The Aniotzbehere Family in California

We have no information about their trip to America, nor about their life in California. The only text we have is an article found in a Basque newspaper from Los Angeles in 1894. It is a Bertsu written by Juan Gordo published in thr "Euskal Herria" by JP Goytino settled at 330 New High Street in Los Angeles.

THE MISERIES OF CALIFORNIA 1. It is the year one thousand nine hundred and ninety four I was told to compose a few stanzas right away I will identify the name of the subject for it is pitiful what is hapenning in this case. 2. In these past twenty-five years I have been living in California and I have yet to see another year like that Bettiri Sants has become our boss everywhere whenever I can I am running away from him. 3. In March I began running after my sheep because I could see that things were not going right it had been a while that I was not getting out of the ranch but the present year I was forced to do so. 4. The place where my sheep graze is called Rancho Gabilan (Sparrohawk Ranch) getting around in the surrounding mountains is not easy task there is plenty of water in all the creeks if I want to drink it but I cannot say that I suffer from thirst. 5. My brother Juan Flaco has been on Santa Cruz mountains wanting to rent pasture by those places I heard they asked him for eleven hundred pesos for seven hundred acres only if he was to pay for it in gold. 6. He thought it over and decided to head for the Sierra Nevada since he was forced to take some action if he had remained where he was, alas, it would have been his loss later he figured well his situation. 7. I saw my accomplice Domingo Amestoy in Salinas he was among his sheep and thinking he was feeling happy because business was going well too bad such a year has come upon us all of the sudden. 8. He told me that he was headed toward Sacramento to become acquainted with the area, taking his stock along in case someone might offer to buy the sheep that he would try to sell at a good price. 9. The sheepherder's life now-a-days is pitiful they cannot make any money not even to cover their costs I hope that there won't be another year like this one God in Heaven will take pity on us. 10. The farmers, too, if they had enough seed to sow they might have some hope to make some profit somewhere many do not have pasture nor seed for the following year so they can continue farming. 11. In my ranch I had a thousand acres sown after I made a deal with my sowers but fate was cruel for all of us thus we are all stuck half broke. 12. Mister Bettiri Sants has become a powerful fellow for that reason we must show him the respect he deserves but if he was stuck inside a sack I could find a place to put it. 13. These verses were composed regarding the miserable life to tell you that we live in the area of Monterey and that people lately are pretty depressed I wish I knew what wil happen at the end. 14. The author of these stanzas is Juan Gordo, native of Sara still one must try to make a fortune in California if the future holds no better years than the present he will remain like before. Juan H. Aniotzbehere San Lucas (Monterey) On the 23rd of June of 1894.

Verses may be signed for Bettiri Sants, a probably personification of starvation in Basque folklore. The text was written on June 23rd, John's day. Maybe Basque used to meet around a fire in the Monterey region, where Juan Gordo wrote thos verses...

The three brothers stayed in the region called Paris Valley, close to San Francisco. In the "Monterey County Places, Names, Geographical Dictionary", by Donald Thomas Clark, one can read that:

"Paris Valley. This valley is situated about 2 miles west of San Ardo. Named because of the presence, in the late 1850s of many families of French descendants with names of Aniotzbehere (Ansberry), Aurignac, Balad, Boneau...Or as one reporter wrote in 1894, "Paris Valley...was named in honor of a thrifty colony of French who settled there about 20 years ago on what was the government land."

The first lines about the propertie date back 1890. they are :

In 1927 Gary Cooper is acting in The Last Outlaw, by LLoyd Sheldon. The movie take place in the family property and Adrian acts in several scenes.
Here are two pictures, one signed by Gary Cooper and Betty Jewel the other with Adrian and Paul Parker, Elvira's husband.

Jack Luden, Betty Jewel, Gary Cooper, Paul Parker (standing up)	Adrian, Gary Cooper, ?, Paul Parker, Betty Jewel, Jack Luden, cameraman

The census of San Ardo in 1896 give us this information :
- Aniotzbehere, John H. (farmer), born in France, naturalized December 21, 1886 by the Supreme Court of Monterey County. Date of record : May 4, 1896.
It seems that Juan Gordo was naturalized several years after he entered the USA. His first child Elvide Marie-Therese born on October 15, 1880 prove he was there before that date.

An article printed in the San Francisco Chronicle on August 2, 1903 told of the death of Juan Gordo. "Juan H. Aniotzbehere (his real first name was Jean-Henri) of Paris Valley familiarly known as Juan Gorda, a prominent rancher and one of the largest sheep owners of Monterey county [...]."

Around 1930 the Aniotzbehere's name changed into Ansberry for a branch of the family. Adrian and Julius, sons of Juan Gordo and Marie Uhalde, did that change to simplify the name as both were in business affairs, Adrian as Director of the Bank of America in King City and Julius in the insurance business in Salinas.

"...My grand-father, Dr. O'Bannon, owned a dairy farm on the corner of McCloskey and Fair View Road. Since he was a doctor, the dairy farm was mostly a hobby or an investment. He would have hired someone to manage the dairy farm for him then that is when your family (William Ramoni and Virginia Aniotzbehere, 04-22-1884) came to the farm and took care of it and occupied it..."

And here is another extract from a second letter in which we spoke of life in Hollister, a small town in California.

"We had lots of Basques. I had never really thought about them being "French" because we spoke Basque. Of course many people came into California that were ranchers and shepherds and many more became land owners. One family in Hollister, the Etcheverry, made their wealth and were influential land owners by the beginning of the twentieth century.

Hollister was largely a town for ranchers and their flocks, dairy farmers, and hay growing. The "Lathrop Warehouse" was a huge building that served the hay industry. The hay was many times shipped to the east. It was very high quality and served as good nutrition for race horses in Kentucky.

Hollister was small in the 1940's the population was only 3000 inhabitants in the city and perhaps 10,000 people in the surrounding areas. Almost the whole community worked on farms and ranches. We never had ranches for sheep in the San Benito county. The Basques worked mostly in the dairy farms and the ranches.

Meanwhile, Los Banos, which was a little less than eighty kilometers to the east of Hollister was the area for sheep. There was always a Basque restaurant down there that would host the Basque shepherds. It is now a tourist attraction.

Hollister is extremely fertile and the pastures for hay were progressively replaced by orchards and apricot trees. That was a very profitable business for many years, and now those apricot trees have been replaced by tomato plants and other popular things.

...The first of the inhabitants were Mexicans, Basques, Portuguese, Italians, and Native Americans. Many Basques in California lived in the San Joaquin valley. It was a region of orchards at the beginning of the century. The valley is very large, stretching from Sacramento to Bakersfield, around the measure of 500 kilometers. Los Banos is in the San Joaquin valley, Hollister is closer to the coast. When my grand parents were still alive, they rented out a house in Capitola (a small coastal city in Monterey Bay) during the summer. In that time, no one went farther than that for their vacations...."

On the 29th of August, 1989 there was a monument inauguration the, Monument to the Basque Sheepherders, in Reno. It was raised on a site that was comparable to that of most shepherds; desert-like, with a hostile shining sun, and also a blizzard of snow.

Each Basque-American family is not only a one or two generation family that traversed America by train with only a small amount of money in their pocket and a sign around their neck designating their destination in English so that the train conductor could tell them to get off the train, or to keep going. Brothers followed brothers, cousins in line after cousins across the vast prairies of the Grand Basin where the Basques had created their own herd of animals, one sheep at a time.

With their flocks, they were able to acquire large, prosperous farms, and in certain cases they were able to enrich the local economy. Many Basque women also came to the United States to find work on farms or in restaurants and hopefully to marry a successful Basque shepherd.