Mamá María, who was Anastacia'sand Natalia's mother, was born María Engracia Villarreal. Mamá María was the daughter of Isidro Villarreal Elizondo and Encarnación Ramón.

Natalia and Anastacia had memories of their (maternal) grandfather, Papá Isidro. He had a white beard and was up in years, but he went out to the fields with his grandchildren to encourage them and give advice on working the fields. They appreciated having his presence and showed him respect. He always pushed them to do more and to finish the work so there was less to do the next day.

At one time, Isidro Villarreal was the administrator of Agostadero Elizondeña. Viviana Elizondo inherited most of the land after her husband, Benito González, died, and Isidro worked for her. At a later date, Isidro worked for a few years as administrator of Saturnino Vera and Victoriana Martínez's San Buena Ventura Ranch¹².

Isidro lived for a time in a small sillar house on the right-hand side of a road leading to the Vera's ranch. The house may have been on the property when Isidro bought it. The last person to live in the sillar home was Santiago Vera, a son of Damaso Vera and a grandson of Victoriana Martínez Vera, whom everyone called either Tía Chata or Mamá Chata. No signs remain of the house today.

By the early 1930s, only a few of the limestone blocks, or sillares, were still standing to mark the site of Papá Isidro's house.A hand-dug well was nearby, but there is no sign to mark the location now. The name of their ranch, Rancho La Gloria, was changed to Ríos in the late 1940s to honor a man named Cayetano Ríos, who had been a land developer in Nueces County in the 1890s.

Abandoned sillar homes

Isidro later built a wood-frame house in the middle of this land close to the main road that passed through the ranches. The road was referred to as El Camino Real, or the Royal Road, meaning the road that the king or his government administrators traveled. Isidro built his kitchen separately, or perhaps the kitchen was used first as a portal and later covered with mesquite logs laid horizontally like on the jacales. Still later, the house was connected with boards to the kitchen, which still had a dirt floor.

Ascensión, a daughter of Isidro and Encarnación, was the youngest in the family. She was called Rosa because her cheeks were always rosy when she'd been in the heat or sun. As the youngest, she inherited the house of her parents. When Encarnación, Isidro's wife, died, he went to live with his oldest daughter, María, and her family at Rancho San Andrés.

Papá Isidro was sick for a couple of weeks before he died. On the day he died, he lay down in bed. A grandfather clock stood near his bed. He told the family that at 3:00 p.m. he would pass away. That was the exact hour he died. Isidro left his land to his children. Before his death, he had executed a partition deed dated November 1, 1909. He had requested that the 394 acres that he had purchased from Nepomuceno Gutiérrez be divided among his six children, giving each 65 2/3 acres. The date of his death and that of Encarnación are unknown.

Following the death of their parents, Isidro and Encarnación, Mamá María's sister Sara came to live with the family. Tía Sara was always the one in charge of cooking or boiling the mixture of corn and lime, el nixtamal.

A story handed down in the family is that as a child Tía Sara had once fallen into a deep well and nearly drowned. Although she survived, the incident left her emotionally impaired and with a physical impairment that made it difficult for her to speak correctly. Sara was raised at Rancho La Gloria with her other sisters, and supposedly that was where she fell into the well, called a noria de buque.

12. Information from Mr. Saturnino Vera, a son of Pablo Vera and Paula González, who heard it from his father.