The Wilson Line
The Wilsons trace their roots to County Cork, Ireland, where George Michael Wilson was born in 1908 to a family of modest farmers. The land was hard and the years following the Great War harder still. In the spring of 1931, George boarded a steam liner at Cobh harbour with little more than a wool coat and the address of a distant cousin in New York.
He found work on the docks, then in construction, and eventually saved enough to send for Agnes Doyle, the schoolteacher's daughter he had left behind. They married in 1934 and settled in a narrow row house in Queens before the promise of steadier work drew them south and west.
"We didn't come here to be Irish. We came here to be American — and to give the children something better than we had."
— Agnes Wilson, as recalled by Thomas WilsonReplace this placeholder text with your own Wilson family history. Add the real towns, dates, occupations, and stories that you've gathered from family records, oral histories, and archive research.
The Valero Line
The Valero story begins in Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco, where Ernesto Valero was born in 1910 into a family of craftsmen and market traders. Mexico in those years was a place of upheaval — the Revolution had scarred a generation, and the decades that followed brought little stability for those without land or connection.
Ernesto crossed into Texas in 1938, following rumors of work in the agricultural valleys near San Antonio. He carried his trade — woodworking — and the memory of Consuelo Reyes, whom he had left in Guadalajara with a promise and a ring. She arrived six months later. They were married in a small church in San Antonio in 1939.
Replace this section with your real Valero family history. Document the places, the journeys, the trades, and the people who shaped this side of the family.
Two Families Meet
Thomas Wilson and Elena Valero met in the summer of 1961 at a neighbourhood dance in San Antonio. He was twenty-three, recently returned from service, and working at the post office. She was nineteen, training to be a nurse, and had never met an Irishman before.
Their courtship lasted two years, through the cautious introductions of two very different families — an Irish-Catholic household that kept its silences, and a Mexican-American one that settled everything loudly over dinner. They were married in the spring of 1963, and with them the Wilson and Valero lines became one.
Building a Life
Add the story of how Thomas and Elena built their life together here — the house they bought, the children they raised, the careers, the struggles, the traditions that mixed Irish and Mexican heritage into something new and entirely their own.
This is the heart of the archive — the living memory of the family. Fill it with the stories only your family knows.
Our Legacy
Write about what the Wilson-Valero family means today — the values passed down, the traditions kept, the places that still feel like home. What do you want the next generation to know?
This archive exists so those stories are never lost.