Yes, Joseph, that was a fabulous account by Arturo. It reminds me of the one and only time I accompanied my father to Jerez. We went to the church there to see about his birth record (apparently lost or destroyed during the Revolution) and there was an elderly master stone mason and his two young assistants working on restoration on one side of the building. I was impressed by their work with the stones, and wanted to film them with my little 8mm movie camera (this was in the '60s). My father asked permission for me to film them, and when he did so, they stopped working and stood at attention with their hats off. I had wanted to film them at work, but they were too polite to continue as long as we were there. I was too young and dumb then to do any genealogical searches. This was before I got the bug.

My father told me he had been an altar boy in that church, and I was surprised because by then he was in his sixties and had always been an atheist as far as I knew. I later wandered around the church where some elderly ladies were refilling the vases with fresh flowers. I was amazed at the age of the church, the floor tiles of stone worn smooth and concave from all the foot-traffic. The alter was high and the wall behind it did not reach the ceiling. I heard what sounded like a choir of men doing what I know now to be Gregorian chants coming over the top of that wall and when I walked around behind the altar, what I saw made me almost faint. There were several monks sitting in ornately carved chairs with black robes and peaked hoods covering most of their faces. They had little books on their laps and they continued their chant. They never looked up or stopped when I walked in, and I just as quickly walked out. I was so stunned by the beautiful sound and the ominous look of those monks. I had never seen such costumes except for those white things worn by the KKK. I told my father what I had seen, asked him to come see, but he just blew me off, totally unimpressed. Bad memories for him, I guess.

Emilie
----- Original Message -----
From: Joseph Puentes
To: general@nuestrosranchos.org
Sent: Tuesday, December 26, 2006 11:54 AM
Subject: Re: [Nuestros Ranchos] My trip to Charco Hondo, Totatiche

That is a fabulous account. I love the "...see, feel, touch and smell. .
." part. Sometimes I look at pictures of the church in Santa Maria and
imagine my great grandfather (Jose Julio de Jesus Puente Varela) being
baptised there on the 15th of March in 1852. I can see him as an infant
and my 33 year old GGG grandfather, Josse Cecilio Puente Torres and my
GGG grandmother Dominga Varela Bañuelos there (well I think they were
there, maybe he was but maybe she wasn't?) imagine them there walking
into the church with their infant my gg grandfather along with the
padrinos (Teodoro Salazar and Refugio Diaz). Well you get the point and
I can hear exactly what you are saying with your experience. thanks for
sharing and thank you for being part of this group and all you do. You
are very appreciated.

joseph

ps: as far as touching that stone. Imagine the life of the person that
laid that stone. Wow that was a different life. Of course since it was
the cornerstone and had to be place precisely then maybe that person
would have been living a little better life than the ones that just
worked on the rest of the building.

===================

Joseph Puentes
http://H2Opodcast.com (Environment Podcast)
http://NuestraFamiliaUnida.com (Latin American History)

arturoramos wrote:
> I just arrived this morning from Los Angeles and finally have a moment to catch up on Nuestros Ranchos postings. I wanted to share a bit about my trip to Mexico this year. While I was down there for a wedding and therefore largely busy with family events, I did get some genealogy-related things done.
>
> Perhaps the most interesting was a visit to a rancho in Totatiche, Jalisco named Charco Hondo. The rancho was perhaps the first permanent Spanish settlement in the region as all of the towns including Totatiche and Temastian were indigenous (mostly Tepehuan) settlements. The 1770 census of the rancho shows a population of more than 300 inhabitants which means it was quite a vibrant place at the time.
>
> What drew me there was a mention in a book of a cornerstone in one of the old buildings on the rancho with an inscription describing the building as a school whose teacher was a certain Joseph Grano... who happens to be my ancestor 7 times over. I got to see and touch the stone with the date of August 1725... the building, made of stone is largely intact... the roof collapsed several decades ago and has been replaced but the walls and door are clearly the originals. There are many other ruins in the rancho, mostly adobe and therefore much more deteriorated. There are also the ruins of the original dam built on the rancho, also in the early 1700s. It was amazing too see, feel, touch and smell these lands of my ancestors.
>
> I will share photos in the following days.
>
> I also went to the Centro Universitario Norte of the Universidad de Guadalajara, which is located in Colotlan, Jalisco. It is a beautiful campus with a great bookstore of local microhistory, anthropology, etc. I bough several books which I will also inventory for the group in the coming days.