Doña Margarita Martín

The La Soledad the panel names is this ground. Margarita was a daughter of Captain Sebastián Martín, whose 1703 grant the neighboring board describes, and her will did not settle her estate quietly. In 1744 her son-in-law Carlos Fernández of Taos, speaking for her Padilla children, brought a complaint over it, and the hearing that August was held at La Soledad before her own father as executor. The accounting turned up 3,296 pesos of her dowry mortgaged by her second husband, don Bernardo Roybal, who remained guardian of their three young children.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Doña Margarita Martín c.1700-1743 Margarita Martín was born in La Soledad sometime around 1700. She married twice, first to Juan Manuel Padilla in 1721 and then to Bernardo Roybal in 1731. Her will offers a view of items found in wealthy households during the Spanish Colonial era. Margarita owned a two-story house, land, orchards, household furnishings, religious items, and personal luxury items, such as strings of pearls, slippers, shawls, linen, lace, and scarlet cloth. Notable among her possessions was a harp brought to New Mexico on an arduous journey over the Camino Real. Official Scenic Historic Marker Hispanic Women of Colonial New Mexico and their Wills 1598-1821 In Spanish Colonial New Mexico, women of all economic backgrounds had the legal right to draw up their own wills independent of their husbands. Today, these wills are important historical documents and are a record of official estate inventories, land ownership, and relationships among extended family and heirs. Wills provide insights into women's socioeconomic status and illuminate the lives of women in Spanish Colonial New Mexico.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• El Santuario de Chimayó — 9.2 mi
  A small adobe shrine on the High Road to Taos, built around 1816 over earth that pilgrims still carry away in hope of healing.
• Fuller Lodge — 22 mi
  The upright-log dining hall of a boys' ranch school, which fed and housed the Manhattan Project after the Army bought the school in 1942.
• Bandelier National Monument — 27 mi
  Rooms carved into soft volcanic tuff in Frijoles Canyon, named for a Swiss scholar who was led there in 1880 by a man from Cochiti Pueblo.
• San Francisco de Asís Church, Ranchos de Taos — 29 mi
  The adobe church at Ranchos de Taos that artists always paint from behind, kept standing by the mud its parish spreads over it every June.

More markers nearby

• Los Luceros Hacienda — steps away
• Santa Cruz de la Cañada / Santa Cruz Plaza on the Camino Real — 8.3 mi
• Cordova — 10 mi
• The St. Francis Women's Club — 14 mi