Albert and Mary Zoeller, part one

Some of my grandparents and greatgrandparents lived in Juarez for a time and then in Mexico City... I'm of multinational heritage: German-Texan, Irish-Mexican, etc.

My great-grandmother Margaret Bradley moved from County Cork, Ireland to teach in El Paso at a convent school. At some point she became the governess for a wealthy Mexican family (Manual Bauche) and moved to Mexico City. She was fluent in English, French and Spanish. She married the brother of the man she was working for there in Mexico and thus became a Mexican citizen. His name was Francisco "Pancho" Bauche de la Barrera. His mother was either Spanish or Mexican. His father was from Bohemia which became Czechoslovakia and is now either part of Germany or the Czech Republic. It's hard to tell. Bauche is usually a French surname according to my research into the name. So maybe his father was French. Mexico was colonized by both the Spanish and the French. In fact, they fought a war with France and emperor Maximillian was defeated by the Mexican army... I call it when they threw the French out of Mexico.

Francisco and Margaret Bauche de Bradley had three daughters: Margarita, Paulina and Maria. Maria Bauche was the oldest daughter and was beautiful and the vision of a Spanish girl with dark hair and pale skin. We called her Mary and she was the grandmother that I never met. She and her sisters were Mexicans, whether they match the appearance of what you view as Mexicans or not. Paulina was shortened to Polly and Margarita to Maggie during their youth which was multi-lingual. Their Irish mother, Margaret, was soon the principal of the Collegio de Francias, a private high school for young people of the upper classes with French as their primary language along with English and Spanish. Polly and Maggie both trained as teachers and became teachers in Mexico. Mary married an American, but that was after she trained as an accountant or bookkeeper.

Young Mary and her family met a young German Texan named Albert who was in sales. An American seeking his fortune in the early 1900s in Mexico, first in Juarez with one of his uncles from Boerne Texas, then in Mexico City. He also had positions with a bank and the Mexican railroad. His future father-in-law, Francisco, was an official with the railroad. That is probably how they became friends and he was introduced to the Bauche girls and Margaret. I have a photo of the girls with their parents addressed to Albert when Mary was a teenager.

Albert was 15 years her senior, but when she was 20, he proposed. There was a war going on in Mexico and he had to leave via a ship to Cuba then a ship to New Orleans. They wrote touching love letters during those months that they were separated. She said, "I can only give you my fingers, for my father who is away due to the war must give you my hand." Very victorian, as it was 1915! Yes, my grandfather was born in 1881 and my grandmother in 1885. Hard to imagine. Mary and Albert were wed in Mexico City and settled down start their family near her parents. They took at least one trip to Boerne Texas to meet his parents.

In Mexico, Albert fathered 6 children: Harley Francis, Joseph Alberto, Alberto Jorge (called George Albert later), Fredrick Louis (called Fred), Maria Teresa (called Molly) and Edwardo Daniel (called Ned). When the depression struck the US it also devistated Mexico's economy, thus Albert lost all his savings and their home, bank account balance and country club membership. The family of seven crossed the border and became residents of Laredo for a time, then later moved to San Antonio. The 7th child Margaret (called Maggie) was born in Laredo. The 8th and 9th children were born in San Antonio, Henry Bernard and Alice Mae. I don't know if there were others that were miscarried or still born, no records exist. I have some letters where Mary's mother advised her to submit to being a wife, regardless if her husband was not the best of them all. They were of course Catholic! Albert had been raise Lutheran or Free Thinker as far as I know in Boerne Texas. He was descended from a free thinker German... Phillip Zoeller, a socialistic farmer student from Darmstadt, Hesse (Germany).

My father, Alberto Jorge (George Albert), was born in February 1922 in Mexico City. By virtue of being a child of a U.S. citizen, his birth made him a dual citizen of the United States and Mexico. He learned English and Spanish as a child until the family moved to the U.S. in 1929. After they were in the U.S. where there was a prejudice against Mexicans, he and his siblings were told to forget Mexico and their Spanish words. So as an adult, he only knew Spanglish, learned on the job to work with his Mexican-American helpers in the Air Conditioning & Heating trade that provided our family home, food and more. His name was George Albert in the U.S., I have no idea why the names were exchanged after the move to Texas. He was the 2nd child to bear his father's name and could have gone by Albert or Al, but his Dad called him Georgie as a baby. George Albert Zoeller was a fine man and father. I miss him often, usually in February near his birthday and near Easter as his stroke came just before Easter (April) in 1994. He was paralyzed and needed a feeding tube, but thrived and lived for another 5 years in a nursing home in San Antonio. I live 300 miles to the north and drove that road (I-35) many times to visit him there. I wish that he could have been my father for many more years, even though he smoked and drank (too much)... I miss my Daddy a lot. He will never be forgotten. And that dear interweb is why I tell people of my Hispanic heritage. My father was part Mexican, born in Mexico and I am part Mexican born in San Antonio. SAT is a town with a rich heritage and history from the time that it was an important mission town San Antonio de Valero when Mexico owned Texas and parts of the Southwest. Those Spaniards, they wanted land in the New World and staked out a good bit of North, Central and South American, where Spanish is still spoken as the mother tongue by many, many people. Many who are extremely poor in Mexico. More on this topic later. Adios mis amigos!