View from the Innside

Bottger Mansion Bed & Breakfast seeks photos for 100th anniversary

PRESS RELEASE

Bottger Mansion of Old Town, historic Bed and Breakfast
March 16, 2010

Contact:    Kathy Hiatt

                  505-243-3639

                  kathy[a]bottger.com

 

BOTTGER MANSION B&B SEEKS PHOTOS FOR 100^TH ANNIVERSARY

 

ALBUQUERQUE—Steve and Kathy Hiatt, owners of the Bottger Mansion Bed & Breakfast in Old Town Albuquerque, are seeking photographs of the Bottger Mansion Bed & Breakfast for the 100^th anniversary of the house built in 1910 by Charles Bottger.  The mansion was known as the “Gallegos house” when it was the home of Julia Bottger Gallegos.  They are also looking for photographs of the Post Exchange Hotel and the Sunnyside Club (later the “San Felipe Club”), which were previously on the site of the parking lot south of the Plaza until about 1958 and were owned by Bottger ancestors.

 

This year, the Bottger Mansion, located at 110 San Felipe Street NW, will be undergoing a change in theme and décor, transitioning from Victorian to “historic,” and the Hiatts would like to include photographs of the house at various times in its 100-year history. 

 

Franz Huning, William Hazeldine, Bernard S. Rodey, architect Edward Buxton Cristy, Erna Fergusson, and Clyde and Carrie Tingley are among prominent Albuquerqueans important to the history and development of the city, after whom rooms in the bed & breakfast will be named. 

 

Complete information about the Bottger Mansion may be viewed at the website at www.bottger.com.  Ongoing information and stories about the history of the house, Bottger family, Old Town and early Albuquerque can be found on our blog “View from the Innside.” The Bottger Mansion Bed & Breakfast has a Facebook fan page and you can follow us on Twitter.

 

 

Website links:

 

Bottger Mansion Bed & Breakfast                                                        www.bottger.com

“View from the Innside”—Bottger Mansion blog                                  blog.bottger.com

Facebook fan page                                                www.facebook.com/BottgerMansion

Twitter                                                                                                     twitter.com/bottger

 

maiden name mystery solved?

A while back, I found the record of marriage of Miguela to Charles Bottger in September of 1897.  It was in the Marriages, Book “C” and “D”, Jan. 1855 thru Dec. 14, 1900, San Felipe de Neri RCC, Alburquerque, Territory of NM—Microfilm FHL 016-644, and had been translated from Spanish into English.  Additionally, in the introduction to the book, it noted that from pages 42 to 125 or so, the person writing the record had extremely "careless" handwriting, and some of the writing was illegible.  So what I found, as follows, is from 1897, translated from Spanish--explanations to follow:

“Today the (blank) of September of 1897, I married Mr. Charles A. Buttager baptized Luteran, son of J. L. and J. L. Buttager with the dispensation of Mixed Religion, with Miguela Baca widow of Mr. Hain, deceased, and daughter of Gertrudes Baca.  Witnesses, Tony Michellach and Mrs. Michellach.  ‘I the undersigned promise to Miguela Baca, my wife, to leave her free to exercise of her own religion during her whole lift [sic] and also promise that the children who may be born of our union shall all be baptized in the Catholic Church and brought up in the doctrine of the same Church.’  Signed C. A. Buttager"

Here are the explanations:  Bottger's name was misspelled, as usual.  This is the first reference that Charles Bottger was Lutheran (also misspelled).  At that time, Miguela was the widow of Max Stein, so with very poor handwriting and translating a foreign name from Spanish to English, one can understand where "Stein" could be rewritten as "Hain." 

But where did the name Baca come from?  We do know that her mother was Gertrudes Garcia, who was a widow with one child (Miguela) and married Tom Post.  So who was Baca?

I have been working my way through Albuquerque, A Narrative History by Marc Simmons, and came upon the answer.  On page 106, in discussing the substantial Elene Gallegos Land Grant.  Shortly after 1712, land was granted Elena Gallegos, widow of Santiago Gurule.  The author noted that

"As was often done in colonial New Mexico, she retook her maiden name upon her husband's death." 

Therein lies the key.  If Miguela was the widow of Max Stein, who died in 1889, she reverted to her maiden name of Baca, which is how her name appeared when she married Charles Bottger in 1897.  So why is that different than her mother's name?  Because Gertrudes Garcia was also twice a widow.  Her maiden name was Garcia.  She married a man named Baca, who was Miguela's father (hence, Miguela Baca), and then was widowed.  Subsequently, she married Thomas  D. Post, Miguela's stepfather, and was known as Gertrudes Garcia de Post.  When Thomas Post died in 1893, Gertrudes survived him and her name reverted back to Gertrudes Garcia, which was her name at the time of Miguela's marriage in 1897.

I'm finding that there are very subtle historical and cultural traditions like this that make a huge difference in research, and the answers can come from unexpected places.

searching for Miguela's grave in the snow

Last week I had a chance to do some more research in Santa Fe, continuing what I started a few weeks ago.  The more I do, the more loose ends I find.

I had learned that Miguela Bottger died in 1936 in Santa Fe and was buried in Rosario Cemetery.  According to her obituary in the Santa Fe New Mexican, Miguela lived with her daughter on East Manhattan Avenue in Santa Fe.  However, the 1936-37 Santa Fe City Directory showed that Julia and George lived on Acequia Madre Street and that George was a salesman at Bell’s Store.  Most likely, they rented houses at a couple of different places in Santa Fe before returning to Albuquerque after Miguela's death to live in the Bottger Mansion (thereafter called the “Gallegos House”).  Except for the year 1936 when Miguela lived with her daughter, Julia Bottger Gallegos, and Julia’s husband George, all of the Bottger family lived in Albuquerque.  

I’ve always felt that cemeteries create a feeling of closure, especially if you’ve been looking for someone and find their final resting place.  I wanted to find Miguela’s lone grave at Rosario Cemetery, take a photograph, and have an ending to her story, even though there are still gaps to be filled in.

The man working in the office at Rosario was very nice and provided copies of the ledger books he had.  One was a fee book, in which there was one entry for “Miguela Bottge” (name spelled incorrectly—again) on March 2,1936, for “opening and closing grave.”  The other was a locator book, in which she was listed without an actual location.  However, other people buried around the same time were listed either in family plots or in Section B.  The more the man looked, the more he thought that she was buried in the “single grave” section (Section B), especially when I noted that the rest of the family lived in Albuquerque, and Miguela only lived in Santa Fe for a year or so with her daughter.

A map of the cemetery showed that Section B was in the “old” section, much like the Santa Barbara section of Mt. Calvary Cemetery in Albuquerque.  And, like Santa Barbara, a large number of the graves were either unmarked or the headstones or markers have crumbled or been vandalized.  He had told me that the row where she was most likely buried was in more or less chronological order.   I found the earlier beginning of the row, with some grave markers from 1932 and 1933, and then there was a large bare space with no markers, covered with snow and ice.  Farther down were additional tombstones from 1936 and 1937.  No Miguela.  But if she’s there, a very large tree shades her grave.

The next time I return to Santa Fe, I’ll visit Rosario Cemetery and stroll down by the big tree, just in case there’s a small marker with her name on it.  Otherwise, she will lie in restful anonymity over the passage of time, just like her relatives in Santa Barbara.

 

two days of research at the New Mexico Archives and Records Center

February is a little slow, and we had a couple of days with no guests to head up to Santa Fe to the New Mexico Archives and Records Center (1209 Camino Carlos Rey just off Cerrillos Road).

It’s an amazing place with lots of resources and also a lot of rules.  You can’t take any bags, purses or coats inside—they provide public lockers outside the library entrance.  You can take a laptop in (not in your bag, of course) and a notebook, but your cell phone has to be silenced. 

I went prepared with the list of things I’ve been trying to find, and I did manage to find all of them in the time I had—the obituaries for Charles Bottger in 1914, Miguela in 1936, Edward Stein in 1908 (her son by her first marriage), and the elusive Julia L. Bottger who passed away in 1909, who turns out to be Charles Bottger’s mother.  Charles had gone to New York to bring her to Albuquerque, and she died two weeks after her arrival here.

On Tuesday Steve helped me by continuing to look for newspaper articles on microfilm.  It’s very helpful that there’s an index, so I had searched for people and found the dates of articles in the index.  At least then we can go directly to the newspaper on that date on microfilm.

While he did that, I spent all morning scanning through the Albuquerque city directories from 1947 to about 1996.  I need to spend a little more time on that since I realized there are a few pieces missing and a few more questions.  In city directories, not only can you look up people by last name, but it also has a cross-index section by street names and addresses.  The city directory also listed that a property was vacant.  I was able to trace both the Bottger family and descendants when they lived here and also see the stretch of years when it was apparently vacant. 

I think I’ve been bitten by the research bug.  Searching through history is a fascinating exercise in sleuthing, guesswork, assumptions and problem-solving.  Some of the answers can never be discovered because the true story died with the people.

On the trail of Edward Buxton Cristy

The most interesting thing about historical research is that you never know whose path you will cross or whose story intersects with yours.  Charles Bottger's path crossed with that of an Albuquerque architect named Edward Buxton Cristy.

My efforts to date have been focused on the Bottger family, so I haven't really researched Cristy yet.  And I must admit that my initial search at the Special Collections Library was based on an index search, in which I misspelled his last name, based on another book I had found.  Obviously, another trip is required, and I expect to find more newspaper articles about Cristy if I spell his name correctly.

Edward Buxton Cristy is not nearly as well known as another architect in Albuquerque named John Gaw Meem.  However, it was Cristy who was hired by University of New Mexico president George Tight and worked with Mary Colter (of Harvey Company fame) to remodel Hodgin Hall, the original building of UNM.  The remodel involved removing the peaked roof, adding multiple levels and covering the building with stucco to give it a pueblo appearance.  Locals were outraged at what they perceived to be the destruction of the character of the building.  However, Tight had a vision of a "pueblo on the mesa," and several more buildings were built in the style before his dismissal in 1909.  The style, so unique to the university and to New Mexico, became known as "Pueblo Revival" and was adopted years later as the official building style of the UNM campus.  John Gaw Meem followed in later years and designed numerous buildings in the Albuquerque area in the Pueblo Revival style, to great acclaim, while the creators of the style, Cristy and Colter, faded into relative obscurity compared to Meem.

Other Cristy designs include his own home at 201 Walter Street SE built in 1896, a charming bungalow in the Huning's Highland Addition (now a designated historic district), which has been carefully and lovingly restored.  He also designed the W. J. Marsh House at 301 Edith Street SE built in 1892, which was one of the largest homes in Huning's Highland Addition at the time.

Sometime during 1908 or 1909, Cristy and Bottger must have met and arranged for the design of Charles Bottger's new home in Old Town, and it was completed in approximately 1910, when the structure appears on the Sanborn Insurance map.

In a moment of inspiration, I wondered if E. B. Cristy had any descendants, so I did a search.  About 10 people with that name appear in the phone records, and at least some seem to be related to each other.  My next task is to start calling to find out if they are indeed descendants of Edward Cristy and if they have any photographs of his work, of Edward Cristy, or copies of any his plans or drawings they would be willing to share. 

In this 100th anniversary of the Bottger Mansion, it would be fitting to rename one of the rooms after its architect, Edward Buxton Cristy.

history research--property deeds

I'm starting to feel like I'm living at the Special Collections Library.  Researching the Bottgers has become a bit of an obsession.  I can understand why those involved in genealogy have a passion for it.  It's like being a detective, where one clue leads to another.

On Wednesday, I spent another couple of hours, this time going through the deeds index books.  These books are huge, measuring about 1 1/2 feet wide by 2 feet long by 4 inches thick.  They're ledger books compiled at some point by the Bernalillo County Abstract & Title Company, and the indices go back to 1850.  Two books are the index from Grantors to Grantees (A-K and L-Z), and the other set is a cross-reference of Grantees from Grantors (A-K and L-Z). 

The challenge is to remember all of the names involved, since at this point I don't know who actually owned the property or how they gained control of it.  And the more research I do, the more people I find were involved or related or married into the family, and the more names I have to look up.

Some of the entries were fairly obvious.  Tom Post was a quite the business man in "Old Albuquerque," with property acquisitions and sales and leases, which were also recorded.  After his death, several deeds and documents were recorded as his property was put into a trust and then removed back out of the trust after a time.  His wife's name shows up a number of times as well.

What I didn't expect to find was property and water and mineral rights deeded to "John Lewis F. Bottger."  This was in 1893, about the time Charles A. Bottger showed up in New Mexico.  I have to wonder if that was his brother.  In one of the census documents, Charles Bottger listed that his parents were "J.L. and J. L. Bottger."  We know that the Bottger family owned a store in New Jersey, since we have a photo of it, and the name on the store is "J. L. Bottger."  Was that his father's store?  Did his brother come west with him?  The initials J. L. seem to be a Bottger family habit, as he named one of his daughters Julia L.  The name Julia L. Bottger ("and husb") also shows up in the deed index at a time when his daughter would not have yet been born.  Was that his brother's wife?  Is that why he named his daughter Julia?

If John Lewis F. Bottger was his brother and also owned property, why have I found no reference to him in newspapers or vital statistics records? 

I also found an entry where John Lewis F. Bottger was deeded property on "east side of Plaza Old Alb." from Cristobal Armijo.  I remembered that I had seen a reference that our property was once owned by Cristobal Armijo, which would make sense since it was originally the Manuel Armijo house until he left New Mexico around 1846.  If so, what happened to John Bottger?   How did the property eventually fall into the hands of Charles Bottger?

There are still far more questions than answers.

history research--visit to Mt. Calvary Cemetery

In my quest to find out more about the Bottger family, my search led me to the Mt. Calvary Cemetery.  I had--entirely accidentally--found the grave of Dorothy Bottger Ortiz on www.findagrave.com by following a link from somewhere else.  I had hoped that perhaps it was a family plot and there might be other family members buried nearby.  No such luck.

However, I did find out some interesting things about the Mt. Calvary Cemetery and cemeteries in general.  The original cemetery there was called Santa Barbara and is in the southwest corner, at the corner of Edith Blvd. and Indian School Road (entrance to the cemetery is at 1900 Edith Blvd. NE). I had been confused because in Dorothy's obituary it talked about the "family plot in Santa Barbara Cemetery," and yet on findagrave.com it listed Mt. Calvary Cemetery.  It turns out that Santa Barbara was taken over by Mt. Calvary.

I was hoping that all of the records at Mt. Calvary had been computerized and numerous searches could be done in minutes, like at the National Cemetery in Santa Fe, but everything at Mt. Calvary is still in big ledgers, and that's why the lady at the counter spends her whole day looking through books and maps.  She was very helpful, but I didn't want to ask her too many questions.  I know there are more members of the Ortiz family buried there, as well as other members of the Bottger family.  Those could be searches for another day.  (I have to admit that I'd be the type who, if I worked at Mt. Calvary, would be tempted to start typing all that information into a database coded to a map of the cemetery.)

She also told me that searching for old graves is a difficult and often impossible task since many of the graves were unmarked or were missing information.  Also, the cemetery is on a hillside, and years of flooding and erosion have caused damage.  In fact, a massive flood actually washed away graves at one time, causing remains to be unearthed.  Those were relocated to a mass grave in another area of Mt. Calvary since they couldn't be identified. 

On this sunny January day, I strolled among by every grave in the old Santa Barbara area, and I could see bare spots on the hillside where erosion and flooding have washed away graves.  While I've always considered graves to be "permanent" resting places, they do not last for all eternity.  Crude wooden crosses with names and dates can't stand up to New Mexico weather for even one generation.  Concrete markers crumble.  Even the engraved names on white marble headstones of WWII veterans have become somewhat blurred with the abrasion of windswept sand.

The marker at Dorothy's grave appears modern and sharp and appears as if some mindful descendant has recently had it placed there immediately in front of the old marker.  Someone has recently inserted a white silk flower in the crevice between the two markers.

Whether Dorothy was buried alone in the cemetery or other family members' graves were among those which have disappeared, I don't know.  But her grave marker serves as a landmark on the map of the old Santa Barbara Cemetery for others like me to find the final resting places of those they seek.

A voice from the past--Charles A. Bottger, 1897

Persistence in looking through microfilm of newspapers for hours pays off.  Last week I found a direct quote from Charles A. Bottger, in The Albuquerque Weekly Citizen from Saturday, May 29, 1897, page 1:

“I wish to inform my friends and the public in general that I will introduce a new form of amusement for the coming summer season, in the shape of an open-air concert garden. 

 

“Beginning May 29th and 30th there will be a band concert at the Sunnyside, and every Sunday night thereafter, weather permitting.  The music will be furnished by the First Regiment Band, of Old Town, which band now has a membership of twenty-five, and in the point of first class music is second to none in the Southwest.

 

“Many improvements have been made at the Sunnyside in the past few months, and we are now prepared to conduct our concerts on a large scale.  The garden has a seating capacity of 450 people, half of whom will be accomodated with tables.

 

“The bandstand is located on the roof, which insures a better quality of sound, as the audience will listen to music and not noise.

 

“At present the garden will be illuminated by torches, but within 10 days these will be replaced by lights specially adapted to the purpose, and which will make the garden as light as day.

 

“After June 10th the garden will be illuminated every night for the accomodation of patrons who wish to enjoy a cool glass of beer, lunch, games, etc. in the open air. 

 

“The above concerts will begin every Sunday night at 8 p.m. and end at 10:30.  Cars will be on hand at the conclusion of concert to accomodate new town visitors. 

 

“Bicycles will be checked to insure safe keeping.

 

“No admission will be charged, but as this is a dry country we expect everybody to irrigate a little, and as irrigation is necessary to a healthy growth, we want everybody to grow healthy with pleasure, and we want to say right now that we have a first class line of irrigating material on hand.  We don’t run a one-horse outfit.

 

“In conclusion, I will say that the Sunnyside will be conducted as in the past, respectable in each and every respect, courteous and polite treatment, good goods at reasonable prices, this is our motto.

 

“Improper characters, hoodlums and hobos are hereby notified that they are not wanted, and positively will not be admitted.

 

“Respectfully yours,

C. A. Bottger, Proprietor

Sunnyside.”

 

[Note that references to hard liquor were not permitted in “dry” areas of the country, so the euphemism “irrigating” was used for consumption of hard liquor.]

P.S.  We still don't run a one-horse outfit.

historic research--answers lead to more questions

So here I am doing all this research on the Bottgers, and yesterday Raymond Ortiz and his family came for a visit.  Raymond is Charles Bottger's great-great-grandson.  He and his wife were dropping off his son (Zachary Ortiz, a recurring family name) and daughter-in-law at the airport and had a little extra time, so they decided to stop by and look at the old family mansion.  I was thrilled to talk to him about some of the documents I had found.  There was some information I had found out that he didn't know, and he was able to verify one of the family stories about his great-grandmother Dorothy Bottger Ortiz.

At this point it seems that for every piece of information I get, it spurs three more questions.  Right now the questions I need to answer are:

Who was Max Stein, Jr.?  When was he born (married in 1948 at what age?)?  Was he a descendant of Miguela Bottger's first husband, Max Stein?  If so, who was his mother (not Miguela)?

Who was the Julia Bottger listed as having died in Albuquerque in 1909?  Had Charles Bottger's mother come to live here?  His sister?  It was not his daughter Julia L. Bottger, because she had gotten married in 1920 and lived to have six children and 24 grandchildren.

Was Thomas D. Post Miguela's father or her stepfather?  He married a widow, Gertrudes Garcia, who had one daughter.  Was that Miguela?  If so, who was her father?

The search for the true story continues.

history research--tracing the Charles A. Bottger family tree

I've been doing some historical research on Charles A. Bottger, the man who had the Bottger Mansion built in 1910.  It's an appropriate thing to do in the 100th anniversary year of the house, right?

We've been given lots of oral history stories from local residents, Bottger family descendants, and some self-proclaimed historians. Since we had become aware of a few discrepancies, I decided to do factual research, beginning at the Special Collections Library in Albuquerque.  The Special Collections Library is full of records of marriages, deaths, births, baptisms, census records, property deeds, and newspaper archives, to name just a few.  There are some gaps in their records, which may be filled by documents elsewhere, like the Albuquerque Museum archives or the State Archives in Santa Fe, which I'm told has pretty much everything.  I'll see how much I can get in Albuquerque before I take that day trip to the State Archives in Santa Fe.  It's also amazing how much is available online.

What I've uncovered so far is a fascinating, convoluted history of the Bottger family, their own ancestors and descendants.  It turns out that much of that oral history we had been given is incorrect.  The factual documents and records that I've found disprove many of those stories.  On the other hand, there is documented evidence that many of those stories are true.

Part of the challenge in genealogy is that names were spelled incorrectly, families tended to use the same names over the generations (making it both easy and difficult to trace them), and there were a lot of multiple marriages.  Thomas D. Post (Miguela Bottger's father or step-father, not sure which yet) married a widow with a daughter.  Miguela Bottger had already been married, had two children, and was a widow when she married Charles Bottger.  Zachary Ortiz, Sr., Bottger's grandson, was a widower with four young boys, who later remarried and had an additional three children.  It is both fascinating and complex.

I've been encouraged by one of the librarians at the Special Collections Library to put all of this factual information with sources cited into a self-published book and donate a copy to the library.  Someday one of the Bottger family descendants may want to do some research on their own and would find it useful.