María de Guadalupe Córdova was born about 1840 in the town of Sahuaripa in the southeastern part of the state of Sonora in Mexico to Manuel Córdova and María Tapia. Like all Hispanic girls, she was given the name of María, but she was to be known as Guadalupe and nicknamed Lupe.

Guadalupe was about nine years old when news of the discovery of gold in the newly-acquired American possession of Alta California reached the state of Sonora in Mexico. There was immediately a mass exodus to the gold fields. As Myron Angel, author of the 1883 History of San Luis Obispo County, California, on page 356, stated it

The immigrants from Sonora were seen as lower class Hispanics by the established Californios. The Catholic church records records many illegitimate children born to the women of this group. Apparently they did not practice the escorting of their daughters with a dueña when she was with a man, as did the older Californios. Only gradually did intermarriage and absorption take place with these later Hispanic immigrants and their Hispanic predecessors.

For some reason, residents of this town began a small emigration to the town of San Luis Obispo, California. The Córdovas do not appear in the 1850 Census of San Luis Obispo, but they were there by 1854 because church records show that Guadalupe and her sister Refugio were confirmed at the San Luis Obispo Mission Church on 6 December 1854. Her madrina [godmother] was listed as Andrea Peña and her sister’s as Carmen Paco.

It was on 28 July 1856, at the Mission Church in San Luis Obispo that Guadalupe married Onogón Beltrán, a native of the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, just south of where Guadalupe had originated. The marriage did not last long; Onogon died leaving Guadalupe a widow before she was twenty. If there were any children from the marriage, they are unknown as yet. None show on the censuses.

About 1859 Guadalupe married her second husband, Gabriel Rodrígues. There were at least two children born to this marriage and perhaps others who died in infancy. Francisca Rodrígues was born about 1860. There is no record of her baptism in San Luis Obispo nor of the baptism of her sister Pilar, who was born about 1867. This probably means that the Rodrígues family moved elsewhere before returning to San Luis Obispo. It may have been Gabriel’s death that caused Guadalupe to return to San Luis Obispo, where her siblings lived. Gabriel died sometime between 1867 and 1870. There is a confirmation listed for Francisca Rodrígues, age sixteen, on 25 April 1875 in San Luis Obispo.

Guadalupe was about thirty when she married her third husband, Asencion Mendez, a native of Altar, Sonora, Mexico. Asención was the son of Salvador Mendez and Dolores Guingochea, who left Altar, Sonora, Mexico, in the 1860’s and lived in San Juan, Orange County, CA. Asención and Guadalupe were married 8 December 1870 at the Mission Church in San Luis Obispo. Witnesses to the marriage were José Arballo [same as Arvallo] and Guadalupe’s sister Refugio Córdova.

Asención had come to San Luis Obispo shortly before his marriage. He did not appear in the 1870 Census of San Luis Obispo. Dolores is believed to have been of Basque extraction. Her granddaughter Dolores Mendez Serrano claimed to have been part French. The grandmother’s surname appears to be Basque; this would explain the French ancestry because Basque people live in both France and Spain.

Asención registered to vote on September 4, 1871, giving his age as thirty and his occupation as “laborer.” The 1875 San Luis Obispo City Directory, compiled the year previous, lists Asención as living near San Luis Obispo but working in the town. From Salvador’s obituary we learn that the Mendez family was living in an adobe home on Chorro Streeet at the time. If both sources are correct, then the family lived just outside of San Luis Obispo on Chorro Street.

The same month, on September 26, a daughter was born and named for Acensión’s mother: María de los Dolores Mendez. Two years later a son, Salvador Valentín Mendez, named for Acensión’s father, was born on 16 December 1873. Shortly after Salvador’s birth, on February 28, 1874, Asención was shoeing a horse when it kicked him in the head, killing him. [Was he working as a blacksmith?] At the age of thirty-four, Guadalupe was a widow for the third timeWith four children, Guadalupe had few options but to marry again. On 21 October 1875, she married twenty-six year old Miguel Arvallo at the church in San Luis Obispo. Miguel was the son of Eugenio Arvallo and Francisca Tapia. He may have been a cousin because Guadalupe’s mother was also a Tapia. Witnesses at the marriage were Victor Córdova, probably Guadalupe’s brother, and Natividad Arvallo, probably Miguel’s sister. By marrying a man nine years her junior, Guadalupe probably felt that the curse of widowhood would be avoided this time, but a mere five years later, at the time of the 1880 Census, Guadalupe was shown as a forty year old widow living alone with her four children. She was shown living with her daughters Francisca, 20; Pilar, 12; Dolores, 8; Salvador, 7; and Carolina, 4.

If she looked like her daughter Dolores, Guadalupe was a beautiful woman. But at forty her attractiveness had probably started to fade. There was also the possibility that superstitious suitors might have been repelled by the apparent jinx of being married to this woman. At any rate, we know from her granddaughter Alice Serrano Stephens that Guadalupe struggled as a seamstress to support her family. But on 18 May 1885, at the age of forty-five, Guadalupe joined her four husbands in a premature death. She was buried at the San Luis Obispo Catholic Cemetery, but the wooden marker long ago disappeared. The cemetery records were destroyed by a flood, so we don’t know where exactly in the cemetery she is buried.

Within eighteen months of their mother’s death, all three of her daughters were married. Pilar Rodrígues married Narciso Serrano and her sister Dolores married Narciso’s brother, Hipolito Serrano. The boy Salvador was eleven and his sister Carolina, nine, at the time of their mother’s death and probably lived with relatives until they reached adulthood. Like their mother and fathers, Guadalupe’s children did not live long lives. Salvador lived the longest, dying at fifty-four. Three of her daughters were married to Serranos.

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María Francisca Rodrígues was the daughter of María de Guadalupe Córdova and her second husband, Gabriel Rodrígues. Francisca was born about 1859. She was not a daughter of Acensión Mendez, so she was only a half sister to María de los Dolores Mendez, who married Hipolito Serrano. Her father died between 1867 and 1870.

Shortly after her mother’s 1885 death, Francisca married Benito Carlón [1843-?] on July 19, 1886, in San Luis Obispo. It is not known what became of her and if there were any children. Benito was listed in the 1880 Census of San Luis Obispo living alone working as a laborer, age 37, born in California, as were his parents.

Pilar Rodrígues was a daughter of Gabriel Rodrígues and María de Guadalupe Córdova. Her father died between 1867 and 1870. In 1870 her mother married Acensión Mendez, and the following year her half sister María de los Dolores Mendez was born. Pilar was orphaned in 1885 when her mother died, and she married Narciso Serrano shortly afterward.

In early 1887, Pilar’s half sister Dolores Mendez married Narciso’s brother Hipolito Serrano. That December, Pilar and Narciso were godparents at the baptism of Manuel Daniel Serrano, the firstborn of Dolores and Hipolito.

Pilar and Narciso had one son, Tomás Serrano, born on March 21, 1889. Pilar died on

26 July 1891 when Tomás was two years old. Narciso died about 1898. Tomas assumed the name John Serrano. John was placed in an orphanage and eventually left San Luis Obispo. In Fresno, CA, he married and had a son, Jack Serrano, born November 29, 1926, in Delano, CA. Later they moved to Bakersfield. In Bakersfield John and his wife separated. Jack never saw his father again. In the 1960’s Jack made contacts in San Luis Obispo looking for family. He contacted the author, who connected him to the family. Jack died in Cambria, California, in 2003. He has two children, one in Arizona and one in Bakersfield, CA. These are Pilar’s only known living descendants. If John remarried after leaving his wife, there could be more.

“Dolores” Mendez was born in September 1871, the daughter of María de Guadalupe Córdova and Asención Mendez. She married Hipolito Serrano in 1887 and was the mother of Manuel Daniel Serrano, our ancestor. Her biography will be dealt with separately in this work.