LOST SURNAMES : CORTES

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There was until about 100 years ago a Cortes family on Guam, and a branch of the Torres family to this day is known by this name.  There is a Juan Blas Cortes in the 1758 Census and he is listed among the Filipino (Pampanga) soldiers.  But he married a Chamorro, Agustina Tatmaulek.  Tatmaulek means "never good."  Maybe she should have married one of the Namauleg boys (Na'maulek means "make good.") instead.

Because there are no census records after 1758 until much later, we cannot say for certain that Juan Blas Cortes is the patriarch of the Cortes family that lived on Guam in the 1800s.

There is also in the records one Don Juan Cortes living on Guam in 1771, who is described as a Spaniard from Latin America (not Spain itself).  I know nothing more about him.  But he, too, could have settled on Guam and married a Chamorro woman and he could be the patriarch of the family, rather than Juan Blas Cortes of Pampanga.

In any event, a Cortes woman married into the Torres family and by the 1830s we have one Luis Cortes Torres.  This branch of the Torres clan became better-known-as the familian Kottes, and now you know why.

Luis married Joaquina Palomo Espinosa.  Some of their children married into the Kabesa Flores clan and became some of the first Chamorro Protestants around 1899/1900.

In Malesso', one Joaquina Espinosa Cortes, already 60 in the year 1897, was the widow of a Chinese man named Agustin Diotengco.  They had three daughters so the Diotengco name died out, but there are people in Malesso' today who are their descendants.