Efren Gonzales

Efren Gonzales, 1861-1908 
Blacksmith and Fireman
 
Buried in AOUW Cemetery, exact location unknown

(Photo courtesy of Tim Kovacs, Phoenix Fire Department, Historic Station #8)

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Efren Gonzales is believed to have been born July 9, 1861, in Sonora, Mexico, although he came to the United States as a youngster. He must have been literate and had a good command of English for he registered to vote in Tucson in 1886, although he did not actually become a naturalized citizen until 1890 in Phoenix.
 
On September 30, 1889, Gonzales married Aurora Maria Otero in Phoenix, Arizona. Aurora was the daughter of Jesus Leopoldo Otero and Maria Cristina Ortega. It is not known how they met, but the Oteros had been in Phoenix since about 1873.
 
The young couple had eight children at about two-year intervals, all born in Phoenix. They were Edwin (or Edward?), twins Efren William and Arthur, Aurora, Henry, Matilda, Adeline and Ernest.
 
Efren Gonzales was a mechanic and blacksmith by trade and, later in life, had a blacksmith shop on West Jefferson Street. Like numerous other tradesmen in Phoenix, he joined the volunteer Yucatec Hose Company to provide fire-fighting services for his community.
 
To support his growing family, Gonzales opened a grocery store on the northeast corner of First Street and Monroe in 1896. Said to have been a devoted father and family man, Gonzales had saved enough money by 1902 to purchase lot 6 in block 65 for $3,500 from John Kersting and his wife.
 
However, by his forties, Gonzales’s health had been compromised by a lifetime of blacksmithing and heavy manual labor. He retired in 1908 and died just two months later on October 26 of endocarditis. His funeral was conducted under the auspices of the AOUW, the Spanish Alliance, and the Phoenix Fire Department, and he was buried in the local AOUW cemetery. No grave marker has survived.
 
To support her eight children who ranged in age from 18 to 6, Aurora moved her family to San Francisco, where her mother had bought them a large house in San Francisco’s Richmond District.
 
While in San Francisco, the three oldest Gonzales boys experimented with flying gliders. Having worked in their father’s blacksmith shop, they knew all about gears and welding so they constructed their own gliders, which they flew on the sandy dunes behind their grandmother’s house. Their careers as aspiring aeronauts were interrupted by World War I, though, when Edwin enlisted in the U. S. military. After the war ended, the boys moved to Los Angeles, married, and went into other occupations.
 
© 2026 by Donna L. Carr. Last revised 17 September 2026.

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