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[[The following census information was compiled and contributed by Joyce S.
Calif Births (at) http://www.vitalsearch-ca.com/
Alvarez, Ila Mary Horr
Transcribed as Hora
Living with parents in 1920.
1920 Census: Jacumba, San Diego Co, California
Ila M. Horr, dau, age 9, bp CA
Obituary published in the San Diego Union-Tribune on 6/29/2003.
[[ALVAREZ, ILA MARY HORR 1910 to 2003 A descendent of Hezekiah Horr, who sailed from Devon, Ireland on the "Recovery" and landed at the port of Weymouth Massachusetts in 1634, Ila Mary Horr ' s grandfather, Riley Horr, started the first post office in California on the Tuollumne River. Her parents met and married at Clearlake in northern California. Ila was born in Santa Rosa in 1910, where the family lived just around the corner from famed horticulturist Luther Burbank. Ila loved plants all her life. At age two, she won the "Prettiest Baby in Santa Rosa" contest. Ila and her family moved to Dixieland in the Imperial Valley where her father, Bert Horr, homesteaded farmland. Ila ' s mother, Anna Barbara Frank Horr, found the desert heat intolerable, so in 1916 the family leased Jacumba from Titus Spreckles. Bert ' s father, Riley Horr then homesteaded Bankhead Springs, named for Senator Bankhead, promoter of the new transcontinental highway. At Bankhead, Bert built a hotel and a new home for his family. As a youngster, Ila explored surrounding mountains and collected Kumeyaay Indian artifacts near her home. She also took archaeologist Malcolm Rogers to meet Kumeyaay potter Rosa Lopez (Owas Hilmawa) and showed archaeologist Julian Hayden the rock art near Bankhead. Ila ' s extensive Kumeyaay collection is on display at the Heritage of the Americas Museum near Cuyamaca College. Ila attended one-room Clover Flats school (now the Wisteria Candy Cottage) in Manzanita (now Boulevard). Under the oaks outside the school window Ila used to see Kumeyaay women in long skirts gathering and winnowing acorns. Graduating with honors from San Diego ' s "Old Russ High School", Ila turned down an opportunity to model bathing suits and began studying art and business at San Diego State. But the following summer, at a dance in Jacumba, she met a handsome Mexican businessman, Luis Alvarez Garza. They married at Bankhead Springs on a great granite outcrop (since known to the family as the "wedding rock") in 1929 taking up residence in Calexico, where their daughter Anita was born in 1931. They then moved to the residential area of a cotton gin complex in Mexicali. Their son Luis was born in Calexico in 1941. Ila became president of the Calexico Women ' s Club, and, when the family moved north, president of the Brawley Women ' s club. In Brawley, Ila sang for radio station KROP and for the Sacred Heart Church choir. The family moved briefly to Lake Arrowhead and then to a house designed by Ila and built by Jackson and Scott in Pacific Beach. By the time Ila was widowed in 1968, she had amplified her already extensive collection of books on the Californias by purchasing the library of San Diego historian and editor Philip Rush. By then she had organized the first international meeting of the long-lived Asociacion Cultural de las Californias, an annual symposium dedicated to Baja California. First woman member of the San Diego Corral of the Westerners, in 1984 Ila won their prestigious "Old Joe" award, writing for them about mapmaker Jacobo Blanco, explorer Godfrey Sykes and astronomer Chappe D ' Auteroche. She also wrote for the Pacific Coast Archaeological Society Quarterly and for the Cabrillo Monument, serving for a time on their board of directors. Having visited much of Mexico, Ila continued traveling by plane, yacht, mule and off-road-vehicle throughout Baja California. She often camped in Baja, sometimes caravanning with other Baja enthusiasts such as Roscoe "Pappy" Hazard and Erle Stanley Gardner, always raising clouds of dust and glory as she tore along in her dune buggy. She drove the length of the peninsula twice before the road was paved. Ila loved her family fiercely, and after that she loved people, and plants. She designed and made pretty clothes and interesting jewelry and gave big parties famous for her tamale pie. In her nineties, Ila told one of her granddaughters "if you don ' t learn something new every day -- even one small thing -- you ' re wasting your time". At 93 Ila responded to a bit of new information "Huh! I learned something new today!" Ila died June 15 at Country Hills, and was buried at El Camino June 18. Ila ' s passing was marked by an affectionate gathering of her family at her graveside, drumming in Jacumba, Masses said in Mexicali and the continued loving prayers of family and friends. Published in the San Diego Union-Tribune on 6/29/2003.
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The H600 Project Genealogy DB
1910 - 2003 (93 years)