The Arizona Historical Society and the Mexican American Heritage and History Museum present Borderwomen: Matriarchal Business Networks in Territorial Tucson with Dr. Katherine Massoth, live at the Arizona History Museum!

Dr Massoth will explore the matriarchal networks that led to Federico José María Ronstadt starting a successful business in Tucson after 1882. How did his mother’s kin networks lead to Tucson? How did the gendered epistolary bonds stretching from Magdalena, Sonora to Tucson, Arizona, foster a transborder identity across generations? Unraveling these small kinship details exposes a more intricate and delicate story of maternal kinship networks and borderland entrepreneurial projects. By uncovering matriarchal networks, we find that his mother was in the background, interlacing familial and entrepreneurial webs across the newly established U.S.-Mexico border.

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