The Lobo Family of Misión Vieja

It was uncommon for Spanish and Mexican-era land grants in California to be made to women, but it did happen in the case of Rancho La Merced, granted by Governor Manuel Michetorena to María Casilda Soto de Lobo in 1844.  Señora Lobo was born in Los Angeles in 1799 to Guillermo Soto (1751-1819), a solider with the Spanish army who had just arrived in the pueblo the previous year with his wife, Juana María Pérez (1772-1832).  A major arterial roadway, Soto Street, in Boyle Heights and surrounding areas is named for this family.

By 1820, Casilda married José Cecilio Villalobo (a.k.a. Lobo), who was born in 1785 in Los Angeles to Maria Beltran (1756-1792) and Juan José Villalobo (1741-1792), with Juan José being among the soldiers recruited to accompany the original 44 pobladores from Mexico to the newly-created village of Los Angeles in 1781.  The family, including seven children, appeared in the first census taken of the community in 1790 (there were only 31 families in Los Angeles then,) at which time Juan José had retired from the military and was working as a muleteer, but both of Cecilio's parents died soon after.

Cecilio and Casilda had at least eight children, of whom only a few survived childhood and had their own families.  Among them were Juan José, Jr. (1816-1854), who married Saturnina Féliz in 1836.  Saturnina came from another early Los Angeles family, whose patriarch was her grandfather José Vicente (1740-1809).   He came to Spanish Alta California with the famous Anza Expedition of 1775 and then was, like Juan José Villalobo, an escort for the founders of Los Angeles.  Their shared connection might explain why their children married.  Vicente Féliz was a chief administrator in Los Angeles during the 1780s and 1790s before he retired from military service and received a land grant called Rancho Los Féliz, now largely comprised of the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles and Griffith Park.

Another son, José (born in 1820) married María Dolores Verdugo, whose family owned the Rancho Verdugo in the present-day Glendale area.  Finally, there was Felipe Santiago (1821-1850), whose wife was María Presentación Alvitre, of the family profiled on this blog's most recent post.  Her parents were José Claudio Alvitre (1811-1861) and Maria de la Asunción Valenzuela (1808-1861) and her grandparents were Sebastian Alvitre and María Rufina Hernández.  Because Sebastian Alvitre and Juan José Villalobos, grandathers of Felipe and Presentación, were from the same hometown, Villa de Sinaloa in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, this might explain how they became married.

This ca. 1920s aerial photograph looks down on the Old Mission community.  The Rio Hondo flows from the top center to the lower left.  At an angle at the center and going to the lower right is "Temple Road," now San Gabriel Boulevard, leading to Siphon Road with Durfee extending north and east.  San Gabriel Boulevard leaves the Rio Hondo at the center and curved upward towards the top.  What was called "Valley Road" and is now Rosemead Boulevard comes up from the bottom center and ends at San Gabriel Boulevard.  Lincoln Boulevard heads south from San Gabriel Boulevard along the base of the Montebello Hills and the Soto-Sanchez Adobe, then owned by oil magnate W. B. Scott, is towards the lower left corner, just to the right of a dark spot. Most of the left half of the photo consists of the Montebello oil field and is largely within Rancho La Merced.  To the upper right across the Rio Hondo is the roughly 90-acre Rancho Potrero Chico and then east of that much of Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo.  At the extreme lower right is a section of Rancho Paso de Bartolo.  Click the map to see it in a different window and in a larger view.

The connection to Rancho La Merced also could be tied to the Alvitres, because Sebastian moved out to what was then called the Rancho Nieto, a vast land grant given to the family of that name in the 1780s (in fact, the Nieto and Verdugo rancho were among the first three land grants when they were issued in 1784) after some troublesome stays at the pueblos of San Jose and Los Angeles.

After Cecilio Villalobo died around 1836, perhaps not long after he and his family were counted the first Los Angeles district census, it might be that his widow and children moved out to Misión Vieja.  Notably, although one of the sons, Juan José was enumerated in the 1844 census as living in "Angeles" with wife Saturnina and their children, none of the other family was to be found.

This was striking because it was that same year that the grant of La Merced to Casilda Soto de Lobo was made.  As noted in the post on that rancho, Casilda and her family built an adobe house that forms one part of today's Sanchez Adobe historic site in Montebello and occupied it and the ranch for about five years.

Things changed rapidly, however, when Casilda borrowed a little over $2,000 from one of her neighbors, William Workman, co-owner of the Rancho La Puente east of La Merced.  The loan entailed interest, which was common enough in Workman's experience, but not likely in that of Señora Soto's.  At any rate, she was unable to repay the loan and, at the end of 1850, Workman took possession of the ranch, which had been used as collateral.

Interestingly, California, seized by force from Mexico by the United States in 1847, had just been admitted as the 31st state in September and a census was quickly organized and conducted early in 1851.  When the census taker came through Old Mission he found Casilda living with her son Juan and daughter-in-law Dolores Verdugo and their two children, as well as with son Felipe Santiago and his wife Presentación Alvitre.  The adjacent household consisted of her son Juan José, who notably was listed as Villalobo, his wife Saturnina Feliz and their four children.

Tragedy struck within a few years as Doña Casilda and two of her sons, Juan José and Felipe Santiago died in the early 1850s.  When the 1860 federal census was conducted, the latter's widow Saturnina was still at Misión Vieja with four children, ranging from three to ten years old.  Moreover, nearby was Dolores Verdugo with her five children, who were three months to twelve years old, though for an unknown reason, her husband Juan Lobo was not counted.

At some point afterward, the Lobo family left Misión Vieja.  Juan José and Saturnina's son, Felipe, left for San Juan Capistrano where he lived for several decades, married Marcelina Gutierrez and had a family.  Presentación Alvitre de Lobo headed east and settled in what later became the Walnut/Pomona area, close to what was the settlement of Spadra, about where the 57 Freeway and Valley Boulevard come together at Cal Poly Pomona.

Eventually, other members of the family made the Pomona area their home, as well, including her daughters Inocencia and Magdalena and sons Felipe, Jesús, Porfirio and Pablo, some of whom lived for a time at the city and county limits near Reservoir Street close to Chino.  Jesús, whose wife María Francisca Fraijo came from a family that owned where Irwindale later developed, lived for a time in downtown Chino, his mother Presentación also being in their household in 1900, before relocating to south Pomona.  Pablo was, for a while, an employee on the Diamond Bar Ranch, which was created in 1918, and he was one of a about a dozen workers there when the census was taken two years later.  By 1930, he was living with his mother on Hamilton near White in south Pomona and close to Jesús.

Unlike the Alvitres and other families, as will be discussed in subsequent posts, the Lobos did not live particularly long at Misión Vieja, living there for perhaps a couple of decades or somewhat more.  But, because of the fact that Rancho La Merced was granted to Doña Casilda, they should be remembered as among the community's earliest and nost notable residents.

UPDATE, 11 December 2014.  Thanks to a question on another post from this blog, it has been learned that Juan (or perhaps his brother Santiago) Lobo may be one of the Californio heroes in the Battle of San Pascual, which took place near San Diego at the end of 1846 during the American invasion of California in the Mexican-American War.

According to Richard Griswold del Castillo's 2003 article in The Journal of San Diego History, "one Californio solider recalled that Juan Lobo, a twenty-three year old vaquero from Mission Vieja, led the main Californio assault on Kearny's forces."  The footnote for part of the article cites a 1973 University of San Diego master's thesis and a manuscript in the papers of Benjamin Hayes, a longtime Los Angeles County District Court judge and later a San Diego resident.

Yet, the thesis, written by Sally Cavell Jones, lists the soldiers who fought under General Andrés Pico at San Pascual and the name on the list is "Santiago Lobo," not Juan.  Juan did have a younger brother, Santiago, whose age in the 1850 federal census (actually, taken in early 1851), was given as 21.  If this is true, Santiago would only have been 16 or 17 years old at the time of the battle.

In any case, there may not be any further available information, but this does raise intriguing questions about whether members of the Lobo family of Misión Vieja were heroes of the Californio  resistance against the American invaders during this highly-controversial war, the first of American imperialism.

Contribution by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Assistant Director, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.