My mother used to tell me stories about being related to Ponce de Leon, and how our Spanish ancestors helped conquer the Aztecs. She even had our family genealogy traced back to the 1400s in Europe on her mother’s side. One line of her ancestors, through Delphina Martinez, can be traced from New Spain (Mexico) up to New Mexico and then to San Luis Obispo, CA and finally to Agua Mansa, between what is now San Bernardino and Riverside, CA. I myself have done research on my father’s side having taken the Heinz name back to the 1700s in Lorsch, Germany, but my mothers research had always been sort of a side note when I thought about my family history. That is until now.
Michelle recently planned our journey back to Colorado from Arizona and reserved a site near Abiquiu, New Mexico. I had told her about my mother’s stories and she took it upon herself to see if there was anything we could see, relating to my ancestors, while we were there. She looked at my Ancestry.com family tree and found the ancestors from New Mexico. As she moved forward in time from the 1600’s around Santa Fe, she found 3 generations that were actually living in Abiquiu! Using Google, she quickly found that in 1766, my ancestor Pedro Martin Serrano had been given a grant of land west of Abiquiu that consisted of almost 50,000 acres of land. He had petitioned the Spanish governor (the land was owned by Spain at the time) for the land and the request was granted. We found the land grant on the Web (Google is amazing!) and read it. The grant was called the Piedra Lumbre Land Grant. We were very excited to check it out.
As we drove toward the campsite from Santa Fe on I-25, we passed through Espanola and eventually through Abiquiu. Just past the town, about 2 miles from our campsite, we saw a sign:
Our campsite was actually ON my ancestor’s land grant!! I was so excited! As we crested the hill to drop into the land grant area, I was stunned. Beautiful red mountain bluffs, absolutely glowing fall colors in the trees lining Rio Chama, and majestic tabletop mountains.
I spent the next two days in heaven – taking in the sights that my ancestors claimed as their own over 250 years ago. It’s no wonder Pedro Martin chose this land. Every night I went to sleep thinking about what it must have been like without roads and street signs and how awesome it must have been to ride into these bright red canyons on horseback before any other anglos arrived.
Needless to say, we’ll be back soon to spend more than a few days exploring. For now, my cup runneth over and I leave here in the morning with a light heart and a new connection to my past.
Thanks for starting this site. I am picking up my 4250w in a couple weeks. We have not had the build issues you mentioned but our salesperson we signed the deal with took a job somewhere else about the time our unit went online. The interim WW folks were great. The new guy they hired does not seem to have the same customer interaction as the other WW employees. The only customizations we did that were not on their “menu” we’re some additional D rings in the garage, a fold down kitchen counter extension behind the portion of the couch that faces the TV, match the dinette table top with the kitchen counter and requested a table we could install and take out in the garage area when the lower bunk is set up to be bench seats.
Are you planning to be full time? I wish you luck, Joe. Very exciting indeed!!
This website was… how do I say it? Relevant!!
Finally I have found something that helped me. Kudos!
Thank you for the kind words! It’s nice to hear we are helping others… Phil