EDITION 90

AUGUST 2008

Simona Martinez
From the Mines of El Rosario to the World

By Joaquin Lopez
Chronicler of Teacapan, Sinaloa

We knew little about the exceptional life of Simona Martinez, who was born around 1845 and died in 1902. Perhaps her common surname has kept her out of popular biographies, or it might be that historians of Sinaloa and Mexico have dedicated most of their efforts to retelling the lives of men. Nonetheless, here we present a brief but meaningful account of a Sinaloan woman who so far has appeared in the history records simply as the wife of a wealthy gringo.

The life of our heroine transpired in southern Sinaloa in the latter half of the nineteenth century. She was probably born in El Rosario around 1845. To learn more about her, we consulted what has been written about her husband and their children. We also visited El Rosario's Civil Registry, directed by Guadalupe Borrego; the personal archives of Francisco H. Bouttier, the Official Chronicler of Ciudad Asilo del El Rosario; the Historical Archive of the Municipality of Mazatlán, under the care of Sergio Herrera y Cairo; and the Bradbury Family Archives located at UC Davis, run by Liz Philips. We also consulted various historical works on southern Sinaloa.

We have not been able to establish who Simona's parents were, but they must have been influential people in the region. She may have been related to Major Higinio Martinez, Political Prefect of the District of Rosario and to Governor Mariano Martinez de Castro.

Louis Leonard Bradbury came from an English family that settled in Maine in the seventeenth century. By 1860, he was a millionaire living in Oakland, California. He partnered with Thomas Bell, owner of the Bank of San Francisco and almost all the capitalists in Mazatlán had links with Lewis-Melchers, Claussen, Lejarza, Felton, Paredes, Noris Coppel, and Kelly, to name but a few. Kelly was the British consul in 1860, when he sold Bradbury his first shares in the "El Tajo" Mines.

The name of the old Royal Mines of our Lady of the Rosary comes from a legend in which a cowboy lost some of his rosary beads and had to made a fire to make it through the night. At dawn, on August 4, 1655, a thick sheet of silver, melted by the fire, appeared under the ashes. Eustaquio Buelna wrote that "a deep cut was dug into the ridge down to the silver vein. That's why the mine was called "el Tajo" or cut. Likewise, the town was named "El Rosario" on account of the rosary that led to the discovery of the mine."

An old adage has it that there is a woman behind every powerful man. Bradbury was not the exception. Simona Martinez's mystic beauty and the political power of her family attracted the entrepreneur's financial interest and affection. They married just as Bradbury was consolidating his control over the mine's shares. The wedding was in Mazatlán in January 1867. She was 21, he was 45. Nine months later, on October 23, 1867, Simonita was born. Maria del Rosario followed on January 18, 1870, and Luisa in 1876. They were registered in El Rosario. Their three younger siblings, Minerva, John, and Lewis Jr. were born in California.

The Bradburys had a residence in Mazatlan that included seven rooms, a kitchen, and a colonial-style carriage entrance. Maria de Jesus Lopez writes that Simona sold the property to the commercial house of Hidalgo, Careaga & Company in April 1891. The buyers ran a warehouse across from the corner of Arsenal and Ancla streets, in front of the current location of the Art Museum. Oses Cole wrote that in October 1894, Simona purchased the building next to the Muralla Sports Club on Sixto Osuna Street from the British vice-consul Charles Woolrich. With this acquisition Simona began what would later become the seigniorial entrance to the "Patio Andaluz" and the gardens of the Hotel Belmar. You can still see the Bradbury coat of arms in the upper façade.

In 1880, the Bradburys moved to Oakland. Three years later, on account of the elder Bradbury's asthma, they moved to their 2,750 acre Duarte Ranch where they built a mansion. The property value rose when the railroad tracks arrived. The Bradburys were no strangers to the railroad business: the company books shows that they had invested $30,000 in electric train service and the Oakland-Piedmont cable car. Bradbury's legal representative there was Judge John Bicknell, the same man who represented the railroad magnate Lelan Stanford, among others. The company also had plans to lay tracks through the Sierra Madre and exploit its forests in order to make up for the scarcity of urgently needed fuel to operate the mine.

When Simona lost her husband in 1892, she inherited a third of the family fortune and was named executor of the rest. The next year, Simona moved to Rosario to take over the administration of the mines. In December she was invited to a New Year's Eve party thrown by the Echeguren family for Mazatlan's pata-salada high society. In Rosario they call people from Mazatlan pata-salada, or "salty-feet." Mazatlecans return the favor by calling them chupapiedras, or "stone-suckers."

Poet Amado Nervo, writing under the pseudonym "Adan," described the Echegurens' party for the newspaper El Correo de la Tarde (January 8, 1894). "Mrs. Melchers was elegant and proper...Mrs. Bradbury was royally beautiful. She wore a silk lilac dress and a diamond-studded star on her forehead. I have seen fairies dressed as beautifully in children's stories, in the illustrations of my favorite books, in the now distant infancy..."

In 1889, Simona and her husband commissioned the construction of a building on Broadway in Los Angeles. The $125 million contract was won by the self-taught architect George Whyman. Legend has it that the building's design was inspired by a novel set in the year 2010 and that the architect consulted his dead brother with the help of the Ouiji Board. Now a historical monument, the Bradbury Building is L.A.'s oldest commercial piece of real estate. It is so spectacular that television series and movies such as "Chinatown" and "Bladerunner" have been set there. The rear of the building boasts a huge mural of the Mexican-born actor Anthony Quinn dancing "Zorba the Greek."

To honor the source of her riches, Simona used her own money to commission another building on the same block of the Bradbury Building which she named "El Tajo." Later, her daughter Minerva, married to Isaac H. Polk (President James Polk's second cousin), hired Robert D. Faraquahr, architect of the Pentagon, to build them an $85,000 home.

On August 4, 1902, the Los Angeles Daily Times informed its readers that Mrs. Bradbury was ill and was treated by Dr. Isaac Rivas who was called in from San Francisco. Months later, her condition turned worse and she traveled to Oakland, where, according to the Los Angeles Times, she died on December 12. Her remains rest next to her husband's in a crypt guarded by a gigantic angel at the entrance to the family mausoleum.

A devotee of the Virgin of the Purisima Concepcion, patron saint of Mazatlan, Simona's last wish was to build a church in the Virgin's honor. Her family fulfilled her wish and provided all the funds for the church, which was built in Monrovia, California, on land donated by the Bradburys. The Bishop of Monterey Thomas Conaty placed the first stone at June 25, 1903; the church opened in 1906. Recently, it was expanded and remodeled.

In 1910 appeared Jules Vernes's posthumous novel The Eternal Adam. It is a terrifying apocalyptic story set in El Rosario during the twenty-first century. A planet earth-ship falls uncontrollably into the ocean. The supposed narrator, deciphered by another narrator, was the owner of the El Tajo mine; his driver's last name was, curiously enough, Simonat. Clearly, the author was well informed about the owners of the mine. A school teacher named Carlota Schneider, descendent of one of the mine's co-owners, knew of a Rosario woman who corresponded with the famous French writer. According to the Revista de la UNAM, when Verne wrote The Eternal Adam, France saw its first cars roll through its streets. Oses Cole wrote that John Bradbury was the first individual to own a motor car in Sinaloa in 1900.

In the 1930s, as a form of retribution, the mining company granted a 40 x 100 meter lot "free of charge to the federal government," for the construction of a new church to replace what had been the most beautiful one in the continent north of Jalisco to where the famous golden alter piece and the exquisite stone Baroque façade were relocated. The original church collapsed on account of mining excavations in an act of entrepreneurial greed.

An old adage says that in order to own a mine, one must own another mine. The company couldn't endure the rampage of the Revolution, the economic recession of the 1920s, the sharp fall of silver value, and as if that was not enough, a hurricane that claimed the life of the mine's manager. On December 24, 1930, the board of directors approved the selling of the Belmar Hotel, the company's flagship building, to Compañia de Hoteles y Deportes, this deal marked the collapse of the Bradbury Empire.

We will continue digging into Sinaloa's history to find more on the life and work of extraordinary Sinaloan women such as Simona Martinez -Bradbury.

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Simona Martínez

Louis Leonard Bradbury

 

 

Louisa Bradbury, daughter of Simona

The daughter of Simona Martínez with her family

 

Jesus Ruy Sánchez, manager of "El Tajo" mine and his family

The Bradbury building built in 1893 in Los Angeles, California