The oldest brother Ramon married in 1925,³ five years after the death of Maria Teresa.

Events of 1912 and the aftermath:

It must be remembered that this woman (Maria Teresa) had lived through “The dragging of Eloy Alfaro”, and the associated civil unrest, in 1912 – an event which spelled imminent danger to her husband’s life from hostile extremist elements among that faction of Ecuador’s population that was supportive of Ecclesiastical control – resulting in his exile to Chile. He had only returned from this exile two years before his death so it would be logical to expect that all of these events would have been rather fresh in the mind of Francisco’s widow. The youngest son of this couple, Bonifacio, was born in Ecuador during the period when his father was in exile in Chile.
Click here to see a video describing Dr. Martinez’ departure on that occasion.
Decades later toward the evening of his life (1988-1996)  this son Boni would write a series of letters to his oldest brother Ramon, sending copies to his sister Mary Agnes and son Steve. In these letters we learn that Ramon had left school at the young age of 13 or 14 to step in and support the family during the absence of the exiled father (see excerpts below and links to full text of letters). Boni in these letters repeatedly praises his older brother for his actions during this critical time.  We know nothing about Dr. Martinez’ time in Chile but from Boni’s letters we get the impression that the family back in Ecuador was having financial difficulties.

Decisions: the Fateful Journey

A separate page on this website is devoted to a comprehensive discussion of the many important factors surrounding Maria Teresa’s decision to make the journey to New York.  Before continuing the reader may want to consult that page first:
The Del Pozo Sisters in the whirlwind (click)
Additional relevant facts surrounding Maria Teresa’s decision to travel to New York to seek medical assistance are:

Ship Passing through the Panama Canal Locks -Colon, Panama (Photo: Lyn Gateley – flickr)

• It must be borne in mind that Francisco is known to have made several trips to the U.S. even after his graduation in 1871. His son Bonifacio would relate that he made several trips to look after sons from his first marriage who were studying in the U.S. and there is documentary evidence of a trip to the U.S. in 1913 – less than four years before his death – during the time when he is believed to have been living in Chile on a self-imposed exile.⁴
• Maria Teresa was the niece of the Bishop of Guayaquil and her son Ramon would later recount that they (the Dr. Martinez family) would have many visitors at their home in Guayaquil and that “…naturally as the niece of the bishop she received special attention.” Guayaquil is the largest city in Ecuador; only the mountain capital of Quito comes anywhere near to Guayaquil in population or importance. economically, Guayaquil is the single most important city by far; it is an excellent port. It follows logically that the Bishop of this important city was an important figure in the Church of Ecuador. Dr. Martinez had been exiled for three years in the late 1880’s for his activities opposing entrenched ecclesiastical interests during the presidency of President Caamano – his re-publication of El Perico had resumed in 1889- and his marriage to Maria Teresa occurred seven years after his return. It seems logical to assume that Maria Teresa would have had difficulty reconciling the dreadful circumstances of Eloy Alfaro’s Murder (and of Pedro Montero) at the hands of fanatical mobs, with the adamant pro-ecclesiastical stance of her immediate DelPozo family. Both Alfaro and Montero had very close ties to her (Martinez) family up until the time of their deaths.
• The cocoa bean was an important crop for Ecuador. There had been a boom in the cocoa industry at the turn of the century but in 1916 the cocoa industry crashed and the first world war added to an economic decline in Ecuador in subsequent years.

The Journey

In late spring of 1919, Maria Teresa and her four young children embarked on the journey from Ecuador to New York. They would have probably passed through the Panama Canal which had opened just five years previously in 1914. ⁵  They arrived on a ship owned by United Fruit Company named the “Santa Marta”⁶ and were processed through Ellis Island in late June of 1919.

Maria Teresa and her four small children arrived in New York on the “Santa Marta” in 1919

When his mother arrived in the summer of 1919, Ramon was living at 519 W. 143rd Street in Manhattan. This is the address he gave to the Ellis Island Offical when he went to escort his aunt Ines (Wilson) three weeks after his mother’s arrival. This address is different from the one showing on Maria Teresa’s Death Certificate a year later.

Some time after her arrival she had taught for a brief time at St. Vincent Ferrer’s school for girls which was operated by the Dominicans. But she would die within a year of her arrival leaving these young children as orphans in a strange land -a decade before the Great Depression – with no responsible friends or close relatives nearby except for a 20-year old brother.  Her remains were interred at Calvary Cemetery in Queens⁷.

Boni’s letters paint a picture of the family being continually dependent upon Ramon for support all the way from 1913, through the journey of Maria Teresa and her death and afterward until the late 1920’s.   We now assume that after her untimely death he put some or all of them in some kind of institution – at least initially. Mary Agnes, the second-youngest of the four would claim until her dying day that she had been “raised by nuns” but she would not divulge the name, the address, or any information at all about where they had resided. She would only say that it was “like a boarding school”. Was it an orphanage? Was it a convent? Was it a boarding school? She would fall silent when confronted with these questions. It appears that for much of their lives a certain secrecy was maintained about the name and location of this institution but Boni, the youngest, a few years before his death, referred to it as an orphanage during a conversation with his niece Grace Connolly (Caporino).  Boni’s letters do not mention an “orphanage” or anything like it. For the five year period after their mother’s death there has always been an information blackout on the fate of these orphans but new information has finally come to light about their whereabouts in 1925.

1925 Residence of the Siblings

In 1925 there was a New York State Census. This census found the four orphans to be living at 159 West 85th street in New York. This building was built in 1891 and it is still there; it is what we might refer-to today as a multi-unit Apartment building. The census document does not specify apartment numbers; it just shows the street address of all residents residing in this apartment building. The census shows the four orphans to be residing together at this address at that time. They were Lola 18, Sookie 17, Mary Agnes 15, and Bonnie 12. Boni’s letters mention this apartment explicitly twice but there is no mention of how long (before 1925) they had been living there. So we have to infer that they were living together in this apartment by themselves at these young ages, their Brother Ramon, who would have been 26yrs of age having recently married (Ramon was married in March or April of 1925) and doing his level best to support himself, his wife and his orphaned younger siblings. It is significant to note that the family home of Ramon’s first wife was located just a few doors down at 203 West 85th Street apt# 61. The US Census’s of 1910 and 1920 had formerly recorded them to be living there. We don’t know how long the four orphans had been residing at this apartment at the time of the census. However this is the first known address that we can currently place them at after the one they were residing at when their mother died (510 W. 172nd Street). This address is right next to Central Park – within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History. The census documents are available for your inspection at the bottom of this page.
Boni in his letters would mention that he too started working at the young age of 13 which would have been 1926.
To see this scenario in context we need to remember that the Great Depression is considered to have started in October 1929. It is known that these orphans went through a period of impoverishment – assumed to be during the Great Depression. In her later years Mary Agnes would recount to her youngest son that they had gone through impoverishment and that there had been days when all she had to eat was a slice of pound cake.
In his letters Boni is continually praising Remon for what he had done for them when they were in these dire circumstances.

 
The chart below shows the ages of children of Dr. Martinez through his first wife Rafaela and her sister Semira at the time of his marriage to his second wife Maria Teresa and at a few key later years. The chart omits three of the older children for brevity (their exact years of birth between 1873 and 1883 are uncertain). Note that three years after his marriage to Maria Teresa, at the time of Ramon’s birth, Dr. Martinez was still responsible for the support of at least nine known underage children plus Semira herself (Semira survived until 1901). Also even in 1912, the year of the Arrastre, he was still responsible for three underage children through Semira and he sent the youngest of them, Semira’s son Enrique, to a university in Europe! Note also that we can’t really disregard the children who were 20, 21 or 22 years of age because we know that many of them were sent to college abroad so expenses for them would have been higher than for their underage siblings.

Chart showing the ages of Dr. Martinez’ children through Rafaela and Semira at the time of his second marriage and at a few key years thereafter. There were also three older children but we are uncertain about the exact years of their births.

Margaret Yarnall, wife of Bonifacio Martinez (Photo: Katharine Martinez)

Maria Teresa’s youngest son Bonifacio’s wife was Margaret Yarnall.  In her later years she decided to research the details of the Martinez and Del Pozo families.  She traveled to the Genealogical Research library in Salt Lake City Utah and to some other university libraries.  She also seems to have gained access to some genealogical documents that were not available in any North American libraries …perhaps relatives sent some documents to her.  From all this research she produced an excellent and very important genealogical document of about 30 pages in length.