket full of green chile for 25
cents or a bucket full of peaches for 50 cents. After we would get thru selling,
she would gather all her grandchildren in the patio and cut some melons or some
watermelon, and have a party."

     Though not quite five feet tall, Leanore is remembered as an energetic and
outspoken woman, a true matriarch of the ever-growing Trujillo clan in Las
Vegas.  She was the one who collected the rents and in later years oversaw the
chores of her many grandchildren - selling vegetables, watermelon and chili door
to door, shelling corn, cleaning the stables every weekend.  It was she who
arranged wagon trips into the mountains to visit relatives, trade for
vegetables, or pick chokecherries and pinon nuts.

     Leanore's home in the Chihualita Barrio was surrounded by the dwellings of
her extended family.  Her daughter Gertrudes and husband Esteban Montoya had
first lived in one of her rental units, then bought a part adobe, part wood
house next door, separated from the main house only by an alley two feet in
width.  Some distance to the west was the little frame house of her daughter
Lucy, who - after the death of her husband Carlos Trujillo in 1916 - was induced
by her mother to move her four children from Trinidad back to the family
neighborhood in Las Vegas.  And just beyond Lucy's house was the stuccoed house
of Regina, another of Leanore's daughters, who was married to Celso Jaramillo.

     Leanore's two sisters also lived in the Chihualita Barrio of Old Town, Las
Vegas, NM.  Delores, known familiarly as "Mi Lola," lived in the two back rooms
of a building owned by Celso and Regina Jaramillo.  Anastasia, the oldest, had
originally married an Indian and lived in Anton Chico, twenty-five miles south
of Las Vegas.  After the Indian abandoned her, Anastasia did housework for other
people in the village.  When she got too old to work, however, Leanore brought
her to Las Vegas to live in one of her rental units.  Anastasia died there in
1917 during the great flu epidemic.

     Leanore herself died in August of 1923.  Her grandson, Max Montoya, later
wrote down some particulars of her death:

       "My Granma Leonore died in August of 1923, when I was 14 years old.  She
died in her bedroom, which stood on the north end of her house.  It was the
coolest room in the summer and the warmest in the winter because it had a big
pot-bellied stove.

     "My granma's wake was also held in that room. The wake ended around 2 A.M.
 My Uncle Manuel was supposed to blow out all the candles, but instead he got me
and my cousin Alfonso to do the job.  First we blew out the candles furthrest
from the door, and then hurriedly the others, and ran out the door and back to
bed as fast as we could.  I slept with him at his house that nite.

     "After Granma's death, there were so many heirs that my mother was willed
the bedroom where granma died.  She sold it to Aunt Lucy for $50.  Aunt Lucy was
living in the house next door at the time.  She moved to granma's house to take
care of my granpa until his death in 1927."

      Leanore was 69 years old when she died.  Her husband, Juan Trujillo
survived her by four years, passing away on 16 February 1927.

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