Emiteria “Matie” Martinez Robinson Viles
Around Las Vegas, New Mexico, Matie Viles is a well-known name because of the Viles Foundation, the scholarship fund she started in 1959 to help high school graduates pursue higher education. Widowed in 1950, she and her husband had owned and operated the Mountain...Florinda Naranjo Ortiz
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, traveling circus acts and vaudeville-style road shows called revistas brought fun and entertainment to families throughout New Mexico, especially rural areas. Many were owned and operated by families with roots in...
Yetta Kohn
Foreign-born, Jewish, and a single mother, Yetta Kohn succeeded on the frontier at a time when life was perilous, becoming matriarch, rancher, and entrepreneur over the course of her lifetime and establishing a foundation for her family’s ongoing success and security....
Women of the Santa Fe Trail
When women began crossing the plains of the United States on the Santa Fe Trail to the newly acquired U. S. Territory of New Mexico, they brought new sensibilities and priorities. Through activities as wide ranging as raising families, teaching music and literature,...
Sarah “Sally” Rooke
There is no greater an act of self-sacrifice and bravery than giving up your own life to save others. This is what Sarah J. “Sally” Rooke did around midnight on August 27, 1908, in the northeastern New Mexican town of Folsom. In 1905, Sally Rooke moved to Folsom after...
Monica Fuentes Gallegos and Carlota Fuentes Gallegos
Monica and Carlota Fuentes were sisters who married the Gallegos brothers, Francisco and Emeterio, on the same day, November 27, 1872. The two brothers recruited and led a group of settlers to a place then called Rincon, Colorado, that later became known as Gallegos,...
Dr. Meta L. Christy
Dr. Meta Loretta Christy broke many barriers for her race and gender. She was the first black graduate of the Philadelphia College of Osteopathy, the first black osteopath in the United States, and one of the first osteopaths in the world, perhaps the first. One of...
Mela Lucero Leger
Born Manuelita de Atocha Romero (Mela) in Villanueva, New Mexico, Mela spent her formative years with her grandparents in Colonia, New Mexico. By the time she was four years old she could read Spanish, which she did by reading newspapers to her blind grandfather. She...