The Widowed Women of Santa Fe: Assessments on the Lives of an Unmarried Population

Gonzalez, Deena J. The Widowed Women of Santa Fe: Assessments on the Lives of an Unmarried Population. Scadron, A. (Ed.) (1988) On Their Own: Widows and Widowhood in the American Southwest 1848-1939. Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press.

This essay examines the lives of Spanish-Mexican Widows living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, between 1850 and 1880. The terms widow and widowhood can be misleading, however, and require qualification. For some groups of southwestern women a more apt description would be “unmarried,” a category that included not only widows but also the far larger community of women who were divorced, separated, or deserted. Placing Santa Fe’s widows under the broader category of unmarried women reflects accurately their lives and makes possible the use of material from the censuses that did not enumerate widows separately.