Characters will be introduced in the full, in Spain name (if known ), and then names will proceed as registered or christened in The USA.
Gregoria Sanchez married some time before 1868 to a man with a family name of Perez.(first name unknown) On March 23, 1870 they begot a son named Vitoriano Perez Y Sanchez. ( other siblings are unknown )
Vitoriano Perez Y Sanchez was born in the small town called Pozuelo de Zarzon in the state of Caceres in the then Provence of Estremadura in the west central part of Spain.
Vitoriano had no formal education. He worked as a farm laborer, sheepherder and farmer. He grew up to be very big man; he was over six feet in height. Vitoriano Perez Y Sanchez married Pabla Iglesia Y Plaza around 1896.
Pabla’s mother’s name was Anface Iglesia Y Plaza and her father was Fraustrue Iglesia. Pabla had a sister whose name was Isabel Iglesia Y Plaza. We think Isabel and Pabla were raised in a convent. (We don’t know where) Pabla would say that there was a very nice woman that would come see them, but she did not know who she was.
Pabla was a small woman almost 5 feet tall. Pabla was born January 15, 1874 some where in Spain (city unknown). On December 24, 1898 Vitoriano and Pabla’s first child was born in Pozuelo de Zarzon. The baby girl was named Gregoria Perez Y Iglesia. On January 15, 1906 their son Benito Perez Y Iglesia was born also in Pozuelo.
Casto Corchero and his wife Maxima Paule de Corchero and their three sons also lived in Pozuelo de Zarzon. One day in 1906 about July or August Casto’s wife Maxima died a few days after giving birth to her fourth son, Sinforiano Corchero Y Paule.
Pabla breast-fed both her son Benito and Casto’s son Sinforiano. Many of the other women in town also helped in the care of baby Sinforiano. Casto remarried about a year later to Vincenta Lorenzo.
Jobs were getting harder and harder to find in the area and Pabla was still lactating heavily after breast feeding the two boys and believed that Sinforiano would be in good hands.
Vitoriano together with Pabla traveled to Madrid. She worked as a wet nurse for a prominent family for the next two years. In 1907 after Vitoriano settled Pabla in Madrid, Vitoriano traveled to the Isthmus of Panama to become one of the nearly half million men that worked on the Panama Canal.
It took the United States from 1907 to 1914 to get the canal built. The men had a huge job; they had 50 miles of ditch to dig through mountain and jungle. There were also many swamps to drain. The conditions were right for contracting yellow fever and or malaria. Many of the men were stricken, transmitted to them by the bite of infected mosquitoes.
After working for two years Vitoriano contracted malaria and in 1909 he was sent back to Spain. After recuperating for a time, Vitoriano traveled back to Madrid to gather his family. Pabla was not happy to quit her job and the family she was working for hoped she would stay on.
At last Pabla agreed and traveled back to Pozuelo with Vitoriano. When they got back they found the economy of the region had not improved and there were still no jobs. Vitoriano and Pabla also found that all the women that helped Pabla care for baby Sinforiano were up at arms because of the way they thought that stepmother Vincenta was treating little Sinforiano. They didn’t know if any of the ladies stories were true or if it was just a lot of sour grapes.
Vitoriano and Pabla found that Vincenta had had a little girl stillborn but was now four months pregnant. So they decide to befriend Casto and Vincenta and leave well enough alone. On March 30, 1910 Benjamin Corchero Y Lorenzo was born. About six months later Pabla and Vitoriano had a baby daughter born. Her name Marietta Perez y Iglesia, also born in 1910. Gregoria was now eleven years old and Benito was four and were very happy to now have a baby sister.
When Vitoriano was out of the country he heard about a place called Hawaii. They needed workers there to cut sugar cane. There was free passage and all you had to do was go down to Gibraltar and get on a ship (for work and a better life)
Vitoriano started a one-man crusade to get as many friends, family and countrymen to immigrate to Hawaii and then on to the United States. By late 1911 and early 1912 Vitoriano had talked hundreds of people to emigrate with him. There were some hard feelings from some families that stayed behind as some of their young people chose to emigrate. Others wanted their young men to go so that they would not be called into the military. This had some of the authorities upset with Vitoriano.
By the time Vitoriano and Casto got their families together where by they could travel down to Gibraltar they found on arrival that they had just missed the ship.
The ship had left February 12, 1912. The next ship was to leave not until February 3, 1913 almost one year later.(we don’t know if any more families joined them in staying to wait or how many may had gone back home ).
We do know that over 30 families from Pozuelo de Zarzon did make the passage in 1913 and there were from 5 to 10 members in each family group. Vitoriano and Casto’s families stayed in a town called La Linea during that years delay.
Vitoriano brought two of his nephews with him, 19 year old Gregorio Rolden and 17 year old Florencio Lorenzo. By the time they would be boarding ship the two young men had found a new friend, Benardo Cortez and he was anxious to join them.
So now there were four men, one woman, two girls and a seven- year-old boy in Vitoriano’s group. In Casto's group, he had two men, one woman, four boys, and a ten-day-old baby girl. She was born just ten days before departing Gibraltar. Since she was born in Spain her name would be Fonza Corchero Y Lorenzo.
When Vitoriano was registering himself and his family he said his name Vitoriano Perez Y Sanchez. The person doing the registering didn’t know that Perez was the family sir name and wrote down Sanchez. From this point forward Vitoriano and his descendants family name would be known as Sanchez.
Thus on February 13, 1913 the Perez family became the Sanchez family. (Sanchez was Vitoriano’s mother’s maiden name)
They emigrated on a steamship called the Willesden, by the time they saw what the accommodations were like the Willesden was already on it’s way. They sailed through the Straights of Gibraltar and onto the open sea and into the Atlantic. We don’t know if they went down through the Strait of Magellan (a channel between South America’s mainland and Tierra del Fuego) (it is a coast swept by wild winds, fog and huge waves ) or if they went down around and below Cape Horn. (where conditions are even more treacherous)
Whichever passage they took guaranteed it was no picnic; The Willesden then made it’s way up the Pacific and on to the Hawaiian Islands.
There were 1358 passengers on the ship, both Spaniards and Portuguese. Along with pigs, goats, cows, chickens, dogs, cats, and whatever other kind of livestock they could think of and allowed on board.
The voyage was not very pleasant. They came over as steerage (third class) passengers. There was no privacy, no provision for much bathing and the ship was continuously rolling and rocking and whatever. Most had to sleep in one large badly ventilated room.
There was little fresh water or food. It was better for some of the passengers who had brought their own hams, dried sausages, cheeses and other foods that would travel well. The food served on board was not the best. It was 56 days of plain rice or plain pasta noodles. For these passengers there was no meat, no vegetables, no spices, no nothing.
It was not so bad for those who had brought their own supplies because they could make the shipboard food somewhat more tolerable, for the others it was really bad. There were a lot of people trying to swipe food from one another. Grudges were held for years later, it was not forgotten who had tried to swipe food.
It was said that the long white noodles looked like worms, and for years after the voyage you could not get most of the emigrants from Spain to eat rice or pasta noodles of any kind. They could not even look at noodle without making themselves ill.
About halfway into the voyage a Rubella outbreak hit the ship and some of the children died. Vitoriano and Pabla lost their two-year-old daughter Marietta Sanchez and Casto lost his sixteen-year-old son Plasido Corchero Y Paule. They were buried at sea along with two other children.
There was an undercurrent starting in the Vitoriano Sanchez group who needed his cousins to remain a larger viable work group. Some woman by the name of Hermana talked Gregorio Rolden and Florencio Lorenzo to join her group. She told them she was their aunt and would take them onto California with her and her family. (Vitoriano later said she was not even related)
They arrived in Hawaii March 30, 1913, what Vitoriano didn’t know was that when they got to Hawaii they would be screened before getting off the ship. Their hands would be inspected and the size of their family considered. If the men’s hands appeared soft as if they didn’t do any hard work or if there were only one man and a lot of women or young girls in the family or even young boys. They would not let that family off of the ship. The plantation owners wanted workers and not families that could not work in the sugar cane fields. The passengers that remained aboard ship were to go to Buenos Aires Argentina because there was a country that needed increased population.
Pabla’s sister Isabel had five daughters and no sons and they were not allowed off of the ship. They went on to Argentina and contact was lost with them in several years.
When it was time for Vitoriano’s family to disembark, the authorities said "no" because by then there was only one man, one woman, a fourteen year old girl and a seven year old boy. (Because Gregorio and Florencio had joined the other group, we believe Benardo Cortez had joined another group also)
Casto Corchero and his family were allowed to disembark, but Casto said "NO", "if Vitoriano cannot stay in Hawaii my four sons, my wife, my baby daughter and myself will not stay. We will not go to Buenos Aries and you take us back to Spain."
At that point the authorities said, "OK" and the Corchero and the Sanchez families disembarked and stayed in Hawaii. There was one more thing that they didn’t know about getting off in Hawaii. Because of the live stock that had been brought on board, all passengers and livestock had to get a sheep dip bath before going ashore. For years this was the topic of another non- happy event of the voyage.
Life in Hawaii
The Sanchez and Corcheros went to the same sugar plantation on the big Island of Hawaii. They settled in a small village named Kukaiau. It was located about thirty miles from Hilo Hawaii. There were many plantations all along the Hilo coast. Each camp was divided into five parts all sitting side by side. Spaniards in one; Chinese in another; Portuguese in the next, then came the Japanese and the Filipino camps.
The different groups didn’t get along that well partly because of the language barrier. But when it came to the young Filipino men, they did speak some Spanish and they gave the young Spanish men a run for their money when it came to young senoritas attention.
Their fathers tried to keep their eye on their teen age daughters and tried to marry them off as soon as possible to the young Spaniards that were courting them. (Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t)
When the immigrants got to Hawaii only the heads of families were required to sign the five-year contracts so they were the only ones that had to work the full five years in the sugar cane fields. Between 1913 and 1916 almost all the young men and women had left Hawaii and moved on to California.
There were no child labor laws in 1913. So boys as young as five and six worked side by side with their fathers in the sugar cane fields. There were many bad accidents and some of the kids were left permanently injured. Their families got them out of there as soon as possible and moved on to California also.
Gregorio Rolden and Florencio Lorenzo left Hawaii very soon after they got there and accompanied the woman they called Tia Hermana. We do not know what happened with their relationship with Tia Hermana, but when their ship on it’s way to San Francisco was somewhere in the vicinity of Bodega Bay, both Gregorio and Florencio jumped ship.
They both were young men in a new country, they didn’t speak the language, they had never learned to read or write and they had no idea where the rest of the families were planning to settle. The families had no idea what had happened to them.
On January 10, 1915 Ramona Iglesia Sanchez was born to Vitoriano and Pabla in Kukaiau Hawaii. Benito was now 9 years old and he had a dog named Duke. Benito also worked with his father Vitoriano in the sugar cane along with the other young boys that were still there.
Gregoria Sanchez de
Gonzales was now sixteen years old and had
married a very nice young Spanish man name of
Elosio Gonzales. They lived on the Island of
Oahu near Honolulu. Gregoria’s husband
Elosio worked either on a pineapple
plantation or cannery. On November 30, 1915
Gregoria gave birth to a son, Andres Gonzales
Y Sanchez in a small town near Honolulu.
When Andres was about 4 months old, the Gonzales family traveled back to Kukaiau so that Vitoriano and Pabla could meet there first grandchild. The Gonzales family had a photo taken of all of them, just before they left Hawaii for California. (here s a copy of that very photo)
From left to right;
Gregoria, Andres, Andres's dad Elosio, Benito, dog Duke, "Vitoriano", Pabla, Ramona
Andres and
Ramona in last picture in year 2003
Picture
that was taken in early 1916 in Kukaiau Hawaii when Gregoria,
Andres and husband Elosio departed for California
