According to the 1920 and 1930 federal censuses, Isabel Montana's mother was named Felicitas and Isabel was one of her six children by her first marriage, which occurred in Mexico. All that is known of her first husband is that his surname was Robles. The 1930 census also lists an immigration year for Felicitas and her children as 1915.1 When the United States purchased Southern Arizona from Mexico, it drew its new border through traditional Tohono O'odham lands. However, it was still common for Tohono O'odham to cross the border without much fanfare until recent years, when border security and drug trafficking became a concern.
Felicitas married second Jose Montana and her children adopted his name. This turns out to have been a common practice even up to the middle of the twentieth century when Dr. Robert Heckenberg noted in the Papago Population Study that, “A child generally takes the surname of the family in which he resides, regardless of true paternity or the legality of the union from which he was born.”2 After Jose Montana's death, she married a man named Ramon Padilla. After 1933, Felicitas vanishes from the available records. There is no death certificate on file with the state of Arizona for her.
1 Year: 1930; Census Place: Llano, Pima, Arizona; Roll: 61; Page: 2A; Enumeration District: 73; Image: 235.0; FHL microfilm: 2339796.
2 Robert Hackenberg, Papago Population Study Research Methods and Preliminary Results, (Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona, 1961), 24.
Felicitas married second Jose Montana and her children adopted his name. This turns out to have been a common practice even up to the middle of the twentieth century when Dr. Robert Heckenberg noted in the Papago Population Study that, “A child generally takes the surname of the family in which he resides, regardless of true paternity or the legality of the union from which he was born.”2 After Jose Montana's death, she married a man named Ramon Padilla. After 1933, Felicitas vanishes from the available records. There is no death certificate on file with the state of Arizona for her.
1 Year: 1930; Census Place: Llano, Pima, Arizona; Roll: 61; Page: 2A; Enumeration District: 73; Image: 235.0; FHL microfilm: 2339796.
2 Robert Hackenberg, Papago Population Study Research Methods and Preliminary Results, (Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona, 1961), 24.