Rose Marie Taaffe's interview is one of the earliest oral histories preserved at Los Altos History House, and is dated January, 1949. Her history is somewhat the history of early California, particularly of San Jose and Los Altos Hills. She died later that year.
At the age of 81, Mrs. Rose Marie Taaffe, of Los Altos Hills, packed her bags and boarded a train for Texas. She visited with her daughters for a few days, then took a plane to Mexico to visit her sister, Fredericka.
"I have always led a very active life, and I look forward to 10 or 15 more years of activity," she said just before she left. "I need those 10 or 15 years to complete my work. I am collecting and correlating my family history. I'm confident, with God's will, that I shall be able to finish. I've bought a typewriter and learned to type, in order to prepare my history ... or rather the history of my family."
While Mrs. Taaffe was speaking, she gently rolled the rosary beads between her fingers that had once belonged to her great-grandmother, Maria Dolores Castro, sister of General Jose Castro. Maria married Dionisio Bernal, who, with several brothers and his 90-year-old father, made the long trek to California with De Anza. To that marriage was born an infant girl, who on Jan. 24, 1820, was baptized Maria Timatea de Jesus Bernal by Father Magin Catala, in Santa Clara Mission Church. This child was the grandmother of Rose Marie Taaffe. When Maria was 25 years old, she married George J. Bellomy, a native of Virginia.
Bellomy was a patriotic American and more than anything else, he wanted the child his wife was soon to bear to be born under the jurisdiction of the American flag. When the word came in by relay from Monterey saying the flag had just been raised there, Bellomy hurried to raise Old Glory over his business at the corner of The Alameda and Bellomy Street in Santa Clara. As the flag was half way up the mast, came the joyous news that a daughter had just been born to his wife. The child was called Americana Anna.
She was also known as Fermina Rose Bellomy, but the name Americana Anna stayed with her throughout her life, and she was married and buried under the two names.
In 1863, Americana Anna married Charles E. Hoffman, a native of Germany, who was, Mrs. Taaffe said, the superintendent of the Alameda quicksilver mine, where he had installed modern mining machinery. The marriage was blessed with nine children and one of the daughters was Rose Marie.
- Adapted by Donna Shoemaker of the Los Altos History House