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.

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.

The Alvitre Family of Misión Vieja

Among the earliest European-derived families to settle in the Misión Vieja community were the Alvitres.  Moreover, members of the family continued to live at Old Mission until about the time that the area was declared a federal flood zone and residential uses of the neighborhood were ended in the mid-1900s.

The origins of the family in Spanish Alta California date to Sebastian Alvitre, a soldier and native of Villa de Sinaloa, Sinaloa, México, who was among the original nine landholders in the pueblo of San José in 1783 (the town was formally organized in 1777, but it does not appear that land was issued until the later date) and who received, as did the others, two lots in the town. 

It is evident, though, that Alvitre had been in the department for some years before as Hubert Howe Bancroft, who compiled a massive history of California in the 1880s, noted that "Alvitre was a pioneer soldier of the earlier years."  In the first volume of Spanish-Mexican Families of Early California: 1769-1850 it was stated that Sebastian was a "Soldado de Cuero [leather-jacket soldier] of 1769 Portolá Expedition."  If this is true, then he was part of the first land-based expedition by Europeans in Alta California, and Alvitre would have camped with the party in what became Misión Vieja at the beginning of August 1769. 

It turns out, though, that Sebastian's years in San José were turbulent.  According to Bancroft, "Sebastian Alvitre had proved unmanageable at San José and after four or five years of convict life at the presidio had been sent to [Los] Angeles for reform."  It was not stated what he had actually done to warrant being thrown into the abogado (jail) at the pueblo, though undocumented sources offer that Alvitre had relations with an Indian woman that put him in the crosshairs of authorities.

Bancroft followed this with a statement often made about early California, namely that "the settlers were not a very orderly community," and this seemed especially to apply to soldiers, who were widely known for their mistreatment of Indians at the missions and elsewhere in the department.

As noted by Bancroft, Alvitre came south and arrived in Los Angeles about 1786, when the lands of the pueblo, founded five years earlier, were redistributed among the original settlers (there had been 44 in 1781), save one who had left, and twenty new residents, among these being Alvitre.

Apparently, matters still continued to be problematic for Alvitre in his new home, as Bancroft cited a 1791 report of Governor Pedro Fages, in which that official "tells the tale of three or four incorrigible rogues, Alvitre and Navarro of Angeles, and Pedraza, a deserter from the galleon, whose scandalous conduct no executive measure has been able to reform." 

Again, no specifics were provided as to what Alvitre might have done to anger the governor, but Bancroft did write, citing official reports of the era, that "Sebastian Alvtire of Los Angeles and Francisco Avila of San José were usually in prison, in exile, or at forced work for their excesses with Indian women and with the wives of their neighbors."

The historian went on to note that "Concubinage and all irregular sexual relations were strictly prohibited and the authorities seem to have worked earnestly in aid of the friars to enforce the laws."  These included "warnings, threats, exposure to husbands, and finally seclusion in respectable houses with hard work," though, as seen above, exile to another part of the department took place and there were others put in irons, in the stocks, or whipped.

In any case, it does appear that Alvitre finally settled down, as about 1795 he was married in Loreto, Baja California, to María Rufina Hernández, and the couple bore their first child, Jacinto, in that mission community.  By 1798, the family had moved back to Alta California and it appears that Sebastian was stationed at Mission San Gabriel, where the remaining eight children were born.  These were Juan José (1798), José Gabriel (1801), José Antonio (1803), María Dominga (1805), José Vicente (1807), María Florentina (1808), José Claudio (1811) and María Dolores (1814).

This detail of a ca. 1920s map of Rancho Potrero Chico (or Potrero de la Misión Vija) shows the portions owned by Pedro Alvitre and Timoteo Repetto, both of whom descended from Juan José Alvitre, an original grantee with his brother-in-law Antonio Valenzuela (whose wife was Dominga Alvitre) of the rancho in 1844.  Courtesy of Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.

Having been dismissed as an "incorrigible scamp" by Bancroft for his wayward years at San José and Los Angeles in the 1780s, it might well be that Alvitre's later years were more on the "straight and narrow" and he remained at Mission San Gabriel until his death in February 1817.  As those who died there were buried under the old stone church until about 1850, it is assumed that his last resting place is there.

As to the nine children of Sebastian and Rufina, a few died as young adults, including José Gabriel, who passed away in late 1830; José Vicente, who died in September 1828; and María Dolores, whose death occurred in November 1832.  Of the six others, José Antonio, appears to have joined the military and moved north.  He was married at Mission San Juan Bautista in central California and, though he did live in Los Angeles in the 1830s, he spent most of his later life at Monterey where he died in early 1862.

The remaining Alvitre children settled in the general Old Mission area in subsequent years.  For example, in the 1836 Los Angeles district census most of them were counted in the Rancho Santa Gertrudes place name listed in that enumeration.  Juan Crispín Pérez, whose father was about the same age as Sebastian Alvitre and from the same hometown of Villa de Sinaloa, México, had been, according to Bancroft, a part-owner of that rancho, part of the enormous Nieto grant of 1784 that was late subdivided, since 1821.  In 1835, Pérez was grantee of the Rancho Paso de Bartolo (which, after 1851, was the property of Pío Pico).  More importantly, he was the majordomo (foreman) for the remaining Mission San Gabriel lands not taken by secularization of the California missions in the 1830s, and served in that position from 1841 to 1845.

In that 1836 census, Jacinto with his wife Lugarda Moreno, Juan José with his spouse Tomasa Alvarado, Dominga, who was the wife of José Antonio Valenzuela, Florentina, the spouse of Manuel Antonio Pérez, and José Claudio and his wife María Asención Valenzuela, were all at Santa Gertrudes, although where exactly has not been (and may not be) determined.

Eight years later, though, the 1844 district census, showed a definite change.  The place name Misión Vieja was delineated and its residents consisted solely of the Alvitre family.  These included Jacinto and Lugarda; Juan José and Tomasa; José Claudio and Asención; and Dominga and Antonio Valenzuela. 

Notably, at the end of that year, on 9 December, Governor Manuel Micheltorena granted to brothers-in-law Antonio Valenzuela and Juan José Alvitre the Rancho Potrero de la Misión Vieja de San Gabriel also known as Rancho Potrero Chico, a very small grant of under 100 acres. 

This was after the district census, so it seems obvious that, perhaps with Juan Crispín Pérez as majordomo at San Gabriel, his influence might have brought the Alvitres to the Old Mission area and then helped secure the land grant. 

A few months later on 8 April 1845, under new governor Pío Pico, Manuel Antonio Pérez (known on the document as "Manuel Antonio, an Indian," perhaps associated with Mission San Gabriel) received a grant to the Rancho Potrero Grande, just north and west of Potrero Chico, which was over 4,400 acres.  Manuel Antonio was married to Florentina Alvitre, the remaining sibling, and they may have been living on that property before the grant, which might explain why they weren't in the Misión Vieja place name in the 1844 census.

So, from at least 1844 (and perhaps earlier), the Alvitre family were directly associated with the place name of Misión Vieja.  For a century, they remained in the area, where they farmed and ranched, raised families, and experienced the ups and downs of life that most families do.  There were some dramatic incidents involving some members that will be touched upon here subsequently, but it bears remembering that it was a large family and everyday events do not get recorded the way dramatic ones do. 

In any case, the Alvitres deserves remembrance  as an early family of the Old Mission community.

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

The Kizh/Gabrieleño People and Misión Vieja

While this blog refers to the specific place name of Misión Vieja or Old Mission as the first European site established in Los Angeles County, there was thousands of years of habitation in the area by the native indigenous peoples.  While these first settlers are often called Gabrieleño (or Gabrieliño), because of their "association" with the Mission San Gabriel, which started at Misión Vieja in 1771 but relocated to the current site within a few years because of flooding from the San Gabriel River, a more recent appellation has been Tongva.  This latter term, however, has no real historical basis, whereas the name Kizh does have a legitimacy in the record and will be used here.

For example, in William McCawley's 1996 book, The First Angelinos, he cites the statement of Raimundo Yorba, who was a consultant to the archaeologist John P. Harrington stated to him that the natives living in the Old Mission area were "what they called a Kichireño, one of a bunch of people that lived at that place just this side of San Gabriel which is known as the Misión Vieja.  Kichireño is not a placename, but a tribename, the name of a kind of people."

While the Kizh/Gabrieleño, like most so-called pre-literate peoples throughout the world, did not have a written language, they, naturally, had an oral one.  This, in turn, meant that there was a vast oral record passed down through the generations among the Kizh/Gabrieleño, having to do with their religious beliefs, history, cultural and social practices, and much else.  The fact that these attributes were not written down do not, in any way, make them subordinate to the written word—it is simply a different way of recording.

This 1925 United States Bureau of Ethnology map (click on it for a larger view in a separate window,) made by the United States Geological Survey, shows "Gabrielino" tribal villages in the broader Los Angeles region.  Note "Hout" in the upper center, corresponding with the term Houtg-na identified by Hugo Reid in 1852 as on "Ranchito de Lugo," probably Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo within the general Misión Vieja area.  While Reid also identified Isanthcag-na as specifically in Misión Vieja, it does not appear on this map, which was provided courtesy of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.

This makes documenting the history of native peoples anywhere on the planet troublesome for those who need written sources to determine what is valid.  When it comes to the Kizh/Gabrieleño and their thousands of years of residence in the Old Mission area, it has been reported that there were at least two or three villages.  One was noted as Isanthcag-na at "Misión Vieja" by Hugo Reid, a Scotchman who was married to Victoria Comacrabit, a native from the Mission San Gabriel and published 21 letters, the first written analysis, about the "Los Angeles County Indians" in the Los Angeles Star newspaper in 1852.   Notably, while Reid provided names for 28 villages and their 1852 locations, he also observed that "there were a great many more villages . . . probably some forty."

McCawley cited another source who claimed that the name, rendered as 'Iisanchanga, derived from a name for wolf, this being 'isawt, though Harrington considered this linkage "not clear."  McCawley, however, stated that "it is curious that 'Iisanchanga does not appear as a recognizable name in the mission registers" and, therefore, wondered if it "was a small settlement consisting of a few families, or simply a geographical placename."

Bernice Eastman Johnson's 1962 publication for the Southwest Museum, California's Gabrieliño Indians, states, however, that near the first mission site, "perhaps on the rounded hills where oil wells now pump day and night, lay the Gabrielino village of Isantcangna.  Men from this settlement helped the soldiers and the muleteers to raise the first rude structures of poles and 'tules' and gave their attention to the religious observance." 

There are several questionable aspects to this statement, one being that the natives would settle on bare hills rather than in the fertile lowlands closer to water, game and usable plant material. Another is the inference that the Kizh/Gabrieleño were as helpful in work and dutiful in the Spaniards' religious ceremonies as Eastman described.  Her statement, however, that the original 1771 mission structures "were built of materials as flimsy as those from which were formed the huts of neighboring Isantcangna," is notable for two reasons.  First, the demeaning use of "flimsy" (as opposed to, say, "flexible"?) and the suggestion that the Spanish were willing to copy native building materials for their new facility.

Johnson also mischaracterized the later settlement of Old Mission, writing that "years later a little Mexican village of adobe buildings grew up nearby and took the name 'Old Mission,' but this was destroyed in the floods of 1867 and now lies in the rubble behind the new flood-control dam."  This last statement about the 1867 floods is simply untrue:  the Temple adobe of 1851, built just a few hundred yards from the river and which was flooded in 1862, survived into the 20th-century and two years after the 1867 deluge, Rafael Basye built an adobe house adjacent to the Rio Hondo.  Moreover, the Old Mission community existed for decades beyond that flood.

Archaeological investigation, however, as pointed out in early posts on this blog, have not been able, with certainty, to establish this site, primarily because of the total disturbance of the area from flooding, ranching and farming, oil and gas development and the like.  It is thought, though, that a site just to the west of the Rio Hondo, the old course of the San Gabriel River prior to 1867, and north of San Gabriel Boulevard, which is roughly along the old road between the old and new mission sites, is the likeliest spot.

This map from William McCawley's The First Angelinos purports to show Gabrielino villages in the San Gabriel Valley, but does not show any in the vicinity of Old Mission, at the lower center, despite Reid's identification of two, one of which, Houtg-na (or Huunang-na/Hout) appears on the 1925 U.S. Bureau of Ethnology map above. 

McCawley also discussed "the community of Wiichinga [which] was also located in the Whittier Narrows area" and which was said to have been a "ranchería, that is to the east of this Mission on a plain closed by water on all sides."  According to McCawley, "this may have been a small settlement rather than a large community" and reported that there was only one entry in the mission records, from the earliest baptism recorded from Mission San Gabriel in 1771.

The other mentioned village was Huunang-na, although McCawley makes no mention of this site.  Johnson, however, cited Hugo Reid in noting "Houtg-na" as being on the "Ranchito de Lugo," which, stated Johnson, "lay in the vicinity of El Monte."  She linked that name with the term "hukngna" offered by Harrington as meaning willow trees, but then stated that "the Gabrielino word for willow is saxat and a village in the San Bernardino area, Saxangna, was based on that root." 

Confusingly, Johnson went on to say that, "here only the Spanish name El Monte refers to the thickets that bordered the swamps and streams."  She continued with a reference to an "old man who recalled this place [and] seemed to be referring to an incident which had occurred in his father's time," this being a lashing of Indians with willow switches.  On the 1925 map included in this post, there is a placename of "Hout" that appears to conform with the location of the Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo and it has been said that the village was located just north of today's Whittier Narrows Nature Center, south of the 60 Freeway and west of today's San Gabriel River.

There is another notable place associated in the general area surrounding Misión Vieja worth noting.  According to an account compiled by Harrington, the oral tradition of the natives cited a place called Xarvo, Xarvat, or Qarvat, where sorcerers were said to engage in witchcraft and the locale is also said to be connected to the oft-cited tale of Chengiichngech, in that this supernatural figure sent avenging creatures, such as bears, vipers and dog-like animals, to punish those people who did not obey his commands.  Another tradition related that shamans in this area called up windstorms to fight their enemies  from the coastal areas and that this occurred "near Punta de la Loma [a hilltop] by old S. G. Mission and Xarvut."

In any case, this site was said to be in "a deep gulch back of Petissier's [Pellissier's] place, opening to the west (near Bartolo Station)" and that "there is a big canyada opening through the hills.  Indians used to live there."  To McCawley, the likely location is Sycamore Canyon at the west end of the Puente Hills in Whittier, now a natural preserve managed by the Puente Hills Landfill Native Habitat Preservation Authority.

Despite what is probably inevitable differences and contradictions in available written sources, some of what appears in print clearly showed that native peoples lived in the Whittier Narrows area when the Spaniards arrived to establish the first Mission San Gabriel there in 1771.  Why Reid would acknowledge two villages in his 1852 work, being much closer to the period of their existence, and McCawley choose not consider them as true villages is curious. 

There are, however, many descendants of the Kizh/Gabrieleño in the area and their oral traditions are there, as well.  This confirms their sense of place in Misión Vieja relating to their presence there for thousands of years regardless of inconsistencies in the written historical record.