Will Joan Lemon ever be more than a footnote to my historical fiction?
She was born in Cuba in 1809. Her father Diego Limón Ruiz was Spanish and her mother María Conchita Robles was a free Black Indian woman of the Taino nation. They lived a modestly comfortable life in a suburb of Havana. Juanita went to a high school for girls run by nuns in Havana, where she studied English. But Juanita's dad died when she was fifteen, and her mom died when she was eighteen, and then she was left to make her own way alone in the world. So she converted her inheritance into Spanish gold doubloons, packed them into a trunk, and took ship for Philadelphia. Once there, she intended to set up in business. But she was given the advice to go West. So she went as far west as Cambria County, Pennsylvania, where she opened a tavern and attended St. Michael's Catholic Church in Loretto. When she immigrated to the United States, she changed her name to Joan Lemon. It was in Loretto that she met a shy young man named John McGuire, the seventh child and the fourth son of Patience McGuire, and elder brother to my ancestor Ann McGuire McDermitt. Juanita, now Joan, married John and became Patience's daughter in law and Ann's sister in law. She was aunt to Ann's daughter Bridget McDermitt, my ancestor.