Presentación personal / Personal Introduction

Saludos a todos / Greetings everyone,

I am new to the group, although not so new to doing Los Altos genealogical research. My name is Kassandra Brenot; I am the great-grand-daughter of a Los Altos couple who came to the U.S. during the cristero war.
About 25 years ago I began researching my family roots in Los Altos, thanks to my Marquez cousins and the Somos Primos group in the greater Los Angeles area (including Mimi Lozano and Mary Lou Montagna and the stellar work they all got me going on, for which I shall be forever indebted). While my professional and family duties have pulled me away from my passion for genealogy over the course of the past twenty years or so, through some recent unexpected encounters through my work I have reconnected with my Los Altos roots...

I am the head of an all girls, Catholic boarding school in Monterey, California and have discovered that a few of the families at my school are Los Altos families! Knowing the prevalence of endogamia amongst los alteños, I figured we must be related so.... during my summer vacation, I dug back into my old files and jumped online and have been helping these families get started on researching their lines.

Lo and behold, we are related and we are now looking to start a small Los Altos research group here on the Monterey Peninsula. We had our first mini-get together last night with a small group that represented Ramirez, Loza, Campos and Gutierrez. Some of the members of these families immigrated only within the past 20 years, while others immigrated in the 1950s, settling in the Salinas Valley. As for my own family, it was my great-grandparents María Gonzalez Muñoz and José Lorenzo Loza Muñoz who emigrated from San Miguel el Alto to Carpinteria, California in 1926. Some of the names I am researching farther back in my lines (in the areas of Jalostotitlán, San Juan, Aguascalientes and Ayo el Chico) are the following:

Baeza
Becerra
Camacho-Riquelme
Fernández de Rueda
García de Miranda
González de Rubalcava
Hernández de Arellano
Hurtado de Mendoza
Lomellini
López de Fueresclava
Muños de Nava y Estrada
Loza y Linares
Lozano Vásquez
Machuca
Ornelas
Vásquez Cermeño

Through this group, I hope to fill in a few holes I have in my chart, as well as to help guide some of these families as they begin discovering the joy of researching their Los Altos family history. What I also hope to learn more about through this group is the rich history and traditions of the Los Altos region: I was only about 8 when my great-grandmother died so what little I know about Los Altos is what I have read about, found online, or heard about through cousins, grandparents and family friends.

(Hablo español)

Saludos a todos,
Kassandra