The Sánchez Family of Misión Vieja

Juan Matias Sánchez was born in New Mexico in 1808 to Juan Cristobal Sanchez and Maria Margarita Silva.  Little is known of his life there, but, in his late thirties, he migrated via the Old Spanish Trail to the Los Angeles area, perhaps in a caravan in 1846 or 1847.  The earliest documentation of him in this region was his registration for a cattle brand, dated 20 September 1847.

Where he was keeping his cattle is not known, but it is likely it was on the Rancho La Puente, co-owned by John Rowland and William Workman, who had come from Taos, New Mexico in late 1841 and undoubtedly knew Sánchez well there. 

It may be that Sánchez moved to this area to take up work with Workman, because, in the 1850 federal census, which was actually taken early in 1851 because California statehood was not decided until September 1850, Sánchez was counted in Workman's household and his occupation given as "overseer." 

Juan Matias Sánchez (1808-1885), co-owner of the ranchos La Merced and Potrero Grande in the Misión Vieja area.  Photo supplied by Tim Miguel.

In other words, Sánchez was the majordomo, or foreman, for Workman's cattle, horses and other animals on the latter's enormous 24,000-plus half of La Puente.  This was a job requiring considerable skill in managing the vaqueros tending the animals and arranging for the shipment of stock to the newly-discovered gold fields in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, some 250 miles to the north.


In fact, Sánchez departed for the gold fields in 1849 to seek his fortune there, but apparently returned quickly realizing that the effort was not as productive as taking cattle there to supply the growing masses of miners and others who were flocking to California during the rush.

However, it is possible Sánchez did well in the fields, because in September 1850 he loaned his employer, Workman, 211 1/2 ounces of gold, which would have been worth several thousand dollars, a fortune for the time. 

The surviving receipt, dated 26 September, simply states that Workman declared himself "to be in debt to Don Juan Matias Sanchez the amount of 211 1/2 ounces in gold -- in troy weight, which amount I promise and oblige to give to the aforementioned Sanchez to his order the day he asks for it.  In February 1852, Sánchez acknowledged the receipt of 1500 pesos in silver, with another 500 paid up a little over a year later. 

When Casilda Soto de Lobo, grantee in October 1844 of Rancho La Merced in the Old Mission area, gave Workman 825 pesos as payment for a debt, Workman forwarded that amount to Sánchez--this also being in March 1853.

The reason this latter transaction is significant is because Señora Soto de Lobo borrowed $1225 from Workman in December 1850 and was obligated to return the money by early April 1851.  In lieu of this, Workman was given the option of buying the 2,363-acre rancho outright for $2,500.  On 30 April 1851, he exercised that option.  Shortly afterward, Workman's daughter Margarita and her husband, F.P.F. Temple, moved onto the ranch and built an adobe.

On 15 September 1852, Workman executed a deed transferring the La Merced ranch to F.P.F. Temple and Sánchez, so the transfer six months later to Sánchez of the 825 pesos paid over by Señora Soto de Lobo to Workman follows the trail, it appears, of that original loan by Sánchez to Workman.

Casilda Soto de Lobo built, probably in the summer of 1845, for herself and her children an adobe on a bluff at the base of the Montebello Hills facing east towards the Rio Hondo, the original channel of the San Gabriel River.  Shortly after she lost the ranch and Sánchez was given a half-interest in it, he moved into the adobe. 

Oddly, one of the Lobo sons, Juan, who had received his own cattle brand in 1846 for use at La Merced, went to the gold fields in 1849 and got himself into some trouble.  At Sonora, in what became Tuolumne County in the "southern mines," Juan Lobo executed a contract with a Charles Van Winel in which he borrowed $1,000 on promise of repayment and, in lieu of the latter, he promised the La Merced ranch.  In April 1851, Van Winel executed a foreclosure action in Los Angeles and, when it was revealed that Juan Lobo had no legal right to mortgage any property, he was thrown in jail and Van Winel had no legal recourse to recover his money.

Meantime, Sánchez began a common-law marriage with Maria Luisa Archuleta, a native of New Mexico, whose first husband Rafael Martinez, a brother of John Rowland's wife Encarnación, had disappeared during the Gold Rush when he'd left the area to search for gold and was never heard from again.  Luisa had three children with Martinez: Albino David, María del Refugio, and José.  The common-law relationship may have been because of the uncertainty of what had happened to Rafael Martinez.

Photo supplied by Tim Poyorena-Miguel.

In any case, Sánchez and Luisa Archuleta settled in the Soto adobe at La Merced and expanded it with a perpendicular wing--necessary because of the growing family that included her Martinez children and the five who were born to them between 1856 and 1867.  These included Tomás, Francisco, Luz, Juan Cristobal, and Julián.  Luisa died in 1873, not long after she and Sanchez had an official church marriage, which took place on 10 February 1872.

Notably, the four sons shared the same names as the first four sons of F.P.F. and Margarita Temple and the five Sánchez children were sponsored at baptism by William Workman, his wife Nicolasa, the Temples, and their two oldest sons, Thomas and Francis (that is, Tomás and Francisco.)  This represents the closeness the Sánchez, Temple and Workman families had as compadres and neighbors.

Sánchez added to his landholdings in October 1852 when he was granted all of Rancho Potrero Grande, excepting 172 acres previously sold, by its original grantee Manuel Antonio Pérez.  This property, which was north of La Merced, amounted to over 4,000 acres, though the deed was, for an unknown reason, not executed with the county until March 1878.

Sánchez quickly mortgaged his section of the Potrero Grande to Andrés Pico, brother of ex-governor Pío Pico and a hero of the Californio resistance to the American invasion of 1846-47, for $6,300 in October 1853.  The loan was due in May 1854 and repaid in full, perhaps with proceeds from the annual sale of cattle in the gold fields.  In March 1857, Sánchez sold 1/4 interests to his compadres Workman and Temple for $1,500 each, so that he retained a 1/2 stake in the ranch.

In 1863, Sánchez, Temple and Workman acquired a majority of the small Rancho Potrero Chico, which only totaled about 80 acres near the original site of Mission San Gabriel and adjacent to La Merced and Potrero Grande.  With these dealings, Sánchez eventually had a portfolio of well over 3,000 acres, a substantial estate for the period.

In the 1860 census, the first of two that recorded self-reported values for real estate and personal property, Sánchez claimed that he had $8,000 of each—this during an economic downturn brought about by the end of the Gold Rush and a national depression and then followed by flooding and drought that decimated the cattle industry.  A decade later, as matters improved significantly in the economic arena, Sánchez reported $30,000 in real estate and $15,000 in personal property.  It can be added that Sánchez was one of the largest wool producers in Los Angeles County—in 1862, he was twelfth on a list with nearly 5,000 pounds produced the previous year, but this was before the drought took full effect.

During the ups-and-downs of the Gold Rush, floods and droughts, the Civil War and other conditions of the 1850s and 1860s was the long quagmire involved in the land claims for California ranches secured under Spanish and Mexican rule.

Although the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was drafted in early 1848 to include an article preserving Spanish and Mexican era land grants, the U.S. Congress voted to remove that provision in approving the treaty.  Then, with the onset of the Gold Rush and a mass of migrants seeking gold and then land, disputes arose over those grants.

Consequently, Congress passed an act in March 1851, appointing a commission to hold hearings at which land grant holders were to present their grants, maps and witness testimony after which the commission would make a ruling.  Of the over 800 grants presented to the commission, over two-thirds were approved. 
The legislation, however, included a provision for either side (the government or the grantee) to appeal the commission ruling to a federal district court, with further appeals available to the United States Supreme Court.  Although the commission did its work quickly, claims in the courts dragged on so that the average claim took seventeen years to complete.

For Sánchez, there were two claims to make: for Rancho Potrero Grande and for Rancho La Merced.  The first was a breeze, as the commission quickly rendered its decision in his favor and the district court followed suit.  In 1859, seven years after filing his claim, the patent arrived from Washington, making Sánchez (and Temple and Workman, who owned half of the ranch after 1857) one of the earliest of the patent holders in the region.  La Merced was a different story, however.  The claim took over twenty years to be reconciled, with the patent not being issued until 1872.

Having a patent, however, was hardly a guarantee that ownership of a large ranch would be trouble-free.  In the early 1850s, several groups of settlers from the southern states migrated to the area and established communities like Savannah (a corruption of the native Gabrieleño name of Sivag-na), Lexington and El Monte.  In some cases, these new arrivals established farms on ranchos from the Mexican era and were labeled squatters by the owners of these ranches.

Potrero Grande turned out to be a flashpoint for the squatting problem.  Sánchez, Temple and Workman filed suit in the local district court to evict several dozen people who had taken up residence on the ranch.  In 1859, the year the land patent was received, the court ruled for the three men and against the squatters.  It was one thing, however, to get a judgment from the court and quite another to execute it and it is not yet known what happened in the aftermath of the case.

In 1874, however, another ejectment suit by Sánchez and F. P. F. Temple (William Workman deeded over his quarter interest to his daughter, Temple's wife, in 1862) was filed against several families who had also squatted on Potrero Grande.  It quickly became known that at least a few of them, including the Penfolds and the Newmans, were not going to yield their land without a fight.  In mid-January, Sheriff William R. Rowland and his deputies rode out from Los Angeles to serve a writ upon Bernard Newman, but were fired upon with one deputy, Pete Gabriel, being severely wounded.  Newman was arrested and tried in court and that event will be covered here in a later post.

Whether or not the land dispute of 1874 was fully resolved in the favor of Sánchez and Temple, another much greater challenge was just around the corner.

The late 1860s and early 1870s was a period of unprecedented growth and development in the Los Angeles area, as the population grew and the economy improved.  Sánchez's compadres, F.P.F. Temple and William Workman, launched headlong into business ventures during this boom period, including banking.  After 1871, their private bank, simply called Temple and Workman, was an active participant in development projects throughout the region, including oil, real estate and railroads, but it was also poorly managed.

In late August 1875, the economy collapsed due to stock speculation in Virginia City, Nevada silver mines, toppling the Bank of California, the state's largest.  The panic reached Los Angeles and fearful depositors flocked to the two commercial banks in town, Temple and Workman and Farmers and Merchants, to withdraw their money.  While the latter had enough cash in reserve to meet the need, Temple and Workman did not, closed for several months, and sought a loan to continue operation.  In early December, Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin offered to loan the bank $210,000, but insisted that not only Temple and Workman use their massive landholdings as collateral for the loan, but that Sánchez do the same, even though he had no involvement in the bank.

Los Angeles merchant, Harris Newmark, recalled in his memoir that "Sánchez, who transacted a good deal of business with H. Newmark & Company, came to me for advice."  Newmark told the ranchero that "Temple & Workman's relief could be at best but temporary . . . and so I strenuously urged Sánchez to refuse [to include his land in the Baldwin mortgage]; which he finally promised me to do."  Notably, Newmark observed that "so impressive was out interview that I still vividly recall the scene when he dramatically said: 'No quiero morir de hambre!' — 'I do not wish to die of hunger!'"  Finally, the merchant mournfully noted that, "a few days later I learned, to my deep disappointment, that Sánchez had agreed, after all, to include his lands."

As Newmark, and surely many others, predicted, the Temple and Workman bank loan did not prevent disaster and the institution closed its doors permanently in early January 1876.  The merchant stated that "thus ended in sorrow and despair the lives of three men, who, in their day, had prospered to a degree not given to every man."

It took several years for the bank affair to be wrapped up in the courts and Baldwin received his foreclosure judgment by 1880.  Sánchez was then in his early seventies and, although Baldwin was known for his ruthlessness in business, he did show some compassion.

In 1880, Baldwin executed a deed to Sánchez for 200 acres of La Merced known "as the Juan Matias Sánchez House and Vineyard" as well as "lands under cultivation and improvements thereon," which was to remain the property of Sánchez.

Matilda Bojorquez de Sanchez (ca. 1860-1891), the second wife of Juan Matias Sánchez..  The original photograph was taken in the late 1880s by A.C. Golsh.  Courtesy of Dara Jones.

Shortly afterwards, Sánchez married again, to Matilda Bojorquez, who was still in her teens when she wed the 70-something ranchero.  The couple had three children, daughters Dolores and Rosa and son José Juan between 1879 and 1883.

Mindful of the future of the ranch and his second family, Sánchez issued a deed in June 1882, giving his young wife, Matilda, the 200 acres as well as to "her heirs and assignees forever."

A little over three years later, in November 1885, Sánchez, aged 78, died at his home, having lived a long and eventful life, though Newmark wrote that he "died very poor."  Whether this last statement was true or not, Sánchez did live much of his life in California as a wealthy and well-regarded ranchero.

In 1887, his widow Matilda sold a 1/2 interest in the 200 acres to Frederick Hall and Charles H. Forbes and then she married the latter's son, Agustin two years later.  The marriage lasted less than two years, as Matilda died in April 1891 in her early thirties as she was giving birth to twins, who also died.

In November 1892, Lucky Baldwin filed an action claiming the 200 acre property and won a judgment on Christmas Eve 1896.

The Soto-Sanchez Adobe, however, remained in the hands of the Bojorquez family until it was sold to the Lucky Baldwin estate in 1911.  Three years later, the Baldwin estate sold the house and the 200 acre property to Edwin G. Hart, a noted developer who founded the communities of North Whittier Heights (Hacienda Heights) and La Habra Heights, among others.  Hart subdivided the parcel through the La Merced Heights Land and Water Company. 

Also in 1914, oilman William B. Scott purchased the Soto-Sanchez Adobe, which, after his death in the early 1920s, was held by his family and, for years, his two children, Josephine Scott Crocker and Keith Scott, until the family donated the adobe to the City of Montebello in 1972 and the house became a historic site museum, managed by the Montebello Historical Society.

Two of the sons of Juan Matias Sánchez and Luisa Archuleta, Tomás (sitting on the stair rail at the right) and Francisco (standing just to the left of Tomás) with their wives, Masrgarita Rowland Sanchez (top left with the striped blouse) and Felipa Gonzalez (just over the left shoulder of Francisco) and other family and friends, including Juan Matias's nephew's son, James Basye (standing lower left,) ca. 1900s.  Courtesy of Dara Jones.

The Soto-Sanchez Adobe is one of the few remaining buildings that touches upon the story of the Misión Vieja community.  While Juan Matias may not be a familiar name to most people, his life serves as an interesting and notable element of the history of Old Mission and the Los Angeles region.

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