| Notes |
- Manuel María de la Sierra was born in Santander, Spain. One has to realize that the Santander he knew no longer exists, even its medieval cathedral. In 1942 a sea storm (maremoto) erased it from the map, leaving behind scant relics of it nautical past. If any one wihshes to find out what it was like one has to read such novels As "Sotileza" and "Peñas Arriba" by Pereda. The imagination will have to do then.
Family history tells us that Manuel María married María Vicenta Pereira y Zatarain(it is very possible that her family came from Asturias or Galicia [Pereira] and the Basque Provinces [Zatarain- the name of a small Basque town]) about 1820. In 1822 there is the famous Golpe de Riego (whose songs I remember) and the re-invasion of Spain by 100,000 French (Bourbon) soldiers who came to the resuce of Fernando VII and allowed him to aborgate the Constitution of Cádiz and become once again an absolute monarch. Either because the French destroyed the fishing ships of the family or because they had had it with war, Manuel María took his wife and young son, Maunel Fermín to Puerto Rico. We really do not know what he did. According to my grand mother (his g-great grandaughter), he is listed as an "hombre bueno y notario." At one point he must have taken exams to be a notary.
His first wife María Vicenta died in 1824 and he married Julia Toste, of a very prominent family from San Juan. He had two daughters : Tersa and Mercedes. This progeny was to become quite important because Teresa married one of the great Puerto Rican journalist José Ramón Freyre y Rivas. Freyre not only was a good journalist but keen observer of the working classes and he worte a series of articles on the "jornaleros" (day workers) of the 1850-60 that are a the best observations of the Puerto Rican working class at that moment and stay as a source of of unbelievable sociological and historical work. I do not know if they have ever been published in book form.
Mercedes' grandaughter Altagracia Gayá y Ballesteros married Pedro Adolfo de Castro, Puerto Rico's preeminent architec of the 1930's.
Julia died and shortly there after he married his wife's cousin Carmelita Toste. By her hae had Ramón and another Mercedes. Ramón was the only revolutionary of the family. During the governorship of Laureano Sanz (Atila, el Godo, etc.) he was going to be imprisioned, but his brother found out and he was exiled to the Dominican Republic. There he had two illegitimate children Ramón and Mercedes (again!). Ramon became a bseball player. He was one of the first player of "Los Indios de Mayagüez." He dropped the "de la" from de la Sierra and we have no idea if he had children, His sister never married.
Manuel María de la Sierra died in Mayagüez. We do not know if he is buried in the old cemetery in the crypt that now belongs to the Mulets or in San Juan with his wives.
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Abt 1805 - 
