FAMILIA : RIOS

  

The RIOS families of the Marianas have a Spanish surname that means RIVERS.

In fact, the family crest in Spain looks like this. You can see the watery image of rivers is included in the design.

Just as many English family names come from places (Mr. Hill, Mr. Church, Mr. Woods), some Spanish names also come from places : Señor Palacios (palaces), Señor Torres (towers) and Señor Iglesias (churches). In English, there even are families called Rivers, which is Rios in Spanish.

GUAM ORIGINS

There were Rioses on Guam from very early on, as early as 1727.

In the 1727 Census, there are Rioses listed as soldiers in the Spanish regiment. This does not automatically mean they were born in Spain. They could have been from Mexico, South America or the Philippines but of Spanish, or part Spanish, blood. 

There was Francisco de los Rios, who married a Chamorro woman named Rosa Taihimas.  Their children at the time of the census were Basilio, Manuela, Lorenza and Manuela Josefa.

There was also Juan Antonio de los Rios, who married Josefa de la Cruz.  Their children were Francisco, Pablo, Antonio, Jose and Pascuala.

Lastly there was Miguel de los Rios, who married Marcela de la Cruz.  They had three children by 1727 : Ignacio, Maria and Teodora.

We do not know if these three men named Rios were related.

 

THE 1758 CENSUS

By the next census we have, 1758, we see how these three Rios families developed :

Antonio Cruz de los Rios, who is seen above in the 1727 census as the son of Juan Antonio and Josefa, married Maria Francisca Montufar.  They had a daughter Antonia.  They could have had more children after the census was taken.

Miguel de los Rios, shown in the earlier census, is still alive in 1758, and still married to Marcela.

Pablo Cruz de los Rios, also in the earlier census and son of Juan Antonio and Josefa, married Rosa de Leon Guerrero.  Their children were Esteban Ambrosio, Maria and Josefa Anastasia.

Besides these men, there were two women named Rios who were married.

MODERN TIMES

By the time we jump all the way to the 1897 census, we don't have large numbers of people named Rios.  One would think that, with three fathers named Rios in 1727, the name would have gotten much bigger, but it didn't. We don't know why. It could have been that people in the family died prematurely from various epidemics. It could have been that more girls were born than boys, and when the girls became women and married, the Rios surname was lost to the father's surname.

What we can say is that there seems to be only two lines of Rioses in Guam in the mid 1800s.

BENIGNO

One of the Rios clans was founded by Benigno Rios, who is sometimes named Benigno Castro Rios.

Benigno married twice. The first wife was a Filipina named Asunción (sometimes called Ascensión) Ayuban. This begs the question; how did Benigno, a man from Guam, at a time when travel between Guam and anywhere else was not so frequent, with most islanders not having the means to pay for travel, get to meet a Filipina woman? It's easier for a man to get up and go across the ocean; much harder for a woman, especially an unaccompanied woman, in those olden days.

I'm sure it will be very hard, if not impossible, to find out how they met, since documents are so unavailable. Perhaps Benigno went to Manila. That seems the more possible option. Many Chamorro youth joined the whaling ships and went all over the Pacific and beyond.

A smaller chance is that Asunción came to Guam. Perhaps she came with a family member, or working as a domestic servant to someone who came to Guam, such as a Spanish official. Again, these are all just possible reasons, but not definitive answers.

Benigno and Asunción had a handful of children.

One son was BRIGIDO AYUBAN RIOS. He married Josefa Garrido de León Guerrero, of the Sombrero clan. Josefa's parents were José and Mariana.

Their sons were José, Vicente and Enrique. Their daughters were Asunción and María.

One grandson of Brigido's, José León Guerrero Rios, the son of the older José, was one of Guam's leading educators. He was not just a teacher but administrator and vice principal in many schools both before and after the war, earning him the title of "Mr. Education." He served in these capacities for 51 years. No wonder the present José LG Rios Middle School in Piti is named after him. José was one of several promising young men sent to Stillwater, Oklahoma in 1919 for further education at the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College.

JOSÉ LG RIOS AND WIFE ANTONIA

Brigido's three sons had many children spreading the Rios last name. His two daughters also married.

One of Brigido's sisters, Dolores, married Don Vicente de la Rosa Mesa, one of the Cabeza de Barangay (neighborhood leader) in Hagåtña.  Their son Tomás Rios Mesa was sent to Manila for schooling and there he fell in love with María Lukban and they married, returning to Guam. Sometime before the war, Tomás went back to Manila to study dentistry and was away when the Japanese invaded Guam. María was abused by the Japanese and died in the Tinta Cave massacre. Tomás returned after the war and practiced dentistry.

TOMÁS RIOS MESA, WIFE MARÍA AND CHILDREN

Two siblings of Brigido, Concepción and Fulgencio, never married nor had children, but two other siblings, Rosa and Antonia did have children outside of marriage. Rosa gave up her children to adoption. Antonia moved to Saipan for a while during German times and had some children there but they seem to have moved back to Guam or died in youth.

Benigno married a second wife, Gregoria Campos de León Guerrero. They only had daughters.

Another Rios, Benigno Castro Rios, was the husband of Gregoria Campos de Leon Guerrero.  Their children were Fulgencio, Casiano, Antonia and Rosa.  But in another document, Casiano is identified as Casiano Ayuban Rios.  This leads me to suspect that Benigno had two wives.  The first was a Filipina by the last name of Ayuban, who was the mother of Brigido and Casiano, and thus also of Fulgencio, who is older than Casiano, and possibly of Antonia and Rosa.  Gregoria could have been the second wife, after the Ayuban wife died.

Then there's a Vicente Rios, married to Josefa Cepeda and their children Mariano and Maria.

So it seems that, with the exception of Vicente and his children, the other Rioses are of the Ayuban-Rios clan.

JOSE LEON GUERRERO RIOS

One descendant of the Ayuban-Rios clan was Jose Leon Guerrero Rios, son of Brigido and Josefa.  He was born in 1898 so he does not appear in the 1897 Census and probably, then, was the first child of the recently-married parents.

He got an early start in life as an educator and was sent by the pre-war Naval Government to study at Oklahoma A&M College.  He wrote articles for local publications and had a brief stint as a judge in the local courts.  He was a teacher and principal before and after the war, passing away in 1983.

For his life-long dedication to the island's schools, a Middle School was named after him in Piti.

One of his students, Judge Vicente Camacho Reyes, was my confirmation godfather and grand uncle through his marriage to my grandmother's sister Ana Perez Torres.