Perhaps values are inherited and what distinguished Josefa Dominga Balcarce and San Martin, Liberator’s granddaughter and his last descendant, was a final trace of the General’s ideals.
Josefa was born in Grand BourgFrance, in 1836 and died in Brunoy in 1924, without ever having set foot in Argentina, which he always considered his homeland.
daughter of Mary Janes and from Mariano Balcarce, he had only one sister (María Mercedes) who died very young. Neither of them had children and therefore, Josefa was the sole heir to the General’s estate.
He grew up in Grand Bourg, but almost all his life he was linked to Brunoy and to the residence that the Balcarces bought there, very close to Paris, to spend the summer time. Her husband was secretary of the Mexican Legation in France, his name was Fernando María de los Dolores Vicente Jacinto Ceofás Gutierrez Estrada y Gómez de la Cortina, and the fortune of her family of origin was as extensive as her own name. she.
Charities
According to the researcher Viviana Kühne, in her article “Being a woman is not an obstacle: The case of Josefa Dominga Balcarce y San Martín”, the general’s granddaughter distinguished herself throughout her life, for her vocation to help the most people in need. After the death of her husband, she decided to give more formality to her penchant for charity, creating a foundation in 1904. And two years later, the Brunoy Home for the Elderly, where she housed elderly people in need in the old family home. who needed medical care.
During the First World War, the nursing home was transformed into a field hospital. And Josefa remained in place, collaborating with the hospital both with money and with her own work. This task was recognized by the French government with the Medal of Reconnaissance and the Cross of the Legion of Honor, in 1919.
A gesture of generosity towards Argentina was to donate his grandfather’s objects to the National historical museumthen led by Adolfo Carranza, his founder. To assemble the replica of San Martín’s bedroom in Boulogne Sur Mer, which can be seen today in the Museum, Josefa made a sketch for Carranza with her own hand, indicating the disposition that the Liberator’s belongings should have had.
He also gave the city of Buenos Aires the property that had belonged to his maternal great-grandparents, the parents of Remedios, Escalada and Quintana, to install the Children’s Board there.
He died at the age of 87 in Brunoy, in the same nursing home he had created; and thinking of Argentina as the country he inherited, that distant land that his grandfather dreamed of until the last minute of his life
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