Tucson Family Connections

 

Ronstadt Family Collection. Tucson, 1924.

In July 2016, I had a series of posts on the family of Concepcion Suastegui, referenced in the memoirs of Federico Ronstadt. Concepcion, called Tia Chona by the Ronstadt family, was the grandmother of Guadelupe "Lupe" Dalton. Lupe married Federico "Fred" Ronstadt in 1904, and is seen above with Fred and sons in a family photo taken in 1924. Fred and Lupe are the grandparents of performer and national treasure Linda Ronstadt, so we have a family connection. We are both directly descended from Francisco Suastegui (my 5th-great-grandfather), an early resident of Los Angeles (1835). More on the Suastegui family can be seen in this post from July 2017.

I'm using this post to call attention to a fascinating article on the Ronstadt family first published on Tucson.com in January 2020 (updated in February 2022). This article was overlooked during the pandemic, but popped up in a recent search as I was revisiting links to the Suastegui and Vasquez families while reading Linda Ronstadt and Lawrence Downes' 2022 book, Feels Like Home, A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands. The article by David Leighton recounts the family's arrival in Tucson, and explains the recent naming of two streets in Tucson for Fred and Lupe - Corte de Federico and Calle de Lupe. That's really cool to see. 

I'll have more on the connections to the Suastegui and Vasquez families in another post.