|
Every Journey Deserves a Great Story
My siblings and I have a list of endearing qualities to describe our mother. At the top of mine would be her storytelling acumen. As young children, without radio, television, computers or our mother’s ability to read, listening to her stories entertained, educated and informed us of our heritage and ancestors whose lives we proceeded.
One such story was only a tale to our young ears, until as adults we discovered an ancestral connection we did not expect or could have imagined.
In the town of San Juan Capistrano, California stands a small adobe home, constructed sometime in the 1840s. The Parra Adobe is an area historical site, and is the former residence of farmer Miguel Parra, whose family migrated from Spain to Mexico between the 1500s to the 1600s. In the 1800s the Parra family migrated from Sonora, Mexico to San Juan Capistrano, California.
Miguel Parra became the father of Jose Parra who was born in 1828 in San Juan Capistrano. He became the father of Jose Julio Parra, born in 1873 in Sonora, Mexico who was the father of my mother Maria Parra, born in Sonora, Mexico in 1926. Between 1828 and 1873, the Parra family built the Parra Adobe and farmed the land located about a mile from the San Juan Capistrano Mission and then left their home in California and moved back to Mexico.
According to the National Register of Historic Place Nomination form, Miguel Parra and his wife Antonia both died in 1869 and are both buried in the San Juan Capistrano Mission Cemetery.
The following information was told to our mother by her father when she was a young girl growing up in Mexico.
According to the legend, while living in San Juan Capistrano, Miguel Parra and his family worked hard on the land and hired local Indians to help. But some of the Indians fought them, claiming it was Indian land and wanted them to leave. The Parra’s fought a good fight, and after years of trying to settle the dispute with the Indians, the Parra’s moved back to Mexico and left the Adobe home and land in the hands of trusted care takers.
Many years later, in 1948 my grandfather, Jose Julio Parra, chose to make the trip from Sonora, Mexico to San Juan Capistrano to lay claim to the home and land of the Parra family. With the deed in hand and other necessary official documents Jose set off to California to petition for the property and home his grandfather built.
On his way to California, my grandfather Jose Julio Parra suffered a heart attack and died. Years later another Parra relative traveled to San Juan Capistrano to lay claim to the property. The official statement by the city was that too many years had passed. The property and home had been sold several times and the back taxes owed would be unaffordable to the family. The city kept the property and the adobe home. The home is now a historical property of San Juan Capistrano.
I am currently writing a book of my mother’s stories. While writing the chapter of the Parra Adobe, Maggie and her husband Gary and I traveled to San Juan Capistrano to visit the Parra Adobe. It would be my first visit. I expected we would walk the property, go into the adobe and I would have an existential experience, perhaps feeling the ghost of my ancestors living in their home two hundred years ago. I imagined feeling their energy or perhaps hearing voices from the walls speaking about living and working in San Juan Capistrano and would be able to substantiate our mother’s story though the feelings I would gather. But this did not occur.
Several months later, visiting the site again, I discovered the Inn at the Mission San Juan Capistrano. The inn is a marvelous Hotel with connections to the Mission, next door and high-end amenities for an unforgettable stay. The Inn’s tagline is, ‘Every journey deserves a great story.’ I couldn’t help but think of our mother and the stories she left behind for us to imagine and continue to be thankful for our heritage.
“I Am My Mothers Daughter, Uncovering Nana’s Voice, One Story at a Time” my new book of mom’s stories is due for publication soon. I hope you will enjoy my writing as much as I have enjoyed collecting and recounting Mom’s journey… one story at a time. Happy Thanksgiving!
With love and gratitude,
Hilda
| 
