María Josepha Sophia de Iturbide

María Josepha Sophia de Iturbide (29 February 1872 – 14 February 1949)

Maria Josepha was born at Mikosdpuszta, Austria-Hungary, on 29 February 1872. She was the only child of Prince Salvador de Iturbide and Baroness Gizella Maria Terezia Mikos de Tarrõdhàza. Her father was a grandson of Agustin de Iturbide, royalist military commander turned Mexican insurgent for independence, who was elected emperor of Mexico in 1822 and forced to abdicate. Returning to Mexico after being forced into exile, Iturbide was shot, leaving a widow and children. Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico and his consort, Princess Charlotte of Belgium, unable to have children themselves, adopted the ill-fated emperor's grandson during their short-lived rule of the Second Mexican Empire.

After her father's death in 1895, her mother married again, to Count Emil von Jenison-Walworth in 1900.^[1]

Republican Mexican liberals had captured and executed Emperor Maximilian in 1867 and conservative, monarchist ideas had been repudiated. Under President Porfirio Díaz, a liberal army general who had fought against the French invasion, diplomatic relations between Mexico and Austria were resumed. The Mexican Revolution (1910–20) had repudiated the long rule of liberal autocratic President Díaz (1876-1910).

Some secondary sources have attributed descendants to Maria Josefa de Iturbide y Mikos; however, such claims are not supported by primary historical documentation.