PASSING AWAY OF YOLANDA GONZALEZ WAS HISTORICAL BENCHMARK IN MORE THAN ONE WAY

By Juan Montoya
Growing up in Brownsville sometimes doesn't let us recognize that we live among some great people who have accomplished great things.
When we make a partial list of people in government who have passed through here the names of Tony Garza (former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico) , George Muñoz (CFO & Assistant Secretary from 1993 to 1997 of U.S. Treasury) , Federico Peña (mayor of Denver from 1983–1991), the late D.J. Lerma (county commissioner and county judge), Ray Ramon (former county judge), Dolph Thomae (longtime Pct. 3 commissioner), etc.,
In the arts we have people like the late author Americo Paredes, singer Chelo Silva, Chris Kristopherson, Julian Schnabel, etc, etc.,
Then, of course, you have the local families like the Zavaletas (with one T or two), the Yturrias, the Celayas, Cuetos, Crixells, Champions, Cavazos, Cortina, Salinas, Ballis etc.
If you had the good luck to have platicado with the late Yolanda Gonzalez who was the acknowledged top genealogist in the Arnulfo Oliveira Library's John Hunter Room, the mere mention of the local names would literally open files and drawers and notations in her mind. There was no name or ancestors of local residents that she didn't know. Whether the family came up through Matamoros, Reynosa, or even Monterrey, she had a handle on it.
I got to know Yolanda by accident. I knew her niece Grace Salinas and her nephew Joe (Cookie) Vasquez growing up in the barrios of Brownsville. One time when Joe and I were enrolled at the old TSC, we walked into the Hunter Room and he introduced me to someone who could answer some of my questions. It was his aunt Yolanda.
 At the time I had a question about Ignacio Zaragoza (the hero of Cinco de Mayo in Puebla) when he lived in Matamoros following the Texas Rebellion in 1836. At the time, Zaragoza's father was an officer in the Mexican garrison at Goliad, where his house still remains and is now part of a state park. I asked her if Zaragoza had lived in Matamoros and why his family would then go to Monterrey.
"Almost every early Mexican family came for Monterrey, then worked their way to the Rio Grande and settled in Reynosa, Rio Grande, Old Guerrero, Camargo or Matamoros," she said. "It was logical that when Texas took over Goliad, being in the military, the Zaragozas would make their way back to Matamoros and then on to Monterrey."
I echo Natalia Ramirez Garcia's observation that "There is no doubt the community of Brownsville who have a great interest in genealogy have lost a great treasure."
Not too many people knew this, but Yolanda was also tied into the living tree of this community. She could trace her lineage back to the man (Miguel Salinas) who owned the Ft. Brown property that Charles Stillman eventually tied up in court and drove the family to spend their money trying to reclaim their birthright. I always wondered what she felt to know that the very property where she was working could have been hers if not for the chicanery of Stillman and his fellow robber barons and cutthroats who connived to dispossess them and others of the land.
She even knew the plot where Salinas was buried at the old Santa Rosalia Cemtery behind the levee (now the Border Wall) and between the river and the Impala neighborhood off Southmost. The problem was, she said, that when the space ran out at the old cemeteries, the bodies of other family members were often stacked atop the existing graves.
When the late Johnny Balli was struggling to get recognition in the courts and in the local press that his family had been robbed of the land consisting of most of SPI, he and other Balli heirs  turned to Yolanda to compile the complex and gnarled family genealogy that would buttress their claim.
Just as she helped Ramirez-Garcia trace the roots of her ancestors, many local families also turned to her for help in finding theirs. She worked in the days before Internet date bases, when the research was done through baptism records, Mormon catalogues, and other church and local government records.
Natalia was right and we echo her sentiments.
"May the work she loved be followed up by others who loved Yolanda Z. Gonzalez, "the Genealogy Lady,” preserving histories of the original Spanish settlers and their descendants. Her dedication was fabulous to the community."