Between Rayón and Ures

 

Google Maps. The road between Rayón and Ures, Sonora.

Maria Concepcion Amado was born in the village of Rayón, Sonora around 1823. At some point she likely made her way to the town of Ures, which was the capital of Sonora in 1823. Ures became a city in 1838 and reclaimed its spot as the capital of Sonora between 1838 and 1842, and again from 1847 to 1879. I know Vicente Campuzano was living in Ures with his first family in 1847, as his daughter Jesus Campuzano was born there.

Concepcion, 1848. Made in Ideogram.

Travel between the two towns during this time was most likely on horseback, by mule or on foot with pack animals carrying goods. Rayón was a municipality in the district of Ures, so trade between the two locations would have been common.

Maria Concepcion

Maria Concepcion Amado, 1852. Made in Ideogram.

On the 10th April 1852, Maria Concepcion Amado brought her month old daughter Maria Concepcion Gabina Campuzano to be baptized at Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in Altar, Sonora, Mexico. As with yesterday's post on her husband Vicente Antonio Campuzano, I used Ideogram to visualize Concepcion and child during this same time period. We do not currently have a surviving image of her.

Ancestry. Altar, Sonora baptisms, 1852.

1852 would have been a year of significant change for Concepcion. She had a daughter Dolores in 1851, followed by Gabina in March 1852. 

Sadly, Dolores died in November 1853. Another daughter, Maria Emilia, arrived in 1855. A fourth daughter, Maria del Carmel Campuzano, joined the growing family in 1857. Compounding the loss of Dolores, Concepcion lost her remaining three daughters within a week in July 1858 as Gabina, Emilia and Maria del Carmel all died between 21-29 July 1858. This was a devastating loss for the family.

Ancestry. Altar Defunciones 1858.

A son, Jose Jesus Campuzano, was born less than a year later on 12 May 1859 in Altar. Two other sons followed - my 2nd-great-grandfather Vicente Plutarco Campuzano in May 1862, and Cirilo Campuzano in 1868.

Her husband died on 20 January 1873 in nearby Pitiquito, Sonora. Concepcion lived long enough to see her three sons marry and start families of their own. Jose Jesus married Elvira Felix in 1883. Vicente and Maria Jesus Vasquez were married in 1890, and Cirilo married Micaela Ortega in 1893. Concepcion likely met ten of her grandchildren before she died on 6 May 1898 in Altar.

Ancestry. Pitiquito Civil Registration. 1893.

I cannot comprehend the amount of strength it must have taken for Concepcion to persevere from those days in Altar. She lived a long life through a tumultuous period of Mexican history.

A reminder to backup your photos

This BBC article from earlier in the month is a good reminder to backup old photos - see Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever (16 Dec 2025). We have an aging iMac with a lot of photos that need to be copied over to a hard drive or saved to our cloud storage. We also have a basement closet with boxes of other photos that need to be scanned and saved.

A shoemaker in Altar

 

Made in Ideogram. Vicente Campuzano, 1852.

In 1852, my 3rd-great-grandfather Vicente Antonio Campuzano was working as a zapatero (a shoemaker) in Altar, Sonora, Mexico. He had recently started a second family with Maria Concepcion Amado, who would have just delivered their first daughter Dolores in the previous year. The imagined scene above shows Vicente mending a boot in his open air adobe workshop.

I picked 1852 for this scene as that was the year of the Pimeria Alta census, which I misspelled and misdated as 1851 in my 2012 post on Vicente's origins. Now I would like to see a digital copy of the original 1852 census of the district of Altar, as I think there's more than just Vicente in that record. There should be a reference to Pedro Suastegui, his wife Ana Maria Orosco and her mother Reyes Valdes in Altar.

Two of Vicente's sons from his first family became tailors. Jose Maria Campuzano moved to Los Angeles, while older son Francisco moved to Tubac in the Arizona Territory.

Paddington and Liverpool Street Station

 

Photo by Patrick Jones. Paddington. 6 Dec 2025.

Photo by Patrick Jones. Liverpool Street Station. 6 Dec 2025.