Daughter of Antone Lertora and Katherine Marie Covaro

Married Costantino Pasquale "Charley" Maggini 5 November 1881. By Father W.H. Mahoney in Hollister, San Benito County, California. Marriage ended with Charley's death 14 November 1906.

Known Children:
Frank "Frankie" Maggini - 9 August 1882, died age 3 months
Agostina Josephine "Josie" Maggini - 5 September 1883
Amelia R. "Minnie" Maggini - 15 February 1885
Leonora Evelyn "Midge" Maggini - 24 November 1887
Helen P. "Nell" Maggini - 7 January 1890
Florence E. "Flo" Maggini - 25 December 1893
Charles George Maggini - 9 August 1894

Married Thomas B. Young 21 April 1910. Hollister, San Benito County, Ca. Ended with his death in 8 December 1910.
No Children

Married John Braxton "Jack" Quisenberry circa 1921.
No Children

Mary had a rough beginning in life. She had to grow up very quickly in order to look after herself and then provide a stable base for her children.

Mary was born in Weaverville, California - her father a miner. She was the last of four known children who included sister Louisa and twin brothers Andrew and John. Her mother's health declined after Mary's birth and was brought to San Francisco for treatment. She died about age 30 when Mary was about 10 months old. Her father, unable to work and look after the children, placed Mary and brother Andrew in a San Francisco orphanage where she caught an eye infection that plagued her through a large part of her childhood. Seeing the conditions in the orphanage her father took her to live with him in Sacramento for some years where he worked as a carpenter - he losing his life in a fall while working on the construction of the California state capitol building.

Although orphaned, Mary was not totally on her own. She had a godfather, Stefano Daveggio, a fellow miner and friend of her father from Weaverville, who became a farmer and road house owner in Paicines Township, San Benito County and had taken in her brother Andrew. She also had a godmother, Mrs. Silvera, in Hayward. Both godparents kept track of her welfare and intervened when things looked a bit rough. She also had a maternal uncle in San Francisco.

After the death of her father she lived in San Francisco. She boarded for about 5 years with a "Spanish" woman, wife of a sea captain, who did cure her of her eye condition but also took advantage of the situation, using her as a servant, not allowing her to go to school.

She remembered traveling to Los Angeles for several months in the early 1870's with this woman and staying at the Lafayette Hotel when it was held up by the notorious California bandit, Tiburcio Vasquez.

There is a family story that she once served Vasquez her "famous enchiladas" and was tipped a $20.00 gold piece - a possibility only when she was a very young girl and possibly if she was visiting and helping out her godfather, Stefano Daveggio who ran a hotel in Aviso (San Jose) in 1870 and a few years later a road house in San Benito County.

Her older sister Louisa also lived in San Francisco and by 1880 Mary was living with Louisa in their uncle Nicola "Louie" Covaro's home 7 Jasper Place. She along with some of her Covaro relatives got employment in a pickle cannery - long before the days of child labor laws. Mary got to know many families (including the Ghirardellis), made many friends, enjoyed going out on picnics, to shows and had an active social life in San Francisco.

Her godfather Stefano Daveggio, along with ranching ran a road house in San Benito county (also served as Postmaster in Mulberry) where Mary came to stay, working at the road house around 1880. She was introduced to Charley Maggini who stopped frequently at the road house as he drove wagons back and forth to Hollister. He was quite smitten by Mary and they exchanged furtive letters. Daveggio encouraged her to marry him.

She married at age fourteen and a half to Charley who was almost twenty years her senior in the Hollister Catholic church, had lunch at the French Hotel and returned to the Daveggio place for the wedding party. On her wedding night she was so scared she "ran like the dickens", jumped in bed and slept with the Daveggio daughters as she usually did. Next day they went to Charley's ranch along with her brother where she started the life of a ranch wife, living in a remote part of San Benito county. She remembered being scared to death, a young girl married to a husband 20 years her senior, learning how to be a ranch wife and feeling very lonely as there were no people her age and only some bachelors and old male ranchers around - the nearest home a mile away. Her 1900 census return states she had 7 children, 6 surviving.

Ranch life ended with the accidental death 14 November 1906 of her husband Charley in Tres Pinos in a run-away team accident.

Mary sold the ranch and moved to Hollister where there were more people and also better educational opportunities for her children. In 1910 the household included three male lodgers, one a Thomas B Young, a divorced livery man running his own stable. Interestingly the census was taken on 21 April 1910, the date of her marriage to Thomas and had the census taker come later in the day or the next, they would have been enumerated as man and wife. This marriage was short as he died within 9 months.

In 1920, Mary is found in Hollister, twice widowed, with two male lodgers, one Jack Quisenberry, widower, who shortly thereafter became her third husband. He worked as a fruit tree grafter. She and Jack spent the rest of their lives in Hollister and died within months of each other in 1958.

Mary was also a very active midwife, helping to deliver many babies in Hollister of friends, neighbors and also her own family including grandchildren - enumerating a list of 35 babies she assisted into the world.

[Partially based on 1950 notes by daughter Leonora "Midge" who interviewed her mother about her early life and family.]