A Memoir

Tentatively titled The Robles Girls, this novel will tell the ancestral tale of Tammy's early California ancestors through the eyes of three generations of women:

Maria Garcia Robles, Tammy's four-time great-grandmother, was a high-spirited young woman who married her sweetheart, Secundino, at sixteen and gave birth to twenty-nine children in the mid-1800s, a time in California history known as the Days of the Dons. Maria and Secundino were both born to poor, hard-working families who first emigrated to "Alta California" from New Spain in the late eighteenth century. After Secundino discovered a mercury mine, he sold shares to investors during the early Gold Rush, and he and Maria bought an 8,000-acre rancho they named Rancho Santa Rita on land that would one day become Palo Alto, California. Don Secundino and Doña Maria Robles became respected leaders in the Santa Clara valley, and lived an invigorating life of ranching, entertaining, and building a community. Later, they were excited to become American citizens, and honored to be invited to attend the California Governor's Ball in San Jose.

Guadalupe Robles Espinosa was the ninth of their twenty-nine children, and by the time she was seven, she played a vital role in the family. Since none of the couple's sons lived to riding age (accidents and illness were common causes of childhood death), Guadalupe and her sisters, trained to be expert riders under their father, a renowned horseman, before Maria could teach them to sew. The girls were an essential work crew, helping with cattle roundups, branding and slaughtering the animals, and preparing the meat, hides and tallow for trade. They cared for their younger siblings, harvested and prepared the family's food and wine, made soap and candles, washed and mended the family clothes, and fed, watered and milked the livestock. They did all this before getting ready for one of the family's fandangoes—a week-long party filled with music, dinner and dancing, or one of Secundino's dramatic bullfight contests, held for the community in the custom bullring he had built on the rancho. 

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Jennie Espinosa Tollner was the sixteenth of Guadalupe and Trinidad Espinosa's nineteen children. Born thirty years after Alta California became part of America, Jennie's childhood was stark compared to her mother's. By then, her grandparents had lost most of their land and livestock to government taxation, tax penalties, lawyer fees, ownership squabbles, and Secundino's gambling. (He was said to be a jovial and trusting man who could not resist a friendly wager.) Jennie's childhood memories are of the shame of attending Mass barefoot and witnessing parishioners' scorn, and being embarrassed by her parents who spoke very little English at a time when speaking Spanish in public was against the law.  After the family lost most of their land and her grandparents died heartbroken, the remaining members survived on the small income generated by a restaurant and tavern they ran from their adobe home on El Camino Real. Jennie met her husband, a German immigrant named Theodore Tollner, at a Palo Alto street fair after he tasted her cooking. The couple soon married and had five children; one of them was Tammy's great-grandfather, Alfred Charles Tollner. By then, the family's 8,000 acres had dwindled to three acres that were sold in 1960,  after a bitter court battle between surviving siblings. Each party received $900.

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This rags-to-riches-to-rags story tugs at my heart. When I first looked at the striking photo of Guadalupe Robles Espinosa, taken at eighty years old in 1922 by a Palo Alto reporter covering early pioneer families, there was so much to see in her face—grief, resilience, anger, honor, hope. I immediately felt that I wanted to get to know her better. Once I dipped my toe into her world, I knew I needed to tell her story. 

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