María Morales de Morales

An interview with her daughters:

Aida Garralda or Orange County, CA

Minerva Medicke of Benning, CA

May 27, 2004

The History Association was delighted to spend time with these two women and learn more about the history of Álamos. Joined by their uncle, Leo Morales, age 94, they traveled from Los Angeles to spend a few days in Álamos, Huatabampo, and Navojoa.

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María Morales de Morales was born in 1895 at Rancho Dolisa in Álamos. She had three daughters and four sons, and two of her three daughters provided information for this report.

The family Matriarch, Benita Morales, was born in Chihuahua and died in Álamos in 1877. Her husband is unidentified, but is believed to have had a Polish or Russian surname. It is speculated that he was a payroll master for one of the mines and that he was killed in 1873.

Her daughter, Ysabel, was born in 1874. Benita had worked for the Salido family as a wet nurse, and there is authentic speculation that Ysabel’s father was actually Epahnio Salido, Jr. The father who adopted her, Juan Morales, drove a 20-mule team making deliveries from Sinaloa to Álamos.

After Benita’s death in 1877, Ysabel was raised by the Morales family who gave the young girl their name. She was often told by an elder in town that while she was called Morales, she was really a Salido.

Ysabel gave birth to María in 1895, and María Morales taught school in Álamos from 1915 to 1922. In 1922 she went to Los Angeles where her brother was living, and worked as a seamstress in a lamp factory. At the age of 32 she married Cruz Sevalla from Zacatecas, Mexico, who had left his homeland at 15 to join the Merchant Marines and eventually came to Los Angeles.