Nuestros Ranchos Site

thank you Linda for the wonderful story of your gr-grandma Tula. .
.great story about her skills and knowledge. We have truly lost a lot of
knowledge when our old people pass away without trying to learn as much
as can from them.

My Grandmother Virginia Diaz (dob: Dec 15, 1886 Las Animas, Jalisco) was
a curandera of sorts. She knew some medicines but not as in depth as
I've heard others describe, but she did learn the art of midwifery. I
heard a story of how my sister went into labor and was going to the
hospital but stopped by to see my Grandma on the way. My Grandmother
said that the child was improperly positioned and if my sister wanted
her to repositon the child. Of course my sister said yes and by a series
of hand manipulations with my sister laying in a blanket that was being
pulled to put pressure on my sisters stomach the child was persuaded to
reposition properly. My sister said that she then went on to the
hospital and had a very very easy birth considering it

True that you can't keep people out without password protecting it, 
but typically people won't find your site unless you advertise 
somewhere.  Believe me, I've set up a couple of sites and monitored 
the activity and the only people that accessed the site were those 
that I gave the URL to.  One site was for a family reunion and 
another was for my daughter's girl scout troop.  People were not 
exactly flocking to those sites.

I don't know if you read the bottom of the info page on genealogical 
society pages, but here is what it says:

"IMPORTANT: After you have your site up and operational, please send 
the URL of your homepage to websites@.... The Websites 
Webmaster will add you to the Guest Pages Index at RootsWeb, which 
should help increase the amount of traffic your page receives." 

The above implies that unless we give Rootsweb the URL to our site we 
would not be added to their index.  That means that doing a search on 
the Rootsweb pages would not find our site.  The

My maternal grandmother was always known to us as Felicina.  She was 
not even aware of the fact that her legal "civil" name was Evangelina 
until she was required to obtain an official birth certificate for an 
immigration or social security process.  Thank God that the person 
working at the registrar was smart enough to look around a bit and 
find her certificate under her "other" name by matching her parents, 
place of birth, etc.  I think that she even had her birthdate wrong 
by a few days.  Her civil name was Evangelina and nowhere in her 
civil record did the name Felicina appear.  I think this is a pretty 
common phenomenon.  The other is the six brothers whose name 
is "Jose" but each goes under some other name such that "Jose de 
Jesus" is called Chuy, Jose Antonio is called "Tonyo" and Jose 
Francisco is called "Pancho".  


--- In ranchos@yahoogroups.com, Alicia Carrillo  wrote:
> This is so interesting and too much of a coincidence.
>  
> My tia who´s my

I just talked with my relative who's mother, Paula Castanon (1896) was 
the midwife, she said her mom would help the Dr. in there town near 
Fresno Ca. for births and that was in the 20's, 30's and 40's. She 
also mentioned that here stateside we get 6 weeks pregnancy leave... 
that's 42 days so is it just an old world custom?  

She also said her Mom did ventosas. People would come to her home when 
they had muscular problems. She was good at massaging backs, arm and 
ankle sprains and she also used special herbs but my relative couldn't 
remember what they were.. I had never heard that word before so I'm 
still learning!

Linda in Wa.

it would seem the the women of the world over time 
developed "traditions" that worked to keep them healthier, happier 
and connected with other women.  Birth control didn't exist as we 
know it and large families were the rule both by religion and by 
economics in Mexico. It sounds like 40 days worked the world over.

My fathers aunt was a midwife in the district of Jerez Zacatecas.  
She learned her trade from her mother, Gertrudis Caldera (1869).  It 
was a mixture of religion and Indian medicines.  If someone died, 
she knew all the litanies by heart and was always called and never 
failed to go, she spend hours teaching her daughter to recite them 
by heart too. In El Durazno she was also the one who directed 
preparing the body for burial.  She delivered babies, fixed aches 
and pains, gave us Yuerba-Buena for tummy aches and had a remedy for 
everything. She was a blend of superstitious and religious. In doing 
the genealogy I find her Garcia ancestors were Indio and her Alcala

Was it literal or was it not. I bet that in different time periods this
rule went from being widely practiced to not. Let's find out.

okay many people have relatives they are visiting when they go to
Mexico. . .let's start asking the old ones what they remember. We don't
need to make this the center of our investigation but a couple of
questions in passing makes for keeping the conversation interesting.

a civil discussion like this is so interesting. . .thank you all for
participating.

joseph

v.h.villarreal wrote:

I really doubt that this is an accurate interpretation or a widespread
practice even in the old days.  "Guardar reposo por 40 días" or
resting for 40 days wasn't supposed to be taken that the mother should
stay in bed, not taking a bath, etc. rather that she should "keep the

husband away from her bed for 40 days", if you know what I mean...

Victor

http://www.aina.org/books/aov.htm

Birth And Baptism

Pregnant women promise that if they have a son they will offer him to
serve the church. But if they have a daughter a sum of money or in kind
they will give to the church as a gift. When the child is born it is
immediately bathed in cold water and sprinkled with salt and wrapped him
cloths. They have learned from what Prophet Khezkiel wrote: "On the day
you were born your biblical cord was not cut, you were not washed in
water and you were not wrapped in cloths."

A son brings more happiness to a family than a daughter. Just like
Armenians when a boy is born all boys quickly go to the relatives of the
newly born boy, bless him and receive gifts.

Baptism

According to custom the child is baptized on the seventh day of its
birth. One day before baptism, the godfather is informed and in the
morning he goes to the mother of the child and takes with him a sheep if
he is wealthy. He takes the child and gives it to his wife

I'm not an "expert" on this issue, but I do remember
that when I had my first child in 1973, my Nana (born
and raised in Mocorito, Sinaloa) told me about the
fact that in Mexico, the women were confined to
bedrest for the 40 days following the birth of their
children, and that they did not bath for those 40
days.  I never thought to ask her if this was for any
perceived medical reason or superstions of some sort.

Olivia

--- "v.h.villarreal" 
wrote:

> I really doubt that this is an accurate
> interpretation or a widespread
> practice even in the old days.  "Guardar reposo por
> 40 días" or
> resting for 40 days wasn't supposed to be taken that
> the mother should
> stay in bed, not taking a bath, etc. rather that she
> should "keep the
> husband away from her bed for 40 days", if you know
> what I mean...  
> 
> Victor
> 
> --- In ranchos@yahoogroups.com, Irma GomezLucero
> 
> wrote:
> > I recall telling my mom & aunt about a family
> baptism

Can you think of a better way to keep the husband out of the bed for 
40 days then no bathing or getting up??  It was what my gr-
grandmothers from both Jalisco (1884) and Zacatecas (1866)passed on as 
tradition to me.  My grandmothers also said it was the only time in 
their marriages that they actually got any rest!
Linda from Wa.

Alice, 

Thanks for sharing that experience.  I'm surprised that such a belief
would be taken in a such a literal way.  Staying in bed for 40 days is
definitely bad for one's health, let alone personal attraction.  Just
imagine the potential for bed sores, leg thrombosis,  and possibly
septicemia for not taking a bath, etc.  No wonder there was so much
maternal mortality in the old days.

But I found a link to an old document that actually speaks about that,
except that it was a custom practiced by the Assyrians during the rule
of the Ottoman Turks in Turkey.  Go here and do a search for "40 days" 

http://www.aina.org/books/aov.htm

Victor


--- In ranchos@yahoogroups.com, Alicia Carrillo  wrote:
> Victor,
>  
> It definitely meant do not bathe for 40 days, it also meant do not
let the outside air hit the mother for 40 days.
>  
> When I had my first daughter I remember a tia telling me and I
quote. "Hija, cuando tengas tu bebe´ no dejes que te den un baño o
ducha". She

I really doubt that this is an accurate

I really doubt that this is an accurate interpretation or a widespread
practice even in the old days.  "Guardar reposo por 40 días" or
resting for 40 days wasn't supposed to be taken that the mother should
stay in bed, not taking a bath, etc. rather that she should "keep the
husband away from her bed for 40 days", if you know what I mean...  

Victor

--- In ranchos@yahoogroups.com, Irma GomezLucero 
wrote:
> I recall telling my mom & aunt about a family baptism record having the
> wrong information.  They  informed the same about the mother not
attending
> her own child's baptism.  The mother stayed in bed, had chicken
soup, and
> didn't bathe for 40 days!   It used to be the belief that a child
needed to
> be baptized right away within a few days of birth.  Since the mother
needed
> to "Guardar reposo" for 40 days, she was unable to attend the
baptism.  The
> father did go with the godparents in our experience.  My father even
had to
> hire someone to take care of

Arturo Ramos wrote:

The problem with everybody hosting data on their own sites is that it
is not possible to make it freely available to members and keep it
from being accessible to the public in general.

yup

 The Rootsweb web
space is simply to put up informational information.  I don't think
they have facilities to have member-restricted file access, etc.  They
don't allow any scripts--only static pages on the site...

Though, Joseph, it would probably be worthwhile putting up a page for
our group there that then leads people back here so that we can use it
to possibly recruit new members.

I'm not wanting to wholesale attract rootsweb people. We are 95 members
strong. We could be 150 strong in 6 months if 1/2 of us picked one or
two people to recruit from rootsweb who gave the strong impression of
being very very serious. None of this "do you know Maria Garcia from
Zacatecas? If so send me her whole genealogy. . .thanks in advance" kind
of people.

Would people be

so if the mother was in bed and the father was off doing war or work
then no one for the family except the padrinos were there to tell the
story. . .hmmmm, this makes good sense now.

thanks,

joseph

ps: where did you get the "Mothers were never at baptisms since the
custom was for her to stay in bed for 40 days.. " information?

Erlinda Castanon-Long wrote:

Many times information was being given by other members of the party
at the church who did not know who parents or grandparents were,
especially if the people were deceased or the family had moved.

Mothers were never at baptisms since the custom was for her to stay in
bed for 40 days.. that meant that someone else had to give her family
info and they were often wrong if there had been a remarriage after
the death of the first wife, her mother, for instance..

Linda from Wa.






Yahoo! Groups Links

The problem with everybody hosting data on their own sites is that it
is not possible to make it freely available to members and keep it
from being accessible to the public in general.  The Rootsweb web
space is simply to put up informational information.  I don't think
they have facilities to have member-restricted file access, etc.  They
don't allow any scripts--only static pages on the site...

Though, Joseph, it would probably be worthwhile putting up a page for
our group there that then leads people back here so that we can use it
to possibly recruit new members.

Would people be willing to do a site on a donation basis?

--- In ranchos@yahoogroups.com, "readysetgo95814"  wrote:
> I agree with John and Steven.  Free web space is available 
> elsewhere.  One such site is Rootsweb.  For individual accounts see:  
> http://accounts.rootsweb.com/index.cgi?op=show&page=freagree.htm
> 
> They also have an option for genealogical societies (such as ours) 
> that will give you

Many times information was being given by other members of the party 
at the church who did not know who parents or grandparents were, 
especially if the people were deceased or the family had moved.

Mothers were never at baptisms since the custom was for her to stay in 
bed for 40 days.. that meant that someone else had to give her family 
info and they were often wrong if there had been a remarriage after 
the death of the first wife, her mother, for instance..

Linda from Wa.