Volume 88, Number 4 - California Historical Society

california history 

volume 88 number 4 2011 The Journal of the California Historical Society 

Interim Executive Director 

Mary Morganti 

Editor 

JANET FIREMAN 

Managing Editor 

Shelly Kale 

Reviews Editor 

JAMES J. RAWLS 

Spotlight Editor 

jonathan spaulding 

Design/Production 

sandy bell 

Contributing Writer 

Marie silva 

Editorial Consultants 

LARRY E. BURGESS 

ROBERT W. CHERNY 

JAMES N. GREGORY 

JUDSON A. GRENIER 

ROBERT V. HINE 

LANE R. HIRABAYASHI 

LAWRENCE J. JELINEK 

PAUL J. KARLSTROM 

R. JEFFREY LUSTIG 

SALLY M. MILLER 

GEORGE H. PHILLIPS 

LEONARD PITT 

c o n t e n t s 

From the Editor: Ties That Bind. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 

Collections: Hipolita Orendain de Medina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 

Invisible Borders: Repatriation and Colonization of 

Mexican Migrant Workers along the California Borderlands 

during the 1930s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 

By Benny J. Andrés Jr. 

If Walls Could Speak: 

San Diego’s Historic Casa de Bandini. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 

By Victor A. Walsh 

“Saludos from your comadre”: Compadrazgo as a 

Community Institution in Alta California, 1769–1860s. . . . . . . . . . . . 47 

By Erika Pérez 

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 

Reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 

Donors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 

Spotlight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 

California History is printed in 

Los Angeles by Delta Graphics. 

Editorial offices and support for 

California History are provided by 

Loyola Marymount University, 

Los Angeles. 

on the front cover 

California State Parks’ recent renovation of the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Old Town San Diego State 

Historic Park was as much a discovery as a restoration. Peeling back layers of construction from previous 

decades revealed a treasure trove of physical evidence about owner Albert Seeley’s conversion of the singlestory 

Casa de Bandini adobe into a two-story fashionable hotel and stage office in 1869, whose restoration 

is depicted in this photograph. Archaeologists also uncovered building materials from 1827–29, when 

Don Juan Bandini erected his beloved home overlooking the pueblo’s plaza. The casa’s legacy, and the 

historical and cultural memory it preserves, is explored in Victor A. Walsh’s article, “If Walls Could 

Speak: San Diego’s Historic Casa de Bandini” (pages 22–46). 

Photograph by Sandé Lollis 

1

f r o m t h e e d i t o r 

ties that bind 

CALIFORNIA HISTORY, September 2011 

Published quarterly © 2011 by California 

Historical Society 

LC 75-640289/ISSN 0162-2897 

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for California Historical Society membership 

services, including the subscription to California 

History. 

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Attn: Janet Fireman 

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POSTMASTER 

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THE CALIFORNIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY is a 

statewide membership-based organization designated 

by the Legislature as the state historical 

society. The California Historical Society inspires 

and empowers Californians to make the past a 

meaningful part of their contemporary lives. 

A quarterly journal published by CHS since 1922, 

California History features articles by leading 

scholars and writers focusing on the heritage 

of California and the West from pre-Columbian 

to modern times. Illustrated articles, pictorial 

essays, and book reviews examine the ongoing 

dialogue between the past and the present. 

CHS assumes no responsibility for statements 

or opinions of the authors. MANUSCRIPTS for 

publication and editorial correspondence should 

be sent to Janet Fireman, Editor, California 

History, History Department, Loyola Marymount 

University, One LMU Drive, Los Angeles, CA 

90045-8415, or jfireman@lmu.edu. Books for 

review should be sent to James Rawls, Reviews 

Editor, California Historical Society, 678 Mission 

Street, San Francisco, CA 94105-4014. 

No one could be surprised that the soulful songster Bruce Springsteen would 

write: “Now you can’t break the ties that bind / You can’t forsake the ties that 

bind.” Sentiments of love and belonging are surely universal, but their expression 

is more overt and more conspicuous in some cultures than others. 

“Invisible Borders: Repatriation and Colonization of Mexican Migrant Workers 

along the California Borderlands during the 1930s,” by Benny J. Andrés Jr., 

tells the back story of a voluntary Mexican repatriation in the 1930s, motivated 

by love for homeland, fueled by strategies to secure fair wages and improving 

working conditions, and made possible by the supportive administration of 

President Lázaro Cárdenas. How it came to be that 175 Mexican families living 

in the San Joaquin Valley, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, and the Imperial Valley 

formed a convoy and traveled to the Mexicali Valley in Baja California to establish 

a farm commune on land the Mexican government had expropriated from 

powerful foreign owners offers fresh insight on received understanding of Mexican 

farm workers during the Great Depression. 

Acknowledging the significance of places that preserve our cultural memories, 

stories, and identities, California State Parks recently restored the nineteenthcentury 

Cosmopolitan Hotel in San Diego. In “If Walls Could Speak: San 

Diego’s Historic Casa de Bandini,” Victor A. Walsh recounts the story of this 

landmark historic building that stands as a testament to waves of change from 

Californio to American frontier society. With its later commercially stimulated 

alterations inspired by affection for a much romanticized Spanish past stripped 

away, the full history of the current hotel, restaurant, and bar is revealed for 

readers and visitors alike. 

Compadrazgo, or godparentage, practiced extensively during the Spanish and 

Mexican eras—and beyond—helped create spiritual, familial, and community 

bonds, as well as business networks. Erika Pérez introduces the concept and 

provides numerous examples of its application by Native American, Spanish, 

Mexican, and Anglo-American families in “‘Saludos from your comadre’: Compadrazgo 

as a Community Institution in Alta California, 1769–1860s.” 

Nation, family, home, tradition: these are the ties that bind. 

Janet Fireman 


www.californiahistoricalsociety.org 

 

California History • volume 88 number 4 2011

c o l l e c t i o n s 

Hipolita Orendain de Medina 

maintained this album for almost 

forty years as a sentimental record 

of love and friendship. It contains 

sonetos and other poems, canciones 

(songs), and notes, written for 

her by family, friends, and acquaintances 

in Spanish, English, and 

German, as well as sketches, pressed 

ferns and flowers, cards, stickers, 

and, sadly, an obituary for Czarina 

Celsa, the Medinas’s daughter. 

Most of the writings in the album 

treat the themes of romantic love, 

platonic fidelity, and religious duty, 

though politics occasionally intervenes, 

as in a simple 1865 dedication: 

La paz, progreso y libertad 

(peace, progress, and liberty). 

Album, 1865–1908, Hipolita Orendain 

de Medina correspondence and 

miscellany, MS 1441, California 

Historical Society 

Hipolita Orendain de Medina 

To the images of missions, ranchos, 

and caballeros—and the romance of 

Mexican California they evoke—CHS’s 

Hipolita Orendain de Medina collection 

stands in clear contrast, offering 

a glimpse into the domestic, cultural, 

and political life of a cosmopolitan, 

multilingual community of native 

Californios and Latino immigrants in 

San Francisco in the second half of the 

nineteenth century. 

Correspondence, notebooks, sheet 

music, poetry, ephemera, cards, photographs, 

and an album of remembrance 

(above)—Hipolita collected them all as 

recuerdos de amistad (tokens of friendship). 

Intimate in scale, the collection 

nonetheless registers larger historical 

forces—the Franco-Mexican War, the 

rise of Mexican and Latin American 

nationalisms, the development of the 

Spanish-language press in California—

c o l l e c t i o n s 

as they shaped the lives of Hipolita, her 

husband Emigdio Medina, and their 

families in Mexico and California. 

Hipolita Orendain was born in Mexico 

in 1844 and moved to San Francisco 

with her mother, the widowed heiress 

Francisca Tejada de Orendain, and 

her sister Virginia in the late 1850s. In 

1868, she married the Mexican-born 

musician, journalist, editor, and real 

estate investor Emigdio Medina. While 

Emigdio pursued business and literary 

ventures, founding San Francisco’s 

Spanish-language newspaper La Republica 

in 1881, the educated and polyglot 

Hipolita became an active member 

of the city’s junta patriótica (patriotic 

assembly) and worked as a dressmaker, 

naming herself head of the Medina 

household in the 1900 census. 

These images from the Hipolita 

Orendain de Medina Collection 

sample Hipolita and Emigdio’s wideranging 

commitments—to literature 

and music, family and religion, the 

Mexican American community and the 

nascent Mexican republic—while opening 

a sentimental, sometimes surprising 

view onto their world. 

One of more than sixty photographs in the collection, Hipolita presented this cartede-visite, 

made in San Francisco on Christmas day 1881, when she was in her late 

thirties, to her sister Virginia. Like many of the cartes-de-visit it bears an affectionate 

inscription: to “muy amada hermanita” (much loved little sister). A note on 

the card indicates that Hipolita was “referred to affectionately as Grammacita,” a 

hybrid term of the English “Grandma” and the Spanish diminutive “cita.” 

Cabinet card, 1881, MSP 1441; CHS2011.585.tif 

Emigdio Medina’s business card presenting him as editor and manager of Los 

Angeles’s El Estandarte Mexicano is one of more than 100 business cards in the 

collection. Medina was active in the Spanish-language press on both sides of the 

Mexico-United States border, representing a variety of newspapers. This restless 

and enterprising journalist was also a poet, musician, and principal of Emigdio 

Medina & Co., Mining & Agricultural Land Agency in San Francisco. 

Business card, ca. 1908, MS 1441 


Invisible Borders: Repatriation and Colonization 

of Mexican Migrant Workers along the California 

Borderlands during the 1930s 

By Benny J. Andrés Jr. 

The Mexican peon does not settle; he comes and earns something and goes back. 

—Harry Chandler, Colorado River Land Company, Mexicali, Baja California, 1930 1 

In December 1934, two weeks after the presidential 

election of Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico’s 

twentieth-century champion of agrarian and 

working-class reform, the first tremor in a 

seismic shift rumbled through the California- 

Baja California borderlands. Joe Herrera, editor 

of La Gaceta del Valle Imperial, wrote a rare and 

unprecedented article for his parent newspaper 

The Brawley News, reporting on the voluntary 

repatriation of 175 Mexican families from Corcoran, 

Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, Santa Paula, 

Calipatria, and other areas in California. The 

Mexican government had arranged for 700 colonists 

to settle on 6,700 acres in a farm cooperative 

directly across the border in Baja California’s 

Mexicali Valley. The repatriation caravan, consisting 

of 152 persons, was the advance party. 2 

The caravan stopped in Brawley, the center of the 

irrigated desert agricultural region, to pick up 

additional colonists eager to return to Mexico for 

better opportunity. There the repatriates shared 

food and supplies, while the group’s orchestra 

entertained the “jolly crowd” with music. Most 

of the participants had saved thousands of dollars. 

“We do not want any help. We have already 

arranged everything about the land,” remarked 

the group’s leader. The Mexican consul in Calexico 

(the American town adjacent to Mexicali, capital 

of the northern Baja California territory) had 

their repatriation papers in order. Herrera served 

up a subtle warning to American agribusiness 

for cracking down harshly on Mexicans during 

labor strikes that year: “They are glad to go back 

to their homeland.” 3 

The convoy’s journey across the international 

line to establish a farm commune in the Mexicali 

Valley is part of a larger story about the ways in 

which Mexican migrants on the California-Baja 

California borderland navigated rapidly changing 

economic and political conditions during the 

Great Depression. Mobile workers on the U.S. 

side of the international border strove to improve 

their lives through migration, strikes, and voluntary 

repatriation to Mexico. Legal and illegal residents 

used the services of mutualistas (benevolent

societies) to forestall deportation and forced repatriation 

for receiving public assistance. Across 

the border in the Mexicali Valley, workers used 

xenophobic arguments to persuade the Mexican 

government to force out Asian competitors, 

deploying nationalistic rhetoric steeped in the 

Mexican Revolution’s ideology to justify demands 

for their government to expropriate land owned 

by foreigners and redistribute it to Mexicans. 4 

Historians have narrowly interpreted Mexican 

repatriation during the 1930s through an immigration/citizenship 

framework, whereby “repatriation” 

means forced expulsion from the United 

States. This perspective confuses immigration for 

permanent settlement with the act of temporary 

migration. Indeed, only a small percentage of 

Mexicans intended to become U.S. citizens, as 

reflected in the naturalization records. 5 Circular 

movement across the international line was not 

only a rejection of American citizenship; one 

could argue that the regularity and repetition of 

this pattern rendered the border invisible. The 

immigration/citizenship focus also ignores the 

Mexican government’s response to the brutal 

treatment of its citizens in the United States. 6 

This rigid nation-state model has straitjacketed 

American scholars, preventing deeper consideration 

of ethnic Mexicans’ repatriation to their 

native land. 7 

With very few exceptions, for the past seventy-six 

years historians have followed a narrative similar 

to that presented in Carey McWilliams’s 1935 

Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm 

Labor in California, which only briefly relates the 

callous actions of U.S. welfare and immigration 

officials in forcibly repatriating ethnic Mexicans 

during the Great Depression. 8 The standard 

interpretation of repatriation in this era is that 

city and county welfare agencies worked in conjunction 

with the U.S. Border Patrol to expel ethnic 

Mexicans who received public aid in violation 

of current immigration law. This accepted narrative, 

however, does not explain what transpired 

in the Imperial Valley, where the failure of farm 

workers’ strikes and an influx of competitors for 

their jobs—not county efforts to reduce public 

assistance—prompted the valley’s Mexican workers 

to voluntarily repatriate. 

The north-south framework presented in Factories 

in the Field is also inaccurate. In actuality, Mexican 

migrants followed irregular, often circular 

paths. 9 Mexican border crossers were migrants 

rather than immigrants, traversing familiar 

transnational and domestic circuits. 10 Another 

flaw in the repatriation paradigm is its chronicle 

of a great injustice done to a powerless people. 

Rather, the agency of Mexican repatriates in battling 

to secure fair wages and improving working 

conditions is a more accurate account. For 

campesinos (field workers) in the Imperial Valley, 

migration, mutualistas, strikes, and repatriation 

were all viable strategies for economic survival. 

This article offers a new interpretation of Mexican 

repatriation, weaving together the body of 

scholarship on farm workers’ activities in the 

Imperial Valley during the 1930s with published 

Spanish-language sources of the “Mexicanization” 

of Mexicali by repatriates to demonstrate 

how their strategies for improved labor conditions 

empowered them to significantly change 

transborder migration patterns. The Mexican government’s 

active involvement in repatriation and 

colonization of its northern borderlands under 

President Cárdenas, and its coordination with 

the U.S. Border Patrol, established the working 

relationship for the binational labor agreement 

known as the Bracero Program (1942–64). 11 

Roots of Repatriation 

Mexican officials routinely attempted to prevent 

migration to the United States, especially after 

the creation of the U.S. Border Patrol in 1924 

and during the massive forced repatriation efforts 

by the U.S. government in the 1930s. 12 During 

the early years of the Great Depression, Mexico 

 


struggled to resettle its repatriated and deported 

citizens. Unlike his predecessors, Cárdenas’s 

administration (1934–40) developed a settlement 

program in agricultural communities along the 

borderlands, 13 vigorously encouraging repatriation 

to populate and economically develop the 

Mexicali Valley. In 1937, when Cárdenas expropriated 

the vast landholdings of the Colorado River 

Land Company (CRLC)—a Los Angeles-based 

syndicate headed by the owner of the Los Angeles 

Times—thousands of Mexicans escaped a hardscrabble 

life by flocking to the Mexicali Valley. 

Consequently, the harsh treatment of Mexican 

nationals during the Great Depression played 

into Mexico’s long-term objective to build up its 

northern borderlands, regain its citizens living 

in the United States, and give repatriates a fresh 

start as small farmers. 

The Imperial-Mexicali Valley, an agricultural cornucopia 

nourished by the Colorado River, was located at the intersection 

of California, Arizona, Sonora, and Baja California. 

This 1927 map, published by the Boulder Dam Association, 

shows the region with the proposed 82-mile-long All- 

American Canal—an irrigation network connecting the 

Imperial and Coachella Valleys with the Colorado River. 

Running parallel to the Mexico-California border, its completion 

in 1940 propelled the growth of the Imperial Valley’s 

agricultural industry. 

Courtesy of the author

Local newspapers such as The Brawley News and 

the Calexico Chronicle provide extensive details 

of this transnational history. Yet these two media 

outlets catered to distinct constituencies and 

perspectives. The Brawley News, an agribusiness 

organ, hewed a conservative, anti–field labor, 

anti-Mexican, Republican viewpoint. In contrast, 

the Calexico Chronicle was the mouthpiece for 

Calexico’s merchants who owed their existence to 

commerce and crossborder tourism in Mexicali. 

With its pro-Mexican perspective, the Calexico 

Chronicle closely reported both nations’ borderenforcement 

activities, as well as news from 

Mexicali, major events in Mexico, and agriculture 

in the Mexicali Valley, particularly regarding the 

CRLC, which owned most of the land in the Mexicali 

Valley (over 800,000 acres) and which purchased 

its food and supplies across the border in 

Calexico. The CRLC shipped its products by train 

through Calexico, since the Mexicali Valley had 

no land transportation link to the Mexican interior. 

Calexico’s dependence on the CRLC’s trade 

explains why the Calexico Chronicle closely followed 

Mexican repatriation to the Mexicali Valley. 

The repatriation story dates to colonization of 

this arid region for agribusiness in 1900, when 

the isolated Imperial-Mexicali Valley was sustained 

by a canal that brought water from the 

Colorado River. World War I demand for farm 

products transformed the region on both sides 

of the international line into a cotton mecca, 

requiring an abundance of seasonal pickers. In 

1920, a scarcity of pickers prompted Imperial 

Valley farmers to join Arizona cotton growers in 

forming a labor-recruitment organization—the 

first time large numbers of Mexican migrants 

were brought to the area. From this point on, 

the valley’s farmers were among the staunchest 

supporters of an open border for campesino 

migrants. After the war, farmers diversified into 

labor-intensive crops and relied primarily on 

mobile Mexican workers. Supported by police 

and judges, they suppressed field unions and 

crushed strikes. 14 

In the Mexicali Valley, the CRLC raised cattle and 

grew cotton. The company hired Chinese tenants 

and imported Chinese cotton pickers in order to 

discourage Mexican settlement and demand for 

land. 15 Its exclusion of Mexicans ended during the 

United States’ post–World War I economic recession. 

Across the border in the Imperial Valley, 

farmers had promised U.S. immigration officials 

that they would send imported Mexicans on contract 

back to Mexico after the cotton harvest. But 

bankrupted by the recession, they did not have 

the money to return the campesinos. Stranded 

Mexicans drifted into the Mexicali Valley, squatted 

on CRLC land, and petitioned the governor of the 

northern territory of Baja California for jobs. 16 

Campesinos faced a formidable opponent. Territorial 

military governors funded their governments 

by taxing foreign landowners. 17 They 

frequently sent soldiers to break up strikes and 

land disputes. 18 In 1921, the Mexican government 

responded to anti-Chinese violence on the northern 

borderlands by banning the entry of Chinese 

laborers. In November 1925, officials in Mexicali 

announced strict enforcement of a law requiring 

that half of all paid workers had to be Mexicans. 19 

Incessant demands for land in the Mexicali Valley 

forced the governor to establish several farming 

communes beginning in 1924. 20 

Mexico’s ban on imported Chinese workers 

spurred the CRLC to bring workers from Sinaloa 

and Sonora. 21 Between 1921 and 1924, 13,000 

Mexicans arrived in Mexicali, 22 but they did 

not linger there long when Americans induced 

them with higher wages to cross the line. Thus, 

the CRLC supported and sustained the circular 

migration corridor from western Mexico to the 

Mexicali Valley and into the United States, 23 

employing 8,000–10,000 Mexicans, 4,000 Chinese, 

and 800 Japanese by 1930. 24 After each 

harvest, the CRLC discharged tenants and day 

laborers and burned their makeshift huts to prevent 

squatting. 25 

 


Around 1900, early irrigation efforts transformed the dry, sandy Imperial Valley into a garden of abundance for 

specialty crops. Shortly afterward, cotton, a labor-intensive crop requiring a large labor force, was introduced to 

Imperial County. In this photograph from the early 1900s, cotton bales are stacked next to a railroad track at a 

typical cotton gin in the Imperial-Mexicali Valley. 

California Historical Society; CHS2011.583.tif 

The 1930 Strike 

Repatriation in the Imperial Valley began with 

a violent pea strike in January 1930. The brutal 

crackdown that crushed the walkout resulted in 

the valley’s first large-scale voluntary repatriation 

movement. The union’s defeat set in motion a 

chain of events that culminated in the redirection 

of circular migration to repatriation in the Mexicali 

Valley. In the midst of the strike, A. Mejía, the 

union president, sent telegrams to Mexico’s president 

and agricultural department requesting aid 

to repatriate thousands of Mexicans. When the 

union announced that the Mexican government 

had granted Mejía’s request, an overflow crowd 

in Brawley’s union hall spilled into the street, 

cheering wildly. Mejía declared: “We believe that 

colonization on a Mexican agricultural project will 

be better than 30 to 35 cents an hour in Imperial 

valley.” He then closed the hall to all meetings 

except those dealing with repatriation. 26 

Within three months, Brawley’s union militants 

had organized the Vanguardia de Colonización 

Proletaria (Vanguard of Proletariat Colonization). 

The campesinos were ambitious. The group’s 

representative told a leading Mexico City newspaper 

that he was in the nation’s capital to convince 

government officials to support the Vanguardia’s 

plan to relocate millions of ethnic Mexicans 

from the United States to a gigantic colonization 

enterprise in Mexico. He claimed that the group 

had 40,000 Mexican and Mexican American 

members and $40,000 in the bank and that they 

anticipated raising $12–15 million within five 

months to enact the plan. 27 

The existence of this strategy and others like 

it suggests the enthusiasm with which ethnic 

Mexicans in the United States viewed repatriation, 

though it is doubtful that the Mexican government 

provided land for the Imperial Valley

Upon purchasing land in northern Baja California in the early 1900s, the Los Angeles-based Colorado River 

Land Company (CRLC) began to construct an irrigation system, creating a highly productive agricultural empire 

in the Mexicali Valley. This newly dug main canal (note the absence of weeds on the banks) snaked through the 

fertile desert to irrigate the CRLC’s vast landholdings. 

Sherman Library 

repatriates at this time. In 1934, a Brawley mutualista 

report documented local labor conditions, 

revealing that campesinos there had organized “a 

mass repatriation” that “was only partially accomplished. 

Similar groups with identical ideas were 

formed practically all over the State of California, 

particularly in Southern California.” The popularity 

of repatriation schemes showed “how hopeless 

the Mexican situation was” in America. 28 

Imperial Valley campesinos were in a tenuous 

position because farmer-worker relations there 

were as contentious as in the Mexicali Valley, 

where governors set minimum wages and arbitrated 

labor disputes, usually favoring employers. 

Yet workers in Mexicali could appeal directly 

to the territorial governor and to the executive 

branch in Mexico City for redress. Although 

unions were plentiful and workers frequently 

went on strike, once a governor made a laborrelated 

decision, it was final. If workers did not 

return to work, Mexicali troops scattered picketers 

and arrested the leaders. Hard-core labor 

activists were occasionally dispatched to prison. 

Executive labor decisions minimized massive 

walkouts, but Mexico’s political structure also 

gave unions bargaining power by instructing 

workers to strike in order to force the governor 

to raise wages. Power to set wages put governors 

10 


in the tenuous position of balancing the needs of 

business and labor, which often resulted in workers’ 

dissatisfaction. Workers responded to unfavorable 

decisions by petitioning the president to 

replace the governor. Though the territorial government 

in the Mexicali Valley differed distinctly 

from the Imperial Valley’s political structure, 

pro-landowner bias often was similar. Harsh 

conditions in the Mexicali Valley thus factored 

into migrants’ decisions of whether to leave the 

Imperial Valley, strike, or voluntarily repatriate to 

Mexico. 

Migrants were caught in a borderland’s vice. In 

the Imperial Valley they faced declining wages 

and a repressive police state; in the Mexicali Valley 

they encountered unsympathetic governors, 

a scarcity of available land, and a lack of jobs 

due to the Depression’s devastation of the cotton 

industry. Within months of the 1930 strike, Mexican 

officials expressed alarm over the explosion 

of expatriates deported and forcibly repatriated 

from the United States. The Mexican government 

sent Secretary of Communications and 

Public Works General Juan Andreu Almazán to 

investigate conditions on Mexico’s northwestern 

borderlands. Almazán’s report to President 

Pascual Ortíz Rubio strongly recommended 

immediately purchasing “at any cost” the CRLC’s 

fiefdom and resettling there industrious but 

unemployed Mexican nationals living in the 

United States. Almazán argued it was a matter 

of national security because Americans, including 

the CRLC, had been and were scheming to 

acquire part of Sonora, as well as Baja California. 

The nationalistic report criticized Asians and 

recommended their deportation. Almazán also 

urged colonization of the region to increase Colorado 

River water use as a strategy to strengthen 

Mexico’s negotiating position in allocating the 

river before Boulder (later Hoover) Dam became 

operational. 29 Two months later, Ortíz Rubio 

directed the agricultural ministry to cancel or 

revise the CRLC’s land concession. In the meantime, 

the government reduced customs duties 

for items that the repatriates brought with them 

into Mexico. Additionally, Mexicali officials began 

deporting Chinese and Japanese to free up tenant 

and farm jobs. 30 

The Public Charge, Self-Help, and 

Strikes 

In the United States, Mexican emigrants, many 

of whom were undocumented aliens, feared poverty 

and long-term unemployment because of the 

increased risk of deportation. According to the 

immigration code’s “likely to be a public charge” 

provision, they could be deported or forced to 

repatriate for vagrancy, inability to pay medical 

bills, or application for public assistance. 31 To 

minimize violations of the public charge provision, 

Mexico instructed its consuls in the United 

States to organize mutualistas to provide charity 

to the sick, unemployed, and destitute. 32 

In 1925, when U.S. officials refused public assistance 

to Mexican nationals, the Mexican consul 

created local chapters of the mutualista la Cruz 

Azul Mexicana in several Imperial Valley towns. 

The consul instructed the charity’s officers in 

Brawley to inform the local judge that Mexicans 

would no longer burden him with pleas for 

public assistance. 33 In Calexico, where Mexicans 

comprised 60 percent of the community’s 6,500 

residents, a mutualista operated several clinics 

and maintained half a dozen beds reserved for 

ethnic Mexicans in the hospital. 34 Despite these 

self-help efforts, whites continued to stereotype 

Mexicans as addicted to public aid. Countering 

this perception, the state labor statistician told 

farmers that contrary to popular opinion, “It is 

not his nature that makes the Mexican take charity, 

but the fact that he is underpaid. He has little 

share in the wealth which he helps create.” 35 

Campesinos’ ability to engage in circular migration 

and avoid transgressing the public charge 

11

Beginning in the early twentieth century, Mexican communities created mutualistas—cultural, political, service, and 

social organizations that included the families of workers. For Mexican migrants and Mexican Americans living in 

poverty conditions in the Imperial Valley, such institutions provided significant economic support. This structure, which 

housed the Centro Mutualista de Zaragoza in Tijuana, Baja California, is similar to the mutualistas found on both sides 

of the U.S.-Mexico border. 

San Diego History Center 

provision diminished during the Great Depression. 

Nationally, the U.S. Border Patrol aggressively 

deported legal and illegal Mexicans who 

applied for public assistance or who could not 

pay their medical bills. In various states, relief 

workers pressured ethnic Mexicans who received 

public assistance to repatriate. 36 Towns in the 

Imperial Valley set up privately funded programs 

to feed and clothe residents, but migrants did 

not receive aid. By the summer of 1933, the sheer 

number of aid cases overwhelmed private relief, 

compelling state and federal welfare agencies to 

provide food and clothing to the needy, including 

noncitizens, even during strikes. 37 Around the 

country, the introduction of New Deal welfare 

programs shifted funding sources and decisionmaking 

from locals to outsiders with different 

criteria for giving or denying aid. This played a 

significant role in ending large-scale Mexican 

repatriation across the United States. 

In the Imperial Valley, the introduction of federal 

aid provoked controversy. Early in 1934, for 

example, farmers were furious when striking 

pea pickers received relief. Local officials seized 

control of the relief decisions and ensured that 

welfare policy would be predicated on the needs 

of agribusiness. By the beginning of the cantaloupe 

harvest later that summer, 9,895 persons 

received public assistance. Although Mexicans 

made up only one-third of the county’s population, 

they accounted for more than 57 percent of 

those receiving aid. 38 Welfare provided an incentive 

for migrants to stay in the area, but it served 

the needs of Imperial Valley farmers as well. By 

allowing campesinos to get relief between har- 

1 California History • volume 88 number 4 2011

vests, growers maintained an overabundance of 

labor that drove wages down. 39 

Momentous events in the latter half of the year 

convinced migrants to avoid the Imperial Valley, 

voluntarily repatriate to the Mexicali Valley, and 

demand land from the Mexican government. 

Privation, failed strikes, deportations, and forced 

repatriation in California combined to radicalize 

many campesinos in the Imperial-Mexicali Valley. 

The introduction of socialist and communist 

organizers on both sides of the international line 

fueled transborder radicalism and exploded in 

massive strikes on both sides of the border. 

The Imperial Valley cantaloupe strike of 1934 has 

been well documented. Crushing it required a 

combination of unprecedented violence and the 

strike-breaking activities of the Mexican consul 

Joaquín Terrazas, who siphoned workers away 

from the campesino union and into a pro-farmer 

union under his control. 40 Local welfare officials 

soon entered the fray. In the midst of the labor 

walkout, they moved to intimidate campesinos 

by announcing the forced repatriation of 1,200 

aliens on relief. The timing of this threat, and the 

fact that there was no follow up to it, suggests it 

was a warning to workers to get back to work. 41 

After the strike, the relief office transitioned into 

a farm employment agency. Relief recipients 

were stricken from the relief rolls if they did not 

take low-paying field jobs. Agribusiness functionaries 

also used public assistance as a weapon 

against strikers. 42 Migrant disempowerment 

continued the next year when Consul Terrazas 

was transferred to another post. Without him, the 

field union evaporated, leaving campesinos without 

union representation. 43 

Land Expropriation 

Immediately following the strike, agraristas 

(agrarian militants) in the Mexicali Valley began 

organizing and petitioning the government for 

ejidos (communal farms). Unlike the small, pri- 

vately owned farm cooperatives and the territorial 

cooperatives already in existence, the ejidos 

were federal projects. Petitioners for ejidos were 

emboldened by the government’s increasingly 

nationalistic stance toward the CRLC. In the 

midst of the 1934 presidential election, Mexican 

officials forced an American to sell his 18,000- 

acre ranch to the government, which then distributed 

parcels to Mexican yeoman farmers 

supported by long-term government loans. While 

campaigning in September of that year, candidate 

General Lázaro Cárdenas, who supported redistributing 

foreign-owned land, visited Mexicali to 

inspect the agricultural colonies. 44 Upon his election 

in November, Mexicans on both sides of the 

Baja California borderland sent him numerous 

telegrams expressing their hardships and asking 

for help. Cárdenas responded by dispatching federal 

officials to investigate conditions and resolve 

disputes. 45 In time, the return of thousands of 

expatriates pressured Mexican officials to negotiate 

land sales from the CRLC and to develop the 

region for Mexican farmers. 

When the aforementioned repatriation convoy 

crossed into Mexicali, the December 15 issue of 

the Calexico Chronicle described their entrance 

with “chickens, goats, ducks, geese, farm implements, 

household goods and innumerable 

Momentous events in the latter 

half of the year [1934] convinced 

migrants to avoid the Imperial 

Valley, voluntarily repatriate to the 

Mexicali Valley, and demand land 

from the Mexican government. 

1

The December 1934 caravan of Mexican nationals who voluntarily repatriated to Mexico settled on Colónia 

Mexico Libre, a 2,800-acre communal farm expropriated from foreign landowners as part of Mexico’s agrarian 

reform movement. Departing Calexico, the 152 colonists crossed the border at Mexicali, Baja California, 

stopping at the checkpoint of the international boundary (foreground). 

Courtesy, Pomona Public Library, Pomona, CA 

children” in twenty-eight cars and trailers. They 

had been planning the move for eight months. 

Several months prior, they had sent a delegation 

to select their land and to confer with Mexican 

authorities who had negotiated the deal. U.S. 

and Mexican customs and immigration officials 

cooperated to speed the group across the border, 

but the repatriates waved away all offers of U.S. 

assistance, explaining that they had squirreled 

away the necessary funds during their years of 

planning. 46 

Two days later, the Calexico Chronicle shed additional 

light on the colonization of the Mexicali 

Valley, reporting on a discussion about the 

repatriation convoy between California governor 

Frank Merriam and General Agustín Olachea, the 

governor of the northern territory of Baja California. 

Olachea indicated that he was pleased the 

migrants were returning home. He asserted that 

Mexico stood to gain from the scientific knowledge 

the campesinos had acquired while working 

on commercial farms in the United States. 

Merriam emphasized that the migrants had done 

nothing to cause California authorities to request 

their removal. 47 

The exchange between the two executives underscores 

the different meanings each attached to 

repatriation. Whereas Olachea expressed smug 

satisfaction that the migrants’ return would 

benefit Mexico, Merriam inferred that the 

campesinos were welcome to labor in California 

as long as they did not request relief. Indeed, the 

1 


decision of thousands of migrants to abandon 

their circular migration patterns to settle in the 

Mexicali Valley boded ill for California farmers 

in general and in particular for growers in the 

Imperial Valley who had become dependent on 

mobile campesinos. 

As the Great Depression and strikes crippled 

agricultural production in the Imperial Valley, in 

1935 the Mexicali Valley’s farm economy broke 

out of its economic slump. Farmers planted 

100,000 acres in cotton, 35,000 acres in wheat, 

and various other crops. Local leaders expressed 

optimism for solid profits and plentiful jobs. The 

giddy head of the Mexicali Chamber of Commerce 

bragged that every available acre had been 

planted and that farmers had even plowed “virgin” 

ground. The sheer size of the cotton acreage 

required another 1,000 pickers recruited from 

Mexico’s interior and other parts of Baja California. 

When cotton prices rose suddenly in December 

1935, Mexicali farmers sent urgent notices for 

harvesters. For the first time since the depression 

began, field hands were making good money. 

Bountiful cotton profits convinced farmers to 

plant an additional 15,000 acres in 1936. 48 

Functionaries of the Mexican government continued 

to express grave concerns about the hardship 

and abuses endured by its emigrants across 

the border. High-level officials frequently visited 

southern California to explore the feasibility of 

settling repatriates onto ejidos in the Mexicali 

Valley. The Cárdenas administration forced the 

CRLC to sell portions its holdings to repatriates 

on long-term mortgages backed by the nation’s 

farm bank. In March 1935, for example, government 

officials finalized the sale of a 2,800-acre 

ranch, renamed Colonia México Libre, home 

of the repatriation convoy that had arrived the 

previous December. The bank furnished loans to 

purchase equipment for the farmers’ communal 

use and seed to grow animal feed crops and cotton. 

Deeds to their private holdings were for 40 

acres. Colonia México Libre symbolized both the 

This railroad labor camp along the Colorado River Delta, 

among the vast holdings of the Colorado River Land Company 

in 1934, housed workers and their families. Built from timber 

and brush from the Colorado River, the camp is representative 

of the harsh housing and working conditions of campesinos in 

rural Mexicali Valley. Confiscating foreign-owned land for use 

by campesinos would become a significant element of President 

Cárdenas’s six-year agricultural reform program. 

Sherman Library 

hope of the new property owners and the act of 

throwing off the yoke of foreign landowners. In 

line with the government’s push to educate the 

masses, officials pledged to erect a school. 49 

The Mexican government had published its intention 

to colonize Baja California in early 1935. The 

high priority given to populating Mexicali was 

reflected in the government’s actions to make 

the region attractive. Responding to frequent 

requests, in mid-1935 farm implements were 

added to the list of products allowed to pass duty 

free through the Mexicali port of entry. Although 

the duty had been small, the decree was another 

measure that helped to pull expatriates back to 

Mexico. A year later, officials purchased material 

to build six modern rural schools. 50 

President Cárdenas sent scores of bureaucrats 

to prepare for land redistribution. In April 1935, 

1

Migrant families in the Imperial Valley often lived year round in ramshackle homes made of discarded lumber, tarps, 

burlap, and cardboard. Nearby ditches provided water for cooking, bathing, and drinking. There were no latrines. The 

most important items for mobile workers were the stove (see pipe protruding from the roof) and the automobile. In this 

photograph, a young girl peeks out the door of her makeshift dwelling against the backdrop of a harvested field. 

Library of Congress, photograph by Dorothea Lange 

Secretary of Agriculture Tomás Garrido Canabal 

toured Mexicali to inspect the conditions among 

the repatriates and to plan for further colonization. 

His entourage included twelve commissioners 

and subcommissioners, experts in irrigation, 

agriculture, land development, and engineering. 

At a gigantic open-air gathering in Mexicali, and 

later in Los Angeles, Canabal promoted the government’s 

ambitious plans to encourage one million 

Mexicans living in the American Southwest 

to settle in the Mexicali Valley as self-supporting 

yeoman farmers. The impetus for the plan, 

he explained, was the severe disappointment 

expressed by migrants who had left their native 

land with high expectations of work in the United 

States but instead had found unemployment 

and hardship. Returning penniless, they became 

a burden upon Mexican society. The Cárdenas 

administration’s plans for interior colonization 

would diminish the individual and collective 

effects of the campesinos’ disappointments. 51 

Later that fall, Baja California governor General 

Gildardo Magaña conferred with business and 

government leaders in Mexico City on how to 

develop the Mexicali Valley. Afterward, a federal 

commission arrived in the valley to explore all 

aspects of settling the region. On November 23, 

Secretary of the Interior Silvano Barba González 

announced a forthcoming visit to Mexicali to 

inspect the border immigration stations and 

investigate the feasibility of establishing farming 

cooperatives. Within days, General Saturnino 

Cedillo, the new secretary of agriculture, arrived 

with a contingent of army officers to tour the territory. 

He then traveled to Los Angeles to exhort 

Mexicans to move to Mexicali. Magaña and other 

government officials also visited Los Angeles to 

encourage repatriation. After attending a picnic 

in his honor, the governor flew to Mexico City to 

finalize colonization plans. Between 300 and 400 

people a month moved to the Mexicali Valley, 

based on the number of border-pass applications 

to shop in Calexico. 52 

1 


Despite the intense government activity in settling 

the Mexicali Valley, the CRLC sold few individual 

plots. A combination of inertia and a lack 

of settlers with sufficient capital resulted in slow 

land sales. In April 1936, the CRLC finally inked 

a contract with the Mexican government to sell 

165,000 acres of its developed land to Mexican 

farmers in parcels ranging from 40 to 375 acres. 

Although the agreement provided for twenty-year 

financing, it effectively locked out the vast majority 

of campesinos, most of whom did not have 

the funds or access to credit to purchase property, 

equipment, and other necessities. 53 

These events marked the end of an era of Mexican 

circular migration on the California-Baja 

California borderland. Following the 1934 cantaloupe 

strike, the domination of campesino labor 

in the Imperial Valley began to shift with the 

arrival of thousands of destitute workers in 1935. 

A deluge of white and black domestic migrants 

from the South and the Southwest fleeing economic 

dislocation arrived in the Imperial Valley, 

along with 6,000 male Filipino workers, some 

from as far away as Alaska. The newcomers 

saturated the labor market, took jobs from ethnic 

Mexicans, and lowered wages for all. In 1936, 

with the arrival in California of almost 85,000 

Dust Bowl refugees, white transients began 

replacing Mexicans as California’s dominant 

farm labor force. By mid-1937, they comprised 

half of the valley’s field workers. According to the 

periodical Country Gentlemen, farmers claimed 

whites were “better workers, less transient but 

more labor conscious,” making “agricultural 

unions more potent.” Agribusiness responded 

to numerous resulting strikes by creating the 

Associated Farmers, a militant organization 

whose “special deputies” broke up picketing and 

smashed unions. 54 

A perfect storm now brewed along the Baja 

California borderlands. A superabundance of 

workers and low wages in the Imperial Valley 

combined with opportunities to acquire land in 

A perfect storm now brewed along 

the Baja California borderlands. A 

superabundance of workers and 

low wages in the Imperial Valley 

combined with opportunities to 

acquire land in the Mexicali Valley 

made repatriation to the Mexicali 

Valley even more attractive to 

campesinos. 

the Mexicali Valley made repatriation to the Mexicali 

Valley even more attractive to campesinos. To 

free up jobs, Mexican repatriates and unions in 

Baja California petitioned government officials 

to expel Asian laborers and tenants. Xenophobic 

screeds prompted the Chinese consul in Mexicali 

to send the Chinese home. 55 The Mexicali Valley’s 

Japanese colony departed as well. 56 

Salvador España, a young engineer, was an 

influential local advocate for ejidos in the mid- 

1920s. A decade later, he launched a transnational 

movement on the Baja California borderlands to 

encourage the landless to petition for the federal 

government’s expropriation and redistribution 

of the CRLC estate. Although deathly ill and bedridden, 

España worked tirelessly to see his life’s 

work come to fruition. 57 In June 1936, ejido activists 

brought together 3,000 campesinos in Mexicali 

to demand land. 58 Baja California residents 

also requested government favors and subsidies. 

In July 1936, for example, the new territorial 

1

governor, General Gabriel Gavira, met with President 

Cárdenas to discuss speeding up land sales 

and building a railroad line to the adjoining state 

of Sonora. 59 To placate frustrated residents, the 

government purchased construction material and 

announced plans to start laying tracks, putting 

700–800 men to work. 60 

After a year of investigations and reports on 

colonizing the Mexicali Valley, President Cárdenas 

urged citizens in a national radio address in 

September 1936 to support his vision of building 

up the southern territory of Quintana Roo 

and the northern territory of Baja California. He 

estimated a cost of eight million pesos to build 

schools, rail lines, irrigation projects, and eliminate 

import duties. He referred to negotiations 

with the United States to allow a satisfactory portion 

of the Colorado River to irrigate Mexicali and 

invited expatriates to return to Mexico. A week 

later, the Mexican Senate affirmed Cárdenas’s territorial 

development plan. 61 

Over a period of nine months following its April 

1936 contract with the Mexican government, 

the CRLC had settled only a few hundred colonists. 

Disaffected ejidatarios (supporters of communal 

farms) responded to the slow pace with 

violence. Agraristas seized farms and compelled 

the government to legitimize their actions. Their 

defiance is celebrated today in the Mexicali Valley 

as “El Asalto a las Tierras” (The Assault on the 

Lands). At a rowdy meeting with the governor on 

January 26, 1937, a leader exclaimed: “Look Mr. 

Governor, Article 27 of the Constitution says that 

the lands are the property of the nation; that is 

why we request them. If you are going to deny 

us our constitutional rights as Mexicans, we will 

use force to take the lands, and if you do not 

give us water, we will break the floodgates.” 62 

The next morning, some 400 agraristas seized 

CLRC ranches and chased off the Asian and 

Mexican tenants. Troops hauled the leaders to the 

stockade, but President Cárdenas immediately 

released them. Taken aback by the brazen land 

grab, Cárdenas requested the agraristas send a 

delegation to Mexico City to meet with him. 63 

In the interim, militants took over farms and 

told small landowners, tenants, and even longtime 

farmers living on the territorial communes 

to leave. When reports of these abuses reached 

Cárdenas, he ordered the territorial governor 

to send soldiers to quell the disorder. In a stern 

message, the governor released a statement 

from the president that called illegal land seizure 

treason. Over the next few days, troops arrested 

some eighty squatters. But agraristas ignored 

the soldiers, leaving tenants and Mexican farmers 

wondering whether to proceed with planting 

or wait until the government resolved the crisis. 

Although a new governor, Colonel Rodolfo Sánchez 

Taboada, assured the public that unrest and 

squatting would not be tolerated, the Cárdenas 

administration gave no assurances to the small 

landowners who had signed long-term mortgages 

with the CRLC or to the residents of the territorial 

cooperatives that their property would be protected 

beyond the current year. 64 

News of the agraristas’ land seizure galvanized 

the country’s major labor organizations to send 

messages to President Cárdenas urging him 

not to use the military against the militants. In 

Mexico City, the meeting between the delegation 

of agraristas and Cárdenas had the desired effect. 

No longer willing to tolerate the suffering of the 

peasantry, the president jettisoned the colonization 

plan for self-supporting farmers and decided 

instead to expropriate the CRLC’s estate in March 

1937. The stunning announcement came from 

the chief of the agrarian department, who would 

remain in Mexicali until the transfer of CRLC 

property to ejidos was complete. The government 

opened a land bank and an agrarian agency with 

an engineer to oversee the technical aspects of 

the operation. The National Bank of Communal 

Farm Credit in Mexico City pledged a million 

pesos in farm financing to 2,500 ejidatarios. 65 

1 


Bolstered by the expropriation announcement, 

agraristas issued menacing threats to the small 

landowning farmers, cooperative farmers, and 

tenants. Spurred by rumors of impending violence 

and land seizure, the governor reiterated 

that current contracts and tenant agreements 

would be enforced. Terrorized by militants, 

farmers and tenants sent telegrams to President 

Cárdenas begging for assurance their property 

rights were secure. Receiving no reply, a delegation 

of yeoman farmers traveled to Mexico City 

to personally state their case. A few days later, 

a thousand small farmers and tenants staged a 

U.S.-style sit-down strike in the territorial palace 

demanding protection and exemption from the 

ejido plan. When union members sympathetic to 

the small farmers met in Mexicali, several hundred 

agraristas assaulted them. In the countryside, 

armed militants told farmers to leave. 66 

With the government unwilling to enforce martial 

law in the rural areas, farm families converged 

in the territorial palace’s park. For twenty 

days, 10,000 protesters held a sit-down strike, 

refusing to leave until they met with the president. 

When Cárdenas rejected their demands, 

they sent a scathing letter accusing officials of 

misleading him. Cárdenas assigned a presidential 

commission to resolve the dispute. But the “striking 

farmers” had allies among the commercial 

sectors of Mexicali and with trade unions, and 

expressions of support poured in from around 

the nation. As tense negotiations dragged on, the 

determined farmers and their allies threatened a 

general shutdown of Baja California. Local and 

national support for the strikers convinced Cárdenas 

to modify his communal plan. He exempted 

the territorial cooperatives, eleven newly created 

federal colonies, four privately owned colonies, 

nine colonies created by the CRLC under the 

original colonization contract, and Colonia 

México Libre, established for the December 

1934 repatriation caravan. Government officials 

also pledged compensation to farmers for losses 

caused by the agraristas. 67 

The Mexican government swiftly prepared ejidos 

for landless residents and repatriates. Shipments 

of farm machinery arrived, surveyors marked 

boundaries, and tenants were given final dates to 

harvest crops and vacate ranches. In a surprising 

announcement, after years of lobbying by Mexicali 

merchants and businesses, Cárdenas decreed 

a (mostly) duty-free zone along the Baja California 

borderlands in June—another example of the 

president’s determination to populate and spur 

economic growth on the borderlands. By July, 

the Agrarian Commission had created over forty 

ejidos with almost 5,000 settlers. When Cárdenas 

left office three years later, the government had 

taken over 422,000 acres dedicated to more than 

fifty communal farm settlements. Between 1915 

and 1946, a total of sixty-four ejidos and thirty-six 

colonies were carved out of the CRLC’s fiefdom. 68 

divergent economic outcomes 

The astounding developments in the Mexicali 

Valley had an immediate impact on the Imperial 

Valley labor force. The overabundance of labor 

that had pleased Imperial Valley farmers ended at 

the same time as the expropriation of the CRLC 

estate. In March 1937, ten days after the CRLC 

seizure, a roundtable discussion among prominent 

state and local officials and agribusiness 

leaders had conferred to address unemployment, 

welfare, and seasonal labor for the upcoming harvests. 

Traditionally in June, when the cantaloupe 

season reached its zenith, plenty of workers vied 

for jobs. But migratory campesinos were not 

arriving as before and employers complained of 

a severe shortage of “experienced” (the code word 

for Mexicans, in agricultural parlance) melon 

pickers to harvest the highly perishable crop. 

Although white men were begging for jobs, the 

employment director affirmed, “Let it be understood 

that I want and will accept only thoroughly 

experienced men.” Despite his request of 150 

pickers from other county employment agencies, 

1

would show up. In February 1938, some 2,000 

white families from Texas and Arizona answered 

advertisements for American pea pickers. It 

appears that campesinos had rejected the Imperial 

Valley as a destination on the migration 

circuit. Lackluster crop prices in 1938 and 1939 

further reduced migrant jobs. 70 Thus, events on 

both sides of the invisible Imperial-Mexicali border 

drew repatriates to the Mexicali Valley. 

A Mexican migrant worker thins and weeds cantaloupe plants in the 

Imperial Valley in March 1937. Illustrative of back-breaking industrial 

agriculture, each cantaloupe in this field had a waxed paper 

“cap” placed on it by hand and spread over a wire wicket to protect 

against cold and to accelerate growth. By June, campesinos had 

found better working and living conditions across the border, impacting 

the availability of Mexican laborers in the Imperial Valley. 

Library of Congress, photograph by Dorothea Lange 

150 Mexicans from other areas who were released 

from the welfare rolls spurned the Imperial Valley. 

Only twenty-six men showed up, with a few 

small groups trickling in later. 69 

In October of that year, while officials in the 

Mexicali Valley were settling repatriates on ejidos 

across the border, the Imperial County employment 

officer who had played an instrumental 

role in forcing unemployed persons off the welfare 

rolls and into the fields could not explain 

why Mexicans had not arrived to pick cotton, 

despite the availability of 500 jobs. “Migratory 

farm laborers are not coming back to the valley 

this year as early as in past years,” he remarked. 

Three weeks later, he was still hoping migrants 

In 1939, President Cárdenas embarked on a 

two-month, 6,000-mile farewell tour of Mexico’s 

northern border. He inspected 400 communities, 

devoting nearly all his time on agrarian 

projects ushered in during his administration. 

Cárdenas spent five days in Mexicali, conferring 

day and night with peasants and small farmers. 

In a speech at an ejido, he exhorted the settlers 

to work hard, shun drinking, and rebuild the 

Mexican economy. In another speech, he urged 

Mexicans living in the United States to return 

home. Cárdenas deepened his commitment 

to develop the desert region by approving of a 

twelve-million-peso irrigation district on the former 

CRLC estate. In addition to pledging to finish 

the railroad to Sonora, he endorsed a two-millionpeso 

bond to finance a 131-mile road to the port of 

San Felipe to develop fishing and tourism, as well 

as other business-friendly initiatives. 71 

Underscoring the high government priority given 

to colonizing the Mexicali Valley, Cárdenas designated 

Ramón Beteta, Mexico’s undersecretary of 

state for foreign affairs, with overseeing the repatriation 

of Mexican nationals living in California. 

Cárdenas set up the northern territorial colonization 

commission, headed by the territorial 

governor. As chief colonizing agent, the governor 

was given broad powers to speed up settlement. 

He was also instructed to recruit colonists from 

both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Cárdenas’s 

efforts to Mexicanize the northern portion of Baja 

California paid handsome dividends. The region’s 

1940 census (including Tijuana) revealed that 

77,509 of the 78,907 residents were Mexicans. 


In the Mexicali Valley, the population increased 

from 29, 985 in 1930 to 44,399 a decade later. 72 

Bridging Eras 

The Great Depression ended a generation of 

Mexican family circular transnational and domestic 

migration. A repertoire of strategies including 

U.S. migration, mutualista self-help, strikes, and 

voluntary repatriation, which had given Imperial 

Valley campesinos the ability to improve their 

economic status, ended when wages declined, 

strikes failed, and jobs became scarce. National 

and international events overshadowed changing 

local conditions. The United State’s deportation 

and massive forced repatriation of Mexican 

nationals played into President Lázaro Cárdenas’s 

vision of colonizing Mexico’s northern borderlands 

with small farmers. In 1937, when Cárdenas 

expropriated the CRLC’s vast landholdings, 

Mexican repatriates embraced the opportunity to 

exchange a difficult itinerant lifestyle in America 

for the prospect of farming in the Mexicali Valley. 

Although repatriation, land expropriation, and 

colonization took place across the U.S.-Mexico 

borderland, recent scholarship on Cárdenas’s 

repatriation efforts in the Mexican states adjoining 

Texas most closely resembles what transpired 

in the Imperial-Mexicali region, albeit with 

significant differences. More ethnic Mexicans 

lived in Texas than in any other U.S. state and 

most repatriates came from Texas, which had a 

reputation of being virulently anti-Mexican. Consequently, 

there were more repatriate colonies 

in the Mexican states south of Texas. One of the 

unique factors of colonization in the Mexicali 

Valley was Baja California’s vulnerability to U.S. 

annexation, which propelled Mexico to populate 

the region. Another difference between the 

Mexicali Valley and other parts of Mexico’s far 

north involved the race to build up water usage 

from the Colorado River before the completion of 

Boulder Dam. 

Voluntary repatriation bridged two eras of Mexican 

mobility: family circular migration and the 

Bracero Program. The depopulation of ethnic 

Mexicans from the United States alarmed American 

employers during World War II. The loss of 

plentiful low-wage campesino migrants, however, 

presented an opportunity to create a new 

seasonal Mexican labor regime, but this time 

without families, theoretically avoiding the vexing 

issues of housing, schooling, and assimilating 

ethnic Mexicans. Building on the cooperation 

between the U.S. Border Patrol and Mexico’s 

Migration Service for voluntary repatriation, the 

two governments enacted the Bracero Program, 

a partnership creating a labor migration arrangement 

restricted to men. 

The Bracero Program was initially appealing 

to Mexico because it now regulated migration, 

thereby maintaining a steady flow of remittances 

while providing a safety valve for excess 

unemployment. It also minimized the number 

of expatriates and eliminated the need to resettle 

thousands of Mexican nationals expelled from 

the United States during an economic downturn. 

U.S. employers strongly supported the Bracero 

Program because it gave them the ability to regulate 

seasonal labor needs. Braceros eventually 

replaced most American migrant farm workers 

in the American West and significantly reduced 

strikes, which served to maintain wages and 

working and living conditions satisfactory to U.S. 

employers. 

Benny J. Andrés Jr. is Assistant Professor, Department 

of History and Latin American Studies Program, at the 

University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His current work 

is a manuscript tentatively titled “Power and Control in the 

Imperial-Mexicali Valley: Nature, Agribusiness, Labor and 

Race Relations, 1900–1940.” 

1

If Walls Could Speak: 

San Diego’s Historic Casa de Bandini 

By Victor A. Walsh 

From the far side of the historic plaza, the 

restored, two-story Cosmopolitan Hotel 

with turned wooden columns and baluster 

railings stands in the soft morning light—a 

sentinel to times gone by. Originally built in 

1827–29 as the family residence of Juan Bandini 

and forty years later converted into Old Town’s 

principal hotel and stage office, it is one of the 

most noteworthy historic buildings in the state. 1 

Few buildings in California rival its scale or size 

(8,000 sq. ft.) or blending of nineteenth-century 

Mexican adobe and American wood-framing construction 

techniques. It boasts a rich and storied 

past—one that has been buried in the material 

fabric and hidden in written and oral accounts 

left behind by previous generations. 

Over its 182-year history, this San Diego landmark 

changed and evolved to accommodate new 

uses, new construction methods and materials, 

and new cultural values and tastes. Like history, it 

is not a museum piece. As Juan Bandini’s singlestory 

adobe home, its construction depended 

largely on local materials and the availability of 

Kumeyaay Indian labor from nearby Mission San 

Diego de Alcalá. Its very size, advanced design, 

zaguán (central entranceway), and elevated position 

on the plaza represented the elite status 

and patriarchal values of a man who envisioned 

his home as the center of family life and pueblo 

activities. It also signified something less tangible 

or obvious: Bandini’s resolve to stay and make 

San Diego his patria (homeland). 

In 1869, when Albert Lewis Seeley, the Texas 

stage master, converted Bandini’s adobe into the 

Cosmopolitan Hotel, Old Town was already losing 

much of its Mexican orientation and part of 

its Californio character—a way of life that was 

largely seasonal, task-oriented, and oral. The 

hotel, the pride of an American frontier society in 

transition, personified this cultural shift. It incorporated 

new building materials, architectural 

elements, and interior furnishings and features, 

as well as such amenities as clocks, newspapers, 

printed fees, and schedules. It offered a multiplicity 

of relatively new commercial services, 

including a post office and barbershop, along 

with its operation as a hotel, bar, restaurant, and 

stage office. In a word, the hotel embodied what 

society was becoming: more mobile in terms of 

distance and speed and more disciplined and 

exacting in time. It also reflected the differentiation 

between public and private space that was 

less sharply delineated in the earlier Mexican era. 

Beginning in 1930, three successive remodels 

transformed the building into an upscale tourist 

attraction. The first, undertaken by Bandini’s 

 


The recently renovated Cosmopolitan Hotel in Old Town San Diego stands once again on the historic plaza, resplendent 

in its original nineteenth-century glory. It is, as one current observer put it, “a resurrection of the past,” when 

many envisioned the hotel’s opening in 1869 as a sign of a new and more prosperous era for the tiny frontier community. 

This historic landmark—initially the home of Juan Bandini, one of Mexican California’s most prominent 

citizens, and today a hotel, restaurant, and bar—fulfills the long-term goal of many San Diegans to recognize and 

preserve a part of their cultural and architectural heritage. 

Photograph by Sandé Lollis 

grandson Cave J. Couts Jr., was the most important 

because it signified a cultural redirection 

by a struggling community hoping to capture a 

portion of the heavy auto-tourist traffic en route 

to the city’s acclaimed California Pacific International 

Exposition. Historical myths celebrating 

southern California’s Spanish origins arose out 

of nostalgia for an idealized past shattered by the 

sudden rise of a modern, urban-industrial society. 

Future operators, attracted by potential profits 

from Old Town’s identity with a Spanish past, 

converted the building into a luxurious Spanish 

Colonial hacienda that not only misrepresented 

its history and those associated with it, but also 

ignored the nineteenth-century Mexican Californio 

heritage. 

The preservation of historic buildings, structures, 

and landscapes provides tangible links to 

an otherwise physically vanished past. They are 

part of a “living tradition”—voices from the past 

that help tell us how those who came before us

once lived and worked. They narrow the “space 

of experience” that separates us from them. This 

is why California State Parks, with invaluable 

assistance from local preservation organizations, 

decided to restore this historic landmark to its 

appearance as the Cosmopolitan Hotel. 2 

Historic preservations and restorations are 

important for another less tangible but equally 

compelling reason. They are places that hold collective 

memories, multiple stories. 3 They offer us 

a coherent identity. The question or challenge is 

which cultural memories, stories, or identities 

can or will be remembered. The Cosmopolitan 

Hotel is a case in point. Recently, the San Diego 

Reader published an article arguing that its restoration 

as an American hotel ignores by necessity 

or choice its Mexican origins and heritage. 4 The 

implication is clear: either the building should 

have been left alone, unrestored in its nonhistoric 

state, or it should have been restored as the Casa 

de Bandini, requiring the removal of the entire 

second floor in violation of preservation standards 

and law. Neither of these options is acceptable. 

The solution, if one exists, is to provide 

tours, a documentary film or commemoration, or 

nonintrusive exhibits that address the building’s 

multiple layers of history and those cultural 

memories associated with it. 

Mexican California: The Casa and 

the Don, 1829–1859 

Juan Bandini would become one of the most 

prominent men of his day in California. Born in 

Arica, Peru, on October 4, 1800, he was the son 

of Captain José María Bandini, a Spanish-born 

naval officer stationed near Lima, and Ysidora 

Blancas, a native Peruvian of Spanish descent. 

The only surviving child of that marriage, Bandini, 

like his father, was the product of the 

Old and New Worlds. In his youth they sailed 

together to Europe, where Bandini completed his 

schooling in Spain and Italy with a focus on law. 5 

During the second decade of the nineteenth century, 

Spain’s New World territories were in the 

throes of rebellion against Spanish rule. Captain 

Bandini, who had returned to a politically unstable 

Lima, spent much of his time on the open 

sea, stopping and trading at Latin American and 

Mexican ports. In 1819 and 1821, he sailed up the 

Pacific coast from San Blas to deliver supplies 

and troops to the presidios at San Diego, Los 

Angeles, and San Francisco. A year later, by then 

retired, a widower, and a loyal citizen of Mexico, 

he decided to resettle in San Diego, lured by the 

promise of a new beginning. His twenty-twoyear-old 

son Juan, who admired his father and 

had no lasting ties to Lima, accompanied him. 6 

In 1827, Governor José María Echeandía granted 

Juan Bandini and José Antonio Estudillo, his 

brother-in-law, adjoining house lots on the plaza, 

measuring “100 varas square [277.5 x 277.5 ft.] 

in common.” 7 Through his marriage to Dolores 

Estudillo and after her death in 1833 to Refugio 

Argüello, the daughter of another influential 

Spanish Californio family, Bandini carved out an 

illustrious career as a politician, civic leader, and 

rancher. He allied his large family with influential 

American immigrants and welcomed American 

statehood. His American sons-in-law included 

Abel Stearns, the wealthy Los Angeles trader and 

cattle baron, Colonel Cave J. Couts, a prominent 

San Diego rancher, and Charles Robinson Johnson, 

a Los Angeles business associate. 8 

Bandini’s one-story adobe home was originally 

U-shaped, with two wings extending away from 

the plaza parallel to present-day Juan and Calhoun 

Streets. 9 It featured built-in, adobe-layered 

cornices and unexposed roof rafters—Spanish 

Colonial elements usually found only in the 

designs of California’s missions. According to 

Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo’s drawing from memory, 

10 the house had eight rooms, 11 a zaguán, a 

kitchen attached to the wing on Calhoun Street, 12 

and two patios in the rear, 13 along with a corral 

and shed for rigging and harnessing horses. 

 


In 1856, the artist Henry Miller traveled 

throughout Alta California along the El 

Camino Real, from San Francisco to San 

Diego, sketching cities, towns, missions, 

and landscapes. “For one view of San 

Diego,” the jurist Benjamin Hayes wrote, 

“Mr. Miller received the beggarly sum of 

$10. An artist here cannot make enough 

to pay his bill at the hotel for four days.” 

Despite this obstacle, Miller completed 

a sketch illustrating the pueblo, a detail 

of which shows Juan Bandini’s adobe 

and the adjacent Casa de Estudillo, the 

pueblo’s two largest homes. 

Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, 

University of California, Berkeley

California State Parks’ 

Restoration 

The three-year renovation of the Cosmopolitan Hotel by 

California State Parks, with support from local preservation 

organizations and companies, began in 2007. In this photograph, 

archaeologists patiently uncover the original cobblestone 

foundation of the north wing of the Casa de Bandini, which 

collapsed during an earthquake in 1862 and was never rebuilt. 

Cobbles were stacked in multiple layers to support the weight 

of the former adobe brick wall. Measuring as much as 7 ft. in 

width, the foundation extends outward with a cobble skirt sloping 

downward beyond the wall in order to deflect water runoff 

from the roof. 

Courtesy of California State Parks 

Water was available from two hand-dug wells. 

The drawing reveals that no exterior doorways 

opened onto the main streets or plaza, probably 

because the building stood on a level cobblestone 

foundation well above the street grade, making 

access difficult. 14 At the southwest corner directly 

across from the plaza, archaeologists have uncovered 

sections of the original foundation. It rises 

4 1 ⁄ 2 ft. from the original street grade to the adobe 

block. The building literally sat on a pedestal 

dominating the plaza. 15 

Alfred Robinson, the New England shipping 

agent for the trading agency Bryant, Sturgis & 

Co., described the stately whitewashed adobe in 

1829 as a “mansion,” which “when completed 

[will] surpass any other in the country.” 16 Built at 

the same time as the Estudillo adobe, the Casa 

de Bandini would take nearly two years to finish. 

The rooms had 3- to 3 1 ⁄ 2-ft.-thick adobe walls 

and deep-seated windows with wooden shutters. 

Cobalt blue floral patterns were painted on 

the finished lime-painted plaster of some of the 

interior walls. The ceilings were heavily beamed 

and covered with muslin to trap insects and dirt. 

The roof was covered with thatch and later clay 

tile. Materials such as the tiles, wood beams, and 

lintels probably were salvaged from the hilltop 

presidio, already in a state of deterioration. In 

1828, Bandini ordered palos colorados (redwood 

posts) from the American merchant John Cooper 

in Monterey. The posts, which measured 1 ⁄ 3 vara 

(11 in.) in diameter and 4.5–5 varas (12.5–13.9 ft.) 

in length, probably were used for the veranda facing 

the lower patio. 17 

The household maintained rigid hygienic standards, 

according to Arcadia Bandini Brennan, 

Juan Bandini’s great-granddaughter. One interesting 

practice carried out by Indian servants was 

hauling the household’s “slops” to the beach, 

where they were buried in holes and braced or 

enclosed with logs. The logs were then removed 

and the human wastes were carried out to sea 

by sand swept in by the waves. Adobe walls were 

 


either painted with lime (whitewash) or plastered 

with slaked lime mixed with sand because the 

high acidic (Ph) levels in the lime kept the walls 

free of fungus and other bacteria. 18 

The front sala (parlor room) was the hub of 

“social gaiety” in old San Diego. Here, Bandini, 

a superb dancer, hosted lavish parties, including 

the weddings of two of his five daughters, 

Dolores and Ysidora, and met with representatives 

from the Mexican Republic and the United 

States. Measuring 33 x 16 ft., the large room was 

the only one in the house with a wooden (white 

pine) floor, and it was well worn by years of 

dancing. Brennan recalled a family tradition of 

placing “little gold dollars” in painted cascarones 

(eggshells), which were tossed to the guests by 

Indian servants during the parties. By the late 

1840s, the room sported a huge Yankee clock 

case, several English fox hunting paintings, a 

picture of George Washington, and an American 

flag, according to U.S.A. Major Samuel P. 

Heintzelman. 19 

Most of the other rooms had compact earthen 

floors. In her memoir, Brennan noted an interesting 

household practice as described by her 

grandaunt. “She told me that . . . the floors were 

fixed by having the ground in each room well 

swept, then wet down by buckets of water. When 

dry, green grasses or soft leafy branches were put 

all over, evenly laid and the beautiful rugs were 

rolled out.” 20 

Alfred Robinson wrote an evocative account of 

the festivities surrounding the blessing of the 

newly constructed home on December 28, 1829. 

The ceremony began at noon, attended by the 

governor (then in residence in San Diego), presidio 

officers, family, and friends. A priest from 

the nearby mission walked from room to room, 

beginning with the sala, sprinkling holy water on 

the walls. Guests then sat down to a sumptuous 

afternoon dinner. That evening, men, women, 

and children from the entire community, “without 

waiting for the formality of an invitation,” 

Robinson recalled, crowded into the grand home. 

In the candlelit sala, a graceful couple performed 

el jarabe (Mexico’s national dance) amid “shouts 

of approbation”: “The female dancer . . . cast her 

eyes to the floor, whilst her hands gracefully held 

the skirts of her dress, suspending it above the 

ankle so as to expose to the company the execution 

of her feet. Her partner . . . was under the 

full speed of locomotion, and rattled away with 

his feet with wonderful dexterity. His arms were 

thrown carelessly behind his back, and secured, 

as they crossed, the points of his serape, that still 

held its place upon his shoulders. Neither had he 

doffed his ‘sombrero,’ but just as he stood when 

gazing from the crowd, he had placed himself 

upon the floor.” 21 

Bandini envisioned his home as a gathering 

place for family and friends. He was deeply fond 

of his daughters Arcadia and Ysidora, who had 

moved to Los Angeles in 1841 when fourteenyear-old 

Arcadia married Abel Stearns. Twelveyear-old 

Ysidora was sent as a companion to her 

older sister. 22 In 1846, he set about refurbishing 

the casa and grounds in hopes of tempting them 

to visit Refugio and him on a more regular basis. 

He ordered fifty pieces of glass, all 8 x 10 in., for 

the installation of paned, wood-framed windows. 

The following year, he replanted the gardens with 

“pretty flowers,” remodeled the lower patio with 

clay brick, and built a detached wooden bathhouse 

for the comfort and privacy of his daughters 

when they visited. “I think they are going to 

like it very much,” he wrote to Stearns. 23 

As time passed and the family grew, more rooms 

were added to both wings. By the late Mexican 

period, there were between twelve and fourteen 

rooms, according to contemporaries. William Kip, 

California’s first Episcopal bishop, who stayed at 

the casa in January 1854, described it as “built in 

the Spanish style, around the sides of a quadrangle 

into which most of the windows open.” 24 

To Bandini, a man driven by an exacting sense 

of duty, caring for the home meant caring for

his family. The casa was the pride of the sparsely 

populated Mexican community, a symbol of the 

family’s patrimony and elite social position. He 

built it to last, to put down roots. San Diego had 

become his patria. 25 

In 1831, Bandini helped launch a successful 

revolt against Governor Manuel Victoria and an 

abortive uprising in 1836–38 against Governor 

Juan Bautista Alvarado. 26 Like his father, he saw 

tremendous potential in a resource-rich Alta 

California, provided it could free itself from the 

yoke of political dominance by Monterey and 

Mexico City. The “great Mexican Federal Republic,” 

he concluded in his Historia de la Alta California, 

had deprived Californios of reaping the 

“advantages and benefits” of their territory. It had 

failed to promote colonization, to protect citizens 

against Indian unrest, to support institutions of 

civil government, and to capitalize on a global 

hide-and-tallow trade by waiving import duties on 

foreign goods. “It is California that has suffered 

the most from the misfortunes that afflict us,” he 

wrote his close friend Mariano Vallejo in 1836. 27 

To Bandini, a man driven by 

an exacting sense of duty, 

caring for the home meant 

caring for his family. The 

casa was the pride of the 

sparsely populated Mexican 

community, a symbol of the 

family’s patrimony and elite 

social position. He built it 

to last. 

Prior to the U.S.-Mexican War (1846–48), Bandini 

had coordinated the sale and shipment of 

provisions to the U.S. military by boat through 

the American consul Thomas Larkin of Monterey. 

28 Ongoing business dealings with American 

traders, especially his ranching activities with 

his son-in-law and business partner Abel Stearns 

and son-in-law Cave J. Couts, had convinced him 

that California’s future lay with the United States, 

not Mexico. 29 

During the war, Bandini forged close relations 

with U.S. military officers stationed in San Diego, 

including Commander Samuel F. Dupont, Lt. 

Colonel John C. Frémont of the California Battalion, 

and later Commodore Robert F. Stockton, 

who had arrived in San Diego in November 1846 

on the frigate USS Congress. Stockton’s mission 

was to fortify and garrison the pueblo and thereby 

protect U.S. access to the bay, the only real harbor 

south of San Francisco, and Bandini’s home 

became his headquarters. “Don Juan Bandini and 

family received the Commodore elegantly at their 

mansion and entertained him sumptuously,” 

recalled the jurist Benjamin Hayes. 30 

San Diego remained an armed camp, its 

residents uneasy in the wake of continued skirmishes 

and cattle rustling. Stockton had fortified 

the abandoned hilltop presidio with gun emplacements 

and U.S. dragoons drilled on the plaza, 

renamed Washington Square. In early December 

1846, messengers from General Stephen Watts 

Kearny’s Army of the West arrived at Bandini’s 

home to inform Stockton that hostile forces had 

surrounded Kearny’s troops in the San Pasqual 

Valley. 31 Stockton sent out a large force to rescue 

the battered column and escort it back to San 

Diego. On December 12, a wounded Kearny and 

his exhausted men arrived at the plaza, greeted 

by the strains of “Hail, Columbia” from Stockton’s 

band. 32 

After the war, the pueblo became a welcome 

stopover for thousands of miners en route to the 

Sierra goldfields. A brisk commerce developed as 

 


hotels, restaurants, billiard halls, tobacco shops, 

and hardware, dry goods, and clothing stores 

sprang up around the plaza, soon to be named 

Old Town, to cater to the throngs of male fortune 

seekers. In 1850, Bandini opened a store in his 

home. Its profits and loans enabled him to make 

improvements to the casa and the following year 

erect a magnificent, two-story, wood-framed lodging 

house east of the plaza, which he named Gila 

House. 33 

Bandini’s extravagant lifestyle and penchant for 

entertaining continued. Doña Refugio recalled 

the Gold Rush as “the reign of prosperity and 

plenty”: “How often did we spend half the night 

at a tertulia [salon]—till 2 o’clock in the morning—in 

the most agreeable and distinguished 

society. Our house would be full of company; 

thirty or forty persons at a table; it would have 

to be set twice. A single fiesta might cost a thousand 

dollars. But, in those days, receipts at my 

husband’s store might pass $18,000 a month.” 34 

With his grand home and extravagant ways, 

Bandini embodied the manners and bearing of 

a transplanted Spanish aristocrat. In later years 

and after his death, he was often referred to as a 

don, the signature title of Old World origins and 

rank. The American author Richard Henry Dana 

Jr., who had met Bandini in 1836, described 

him as “accomplished and proud, and without 

any office or occupation, to lead the life of most 

young men of the better families—dissolute and 

extravagant when the means were at hand. . . . He 

had a slight and elegant figure, moved gracefully, 

and waltzed beautifully, spoke the best of Castilian, 

with a pleasant and refined voice and accent, 

and had throughout the bearing of a man of high 

birth and figure.” 35 

However, Bandini’s letters to Mariano Vallejo 

and Abel Stearns during the late Mexican period 

reveal a far different man—a hardworking 

rancher beset by chronic illness, periodic hardship, 

worry over his family and property, and 

uncertainty about the future of his “native land,” 

During the Mexican era, Juan Lorenzo Bruno Bandini (1800– 

1859) served as secretary to Governor Pío Pico, congressional 

delegate, assembly member, town council member, customs collector, 

mayor, and San Gabriel Mission administrator. During 

the American transition period, he was a San Diego district 

superior judge and city treasurer. His home, Casa de Bandini, 

was at the center of San Diego’s social and political life during 

the 1830s–50s. Despite documentation of burdensome financial 

failures and political disillusionment, it is Bandini’s reputation 

as a wealthy, Spanish-bred gentleman steeped in romantic, cultural, 

and literary pursuits that remains in the forefront of our 

cultural memory. 

California Historical Society; CHS2011.584.tif 

California. He frequently asked for assistance 

unavailable to him in the form of food or medicines, 

like quinine and castor oil, to relieve his 

coughing, asthma, and headaches and to treat 

assorted illnesses afflicting his family and his 

workers. After a poor harvest in 1836, he wrote 

Vallejo in the “name of friendship,” confessing 

that he and his family were in “great need.” He 

asked his close friend if he could spare “a little bit 

of wheat and other things whose use will be adequate 

to sustain life.” Continuing, he explained, 

“Feeding my family is all I yearn for, since misfortune 

has reached its utmost, I lose sleep, I

work incessantly to obtain sustenance, but oh my 

friend, even this doesn’t suffice, this is an unfortunate 

time. . . . I beg you not to miss the opportunity 

if you can send me something to eat.” 36 

William H. Thomes, a crew member of the 

Admittance who met Bandini in 1843, described 

him as “prematurely old” with heavy-set eyes, 

deep wrinkles around the temples, and a decided 

stoop to his shoulders—an indication that hardship 

and worry had taken a toll on his health. 

“This was only five years after Mr. Dana had seen 

him,” noted a surprised Thomes, “and the change 

must have been great in that short time.” 37 

By the summer of 1847, Bandini’s initial optimism 

about American rule had given way to 

growing disillusionment. He decried the coarseness 

of American manners, the breakdown of 

civil order as a result of the Gold Rush, and passage 

of the U.S. Land Act in 1851 allowing U.S. 

claimants to challenge the validity of Spanish and 

Mexican land grants in court. “One sees in the 

towns nothing but drunkenness, gaming, sloth, 

and public manhandling of the opposite sex,” he 

despaired in a letter to Abel Stearns. 38 

Forced to abandon several ranchos due to Indian 

attacks and to defend others in costly court proceedings, 

Bandini became an outspoken critic of 

American policies and legal jurisprudence. He 

condemned the Land Act as a land grab. “We 

are wronged, reviled and insulted,” he wrote in 

the Southern Californian, a Los Angeles–based 

Spanish-English newspaper. The law, he correctly 

noted, required landholders to present evidence 

in the form of surveys to support their claims 

rather than diseños (hand-drawn maps), as was 

the custom under Mexican rule. “The modes of 

procedure were strange to us, everything was foreign, 

even our manner of speech,” he explained. 

“Our inheritance is turned to strangers—our 

houses to aliens.” 39 

Once the placer (or surface) gold had run out, 

the miners stopped coming through San Diego 

en route to the goldfields, and many businesses, 

including the Gila House, folded overnight. With 

no profits from his store, falling cattle prices, and 

wasteful investments, Bandini mortgaged his 

family home and other properties in April 1851 to 

a French gambler, Adolfo Savin, for $12,822.90 

to cover the loan plus interest that he owed this 

creditor. Disaster was only averted when Bandini’s 

son-in-law Charles Johnson, who recently 

had married Bandini’s daughter Dolores, asked 

Stearns to help. “They are awfully cast down 

about this affair,” he wrote to Stearns the following 

month. Stearns interceded and repaid Savin’s 

loan and interest in late 1851. 40 

That year, a debt-ridden and disheartened Bandini 

renounced his U.S. citizenship and returned 

to Baja California. Expelled for inciting political 

unrest, he moved back to Old Town by April 1854 

and opened a tienda barata (cheap goods store), 

in the front sala of his casa. The effort failed, 

however, and by August he had leased part of the 

house to county treasurer Joseph Reiner, who 

opened a hardware and dry goods store. 41 

The following year, Bandini attempted unsuccessfully 

to sell his properties. On August 19, 

1859, he transferred ownership of his home and 

ranchos in Tecate and Guadalupe to Stearns, to 

whom he owed $32,000. He died less than three 

months later on November 1, 1859, at Stearns’s 

home in Los Angeles. 42 

Over the next decade, the old mansion, reflecting 

Old Town’s decline, fell into disrepair. By 1860, it 

was unoccupied, a forgotten epitaph to Bandini’s 

death. In 1862, an earthquake cracked the adobe 

walls in several rooms and collapsed one of the 

end walls. Clearly frustrated by his inability to 

maintain or lease “the old house in San Diego,” 

Stearns wrote to Couts in 1864 that “it would be 

well to nail up the doors and encharge some one 

there to look after it.” 43 


American Transition: The Cosmopolitan 

Hotel, 1869–1888 

In 1869, Stearns at last found a buyer in Albert 

Seeley, a thirty-seven-year-old stage driver from 

Texas, who bought the ruin for $2,000 in gold 

coin. A driver since the age of seventeen, the 5 ft. 

10 in. ruddy-faced Illinoisan had arrived in Old 

Town from Los Angeles in 1867 with his English-born 

wife, Emily, and their children. Shortly 

afterward, he was awarded a government contract 

to carry mail and passengers between Los Angeles 

and San Diego. 44 

Seeley and his partner, Charles Wright, remodeled 

and refurnished the Franklin House on the 

south side of the plaza. Their new operation, the 

U.S. Mail Stage Line, faced multiple difficulties. 

The mail never arrived on time (three times 

weekly) due to poor road conditions, especially 

during winter when rainstorms washed out entire 

sections of the coastal route to San Juan Capistrano. 

River crossings were particularly dangerous, 

and holdups, although infrequent, did occur. 45 

The purchase of Bandini’s house and adjoining 

lots provided Seeley with an opportunity to build 

the necessary facilities for his stage operation and 

to house his passengers in what he called a “firstclass 

hotel.” With Emily’s recent inheritance of 

$8,000, he hired the contractors Henry F. and 

Samuel H. Parsons to renovate the deteriorating 

adobe and add a wood-framed second story and 

new balcony. 46 

An experienced stage driver, Albert Lewis Seeley (1832– 

1898) arrived in 1867 in Old Town, where he operated 

the U.S. Mail Stage Line between San Diego and Los 

Angeles from the Franklin House. Two years later, he 

erected the Cosmopolitan Hotel with money from his 

wife Emily’s inheritance. As his business and investments 

grew, the fashionable hotel became the town’s 

social hub, noted for its “delightful festivity.” Seeley was 

an effective self-promoter, given to exaggeration and fanfare. 

In 1874, he purchased “the largest and most splendid 

stagecoach in San Diego County [and] gave everyone 

in Old Town a free ride.” 


The Cosmopolitan Hotel, or Seeley House as it 

was nicknamed, was an imposing vernacularstyle 

Greek Revival building. Eight thousand 

square feet in size, it represented a fusion of 

nineteenth-century Mexican adobe and American 

wood-framing construction techniques. 

The siding on the second story was mill-sawn, 

old-growth redwood clapboard. The first-floor 

veranda featured turned wooden columns, and 

the second-story balcony was enclosed with 

turned baluster railings. The doorways had fullheight 

pilasters, and the windows were framed 

by large wooden shutters. Bandini’s clay tile 

roof was replaced with a wood-shingled hip 

roof featuring a wide, level overhang covering 

the balcony. The lime-plastered adobe walls on 

the first floor were scored or lined to resemble 

mortared stone—a common practice employed 

to beautify commercial buildings. A large sign 

on the rooftop read Cosmpolitan Hotel. Another 

sign painted on the first-floor adobe façade next 

to the entrance read Los Angeles Stage Office. An 

1

“The very best Concord stages run on this line,” boasted proprietors Albert Seeley and Charles Wright in an advertisement for 

their stage line between San Diego and Los Angeles, which departed from the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Old Town San Diego. 

Though billed as mail coaches, the Concord stagecoaches also transported passengers, gold, and currency throughout the western 

United States. In an interview, Don Luis Serrano, a Seeley stage driver, reflected on the twelve-hour trip on a coach with 

“tough mustangs, about half-broken. . . . I drove two years without an accident, due no doubt to the efficacy of prayer.” 


exterior stairway in the back and an interior stairway 

from the entrance hallway provided access to 

the second-story guest rooms. 47 “The new hotel 

of Mr. A. L. Seeley . . . is truly an elegant building,” 

opined the San Diego Union. “Its broad 

verandahs above and below extending on three 

sides of the whole building give the place a comfortable 

southern air.” 48 

The Cosmopolitan Hotel opened in September 

1869, serving also as a post office and stage office 

for Seeley’s stage line from 1871 to 1887. Advertisements 

in the San Diego Union billed it as a 

“first-class hotel” whose “large and commodious 

hotel” featured “large, well ventilated, and finely 

furnished” rooms and a well-stocked table and 

bar boasting “the choicest wines, liquors and 

cigars.” 49 

Contrary to Seeley’s self-promotional efforts, the 

hotel was not a first-class establishment. It did 

not have gas lighting, plumbing, or private suites. 

Like many frontier institutions, it was multifunctional, 

serving as a telegraph and post office, stage 

depot, and hotel with a bar, billiard room, and 

barbershop operated by a “gentleman of color.” 50 

Except for the corner suite overlooking the plaza, 

the second-story guest rooms were small, indicating 

that private space, unlike today, was not a 

highly valued commodity. The rooms facing the 

street were about 14 ft. deep x 11 ft. wide, while 

those overlooking the rear courtyard, occupied 

by single boarders, were 10 x 11 ft. 51 The rooms 

probably had window shades or possibly blinds, 

one or two mahogany bedsteads with straw or 

woolen mattresses, a washstand, lamp, and a 

table with bowl, pitcher, and mirror. The large 

corner room overlooking the plaza featured a red 

brick fireplace and sliding pocket doors with an 

oak faux finish. 52 

 


The Seeley House catered to visitors traveling by 

stage and to residents of the sparsely settled outlying 

areas with family and business connections 

in Old Town. These included Miguel de Pedrorena 

Jr. of Jamul Valley, whose married sister 

Isabel lived in Old Town; William J. Gatewood, 

the recently hired editor of the San Diego Union; 

and Andrew Cassidy, an Irish-born Soledad Valley 

rancher and county supervisor. Interestingly, 

members of Bandini’s immediate family—Refugio, 

daughters Arcadia and Dolores, and sons 

José María and Juan Bautista—stayed at the hotel 

when visiting relatives. Unfortunately, none of 

them left a written record of what it was like to 

revisit their former home. 53 


Restoration 

Grander and larger than the upstairs guest 

rooms, the bar and sitting rooms on opposite 

sides of the entry hall were the hotel’s public 

show places. The tongue-and-groove Douglas fir 

floors were stained a deep red-brown finish. Most 

of the original woodwork, including the redwoodbeaded 

wainscoting, window wells, and trim, has 

remained intact. The bar itself was probably a 

front-back bar counter, made of either mahogany 

or black walnut with recessed panels. 54 

Along with wine, champagne, and assorted 

liquors, the bar sold its male clientele imported 

Havana cigars for twenty and twenty-five cents 

each; fresh lager beer by the glass, bottle, or gallon; 

all choice brands of liquor; and the “Uncle 

Toby” brandy-rum punch, five for twenty-five 

cents. 55 Ice was available, as were “all the newspapers 

of the day.” Although no known record 

of the bar’s furnishings exists, it most likely 

included an iron safe, a key rack, wall clock, 

hanging lights with ceiling medallions, armchairs 

and tables, and such conventional items as 

ten- and twenty-gallon kegs and spittoons. 56 

Seeley enlarged Bandini’s sala into a “spacious 

sitting room with a fire.” Like the bar, it provided 

a gathering place where female guests and their 

children, boarders, and visitors could take their 

As the cement stucco, chicken wire, and tar paper on the second 

story were removed—remnants from a 1930s remodel by Bandini’s 

grandson, Cave J. Couts Jr.—workers discovered that the hotel’s original 

door and window opening had been boarded up with roof decking, 

providing a perfect blueprint of their locations and dimensions. 

Nearly all of the original mill-sawn redwood clapboard remained 

intact. To see the knot-free, smooth-grained, old-growth redwood is to 

connect with a forgotten past when Old Town was a struggling, dustridden 

frontier hamlet. 

Courtesy of California State Parks

the whole thing hugely. American ladies as well 

as gentlemen being among the lookers-on, from 

the balcony of the Franklin and Cosmopolitan.” 58 

Guests of Albert Seeley’s Cosmopolitan Hotel enjoyed a grand 

view of the plaza’s activities—both unique and mundane—from 

the building’s newly constructed second story. The artist of this 

1887 drawing, originally printed in Harper’s Weekly, preferred 

to capture the romantic notions of the plaza’s Californio past, 

with caballero, bird, and mission bell singing the virtues of an 

earlier time. 

California Historical Society/USC Special Collections 

meals and relax. By the early 1870s, as Emily 

and Albert’s social standing rose, the large room 

with the red-brick fireplace’s warming glow had 

evolved into the town’s community center. It was 

the scene of raffles, family reunions, dances, 

Christmas parties, evening balls, and weddings. 57 

The hotel’s upstairs balcony was literally the 

town’s grandstand where guests and locals could 

observe an array of activities on the plaza—from 

holiday celebrations and circus performances to 

mule team races and bullfights. Rufus Porter, the 

correspondent for the San Francisco Daily Evening 

Bulletin, left a detailed account of one such 

bullfight in December 1869: “Last week Old San 

Diego was in all its ancient and pristine glory— 

the Plaza fenced in and scores of poor bulls 

driven round by the Hijos del Pays [País, Sons 

of the Country] on horseback, care having been 

taken first to saw off the animals’ horns. . . . The 

saloon, store and hotel-keepers seemed to enjoy 

The stage line was the modus operandi for the 

hotel’s existence. By 1871, Seeley had purchased 

the adjoining lot, rebuilt a large barn to house his 

coaches and mud wagons, bought the Blackhawk 

Livery Stable, and put up corral fencing and a 

windmill for pumping water from a red-brick, 

lime-mortared well. The windmill, erected in 

1870 and designed and built by William I. Tustin 

of Vallejo, featured wide horizontal blades, 

a turntable beneath the main shaft, and a selfregulating, 

360-degree turning wheel that could 

shut itself off by turning out of the wind during 

dangerous high-wind conditions. It represented 

mechanical technology far ahead of its time. In 

1872, Seeley purchased the two remaining block 

lots, built another Tustin-designed windmill outside 

the yard, rebuilt or replaced several sheds, 

and planted eucalyptus trees along Juan Street as 

a windbreaker. In 1873–74, the improved hotel lot 

was valued at $2,000. 59 

Seeley’s profit margin was based on delivering 

the U.S. mail, not passengers. By 1871, his Los 

Angeles–San Diego stage service was running 

every day except Sundays in order to service the 

increasing volume of mail. With an overnight 

stop at San Juan Capistrano, the trip took thirtyfive 

hours and cost ten dollars, plus meals. A year 

later, it was cut to twenty-three hours. Passengers 

made the trek in sturdy canvas-roofed Concord 

coaches, while the mail was hauled in lighter 

mud wagons. Over the next several years, Seeley 

and Wright extended their operation into more 

remote areas where mining and farming were 

developing. In 1874, they contracted with Wells 

Fargo and Co. to run coaches to local mountain 

mines and deliver mail and passengers to the 

gold-mining town of Julian. Four years later, the 

U.S. Postmaster General granted Seeley contracts 

from San Bernardino to Los Angeles, Anaheim to 

San Diego, and San Diego to Julian. 60 

 


Among the watercolor sketches of 

California’s adobes by Eva Scott Fenyes 

(1849–1930)—initiated at the urging of 

Charles Fletcher Lummis “as a means 

to record an imperiled landscape”—is 

this 1907 painting of Juan Bandini’s 

renovated Cosmopolitan Hotel during the 

Akerman-Tuffley era. Fenyes overlooked 

the building’s worn condition to create 

an idealized image of the old hotel— 

adjacent to the Casa de Estudillo—that 

promoted her romantic vision of the 

state’s Spanish and Mexican heritage. 

Braun Research Library, Autry National 

Center; FEN.64 

The great fire of 1872 devastated the historic plaza 

and without sea or rail connection, the community 

languished. “Old Town is a heap of adobe 

ruins with a few scattering habitable dwellings,” 

wrote the historian Hubert Howe Bancroft after a 

visit to Benjamin Hayes in early 1874. The number 

of guests at the Cosmopolitan Hotel steadily 

dropped. As of 1882, it was “without a guest,” 

noted the travel writer William Henry Bishop. 61 

The arrival of the railroad to Los Angeles in 1878 

and New San Diego in 1885 signified the end of 

an era in Old Town. By 1887, Seeley had ceased 

running stages, except for a local line between 

San Diego and Ocean Beach. The following year, 

he sold his hotel and stables to Israel Cohnreich 

from San Francisco for $15,000 in gold coin. 62 

Boardinghouse: Akerman and Tuffley, 

1888–1919 

In the decade that followed, the hotel became 

a rooming house. In 1896, the English entrepreneurs 

Edward Akerman and Robert Tuffley 

leased the building, including Seeley’s large barn, 

from Josephine Newman, who had purchased it 

from Cohnreich earlier that year. They converted 

the barn and, a few years later, the downstairs of 

the hotel into olive-pickling and -packing rooms. 

Bandini’s beloved sala became their office. The 

Old Mission Olive Works won many national 

and international awards for their olive products, 

in part because the building’s thick adobe walls 

provided a cool, year-round “even temperature.” 

The Akerman and Tuffley families, along with a 

few of their employees and friends, lived in the 

upstairs guest rooms. 63 

In her memoir of her years growing up in Bandini’s 

casa, Susan Davis Tiffany, a family friend 

of the Akermans, recalled many of the physical 

details of the house during the early 1900s. “The 

Bandini house had neither plumbing nor electricity 

when I went there [in 1898], but both were 

installed later. . . . There was a large fireplace in a 

big room downstairs which had presumably been 

the Bandini parlor, and two small grates were in 

upstairs rooms. None of these supplied adequate 

warmth and we supplemented them with portable 

kerosene-burning heaters. . . . Small kerosene 

hand lamps were our only lighting.” Cooking was 

performed on a wood-burning iron stove. As in 

days past, water was kept cool in ollas (earthenware 

jars). There was no telephone, no gas and 

no refrigeration. 64

The house and grounds, however, had been 

significantly altered since the Cosmopolitan 

Hotel’s heyday. The second-story rooms were 

divided up and rented out to boarders, including 

the Tiffany family. Eucalyptus and pepper trees 

shaded the house and morning glory and honeysuckle 

vines grew in profusion on the porches. 

There were also outdoor tennis and croquet 

courts. The two old wells dating to Bandini’s 

time—one located at the end of a wing and the 

other in the horse corral—were boarded up. 65 

The Tiffany memoir provides insight into the 

boarding house experience in early twentiethcentury 

America. The household was multiethnic 

and multigenerational. Along with 

Mexican and Indian servants who lived nearby, 

the residents included the Akermans and Tuffleys; 

the Altamiranos, an old Californio family 

related to the Pedrorenas and Estudillos; and 

Susan, her sister Elizabeth, and their great aunt, 

Rebecca Davis from North Carolina. The children 

were the household’s bonds. “We grew 

up together like sisters and brothers,” recalled 

Susan. “There were usually twelve or more 

regular residents in the house, and sometimes 

visitors for a short period. . . . So in the Historic 

Bandini house were several generations and a 

variety of national and genealogical lines.” 66 

Akerman and Tuffley operated the olive works 

at the hotel until 1915, when construction of 

their new plant, a large Mission-style building 

a block away, was completed. 67 The Casa de 

Bandini’s association with an industry dating to 

the Franciscan missionaries “seems to remind 

one of the days ‘before the Gringo’ came when 

black-eyed senoritas would sit in the evening 

thrumming the guitar and gossiping over 

the last Fandango,” noted a San Diego Union 

reporter in 1902. 68 

Nostalgia, though, did not halt the historic 

building’s deterioration. Photographs from 

the 1920s show huge chunks of plaster broken 

off from the adobe walls, railings missing, and 

a badly rotting porch deck. By 1920, only four 

boarders—Edward Akerman, his wife Ysabel 

Altamirano, his sister Ellen, and Robert Tuffley—remained. 

The following year, the building’s 

assessed value dropped to a mere $300 from 

$1,250 in 1900. By 1928, it stood vacant, abandoned 

by the misfortune of time. 69 

A Landmark Saved: Couts’s Restoration, 

1928–1945 

On July 21, 1928, Bandini’s grandson Cave J. 

Couts Jr. bought the entire block on which the 

old hotel stood for $12,500. Two years later, he 

transformed the dilapidated family home into 

a hotel and restaurant remodeled in the thenpopular 

Steamboat Revival style. The establishment 

was called the Miramar Hotel. 70 

The first-floor porch was plastered and trimmed 

with a balustrade railing of “cast stone,” or 

concrete. Decorative white lath curved screens 

embellished the tops of the porch and balcony on 

all sides. The cement stucco walls were painted 

yellow, the window sashes white, and the porch 

trim green and brown. The wide, horizontally 

In the early 1930s, Cave J. Couts Jr. (1856–1943)— 

the self-described “Last of the Dons” (opposite, 

inset)—remodeled his grandfather Juan Bandini’s 

former residence in the fashionable Steamboat Revival 

architectural style. He stuccoed the entire building, 

covered the roof with asphalt shingles, and embellished 

the tops of the porch and balcony with white lath 

screens. Despite adding modern conveniences, Couts 

publicly associated his new hotel with the cultural 

traditions of a festive and romantic Spanish past. In 

later years, he spearheaded efforts to restore the Pala 

Mission, beautify Old Town’s plaza, and repair the 

County Courthouse. His final project, a plan to create 

El Pueblito Centro Internacional on the historic 

community’s plaza, never bore fruition. 

Couts’s portrait: Courtesy of County of San Diego, Parks 

and Recreation History Office; Couts’s Casa de Bandini/ 

Miramar Hotel: California Historical Society/USC Special 

Collections 

 


extended overhang that graced the roof of the 

Cosmopolitan Hotel was removed. The wooden 

shingles of the old hotel were replaced with 

asphalt shingles. Junipers, century plants, and 

other exotic shrubbery lined the garden beds 

along Mason and Calhoun Streets. For the first 

time, the building was equipped with plumbing 

to provide hot and cold running water for the 

bathrooms and kitchen and gas lines for modern 

appliances, such as a three-burner gas-plate 

range. The electrical system, installed in the 

century’s first decade, was upgraded. 71 

The development of the auto-tourist industry and 

the public’s captivation with the state’s Spanish 

origins had convinced Couts, who envisioned 

himself as “the last of the dons,” to market the 

hotel as an upscale tourist destination that celebrated 

a Spanish heritage rich in pageantry and 

refinement. His decision was influenced by the 

city’s transformation into a tourist Mecca noted 

for its Mediterranean-like climate and gay festive 

spirit and by efforts to promote the historic 

community’s Spanish heritage. 

In 1908, sugar magnate and investor John D. 

Spreckels had extended his downtown streetcar 

line to Old Town and hired local architect Hazel 

W. Waterman to restore the Casa de Estudillo, by 

then a ruin, adjacent to the Casa de Bandini. It 

was restored “as a typical old Spanish California 

dwelling,” she explained, not “as it was originally, 

nor as it developed thru changes and alterations.” 

Completed in 1910 on the eve of the Panama- 

California Exposition, the restoration launched 

one of California’s earliest historic tourist attractions 

and helped engender a mythical fascination 

with the state’s early Spanish heritage. Under 

showman Tommy Getz’s management, the 

historic adobe was promoted as “Ramona’s Marriage 

Place,” attracting a steady stream of sightseers 

who believed that the chapel in the casa 

was the real setting of a marriage between the 

two principal characters in the bestselling 1884 

novel, Ramona, by Helen Hunt Jackson. Couts, 

who had consulted on the restoration, admittedly 

dismissed the novel as a “greatly distorted” 

romance, but as he confessed to Mrs. S. I. Harritt 

of the Pioneers Society of San Diego, “I certainly 

would hesitate in doing anything that would 

detract from ‘Ramona’s Marriage Place’ at Old 

Town” out of friendship to Getz and appreciation 

of Spreckels. 72 

Other changes followed. The 37-acre Presidio 

Park, overlooking Old Town, opened on July 16, 

1929, the 160th anniversary of the founding of 

California’s first mission. The park’s terraced 

grassy expanses, groves of trees, and strikingly 

beautiful white stucco Junipero Serra Museum, 

with its 70-ft.-high domed tower, recast the historical 

memory of San Diego’s Spanish origins. 

Its development under civic leader George Marston 

and completion of the new Pacific Highway 

spurred Couts and others to reinvent Old Town’s 

historic identity. 73 

Couts’s hotel, however, never prospered during 

the Great Depression and World War II. Few 

tourists visited. Rent money often was directed 

back into maintenance. Rooms sometimes were 

crowded with local transients to reduce expenses, 

and finding responsible or reliable lessees was an 

ongoing problem. Mrs. J. W. Fisher, who managed 

the leasing contracts and took a personal 

interest in the building, complained in one of 

her letters to Couts that “poor old men from the 

county [are] sleeping two, three & four in a room, 

two in the cantina between the dining room & 

scullery and all the other rooms similarly filled. 

Of course that makes it [the casa] not an apartment 

house, club or rooming house or hotel. It is 

just a rest home.” 74 

In March 1935, Couts leased the building to 

Margaret Adams Faulconer, who operated the 

business as a cultural venue under the name 

Casa de Bandini. The timing seemed opportune. 

The California Pacific International Exposition 

would open that summer at San Diego’s Balboa 

Park. Couts hoped to attract visitors from the fair 

 


The image of Spanish dancers illustrating the cover of the official guide to San Diego’s California Pacific 

International Exposition (1935–36) reinforced the city’s focus on “its glorious past dedicated to a glorious 

future.” “Here in southern California,” wrote exposition President Frank Belcher, “we have a rich heritage 

from the gracious days of the Spanish dons. Hospitality has always been a keynote in our lives.” 

California Historical Society

y linking the Casa de Bandini with the cultural 

traditions of Old Spain as exemplified by his 

grandfather. 75 

Cave J. Couts Jr. promoted the casa’s proximity to the enormously 

popular exposition in Balboa Park—“6 Minutes from the Exposition”—in 

this tourist brochure. Inviting visitors to “Live as the Dons 

did,” he appealed to the public’s fascination with “Old Spain.” 

“Your stay within its walls,” he promised potential hotel guests, “will 

become an exquisite memory.” Couts’s description of a residence that 

was “preserved intact as it was in the days of the Dons, and changed 

only by the addition of all modern conveniences” may have appealed 

to popular taste for Spanish romance, but it misrepresented his 

significant changes to the adobe’s original architectural elements. 


Faulconer ran full-page advertisements in the San 

Diego Union featuring images of gaily dressed 

dancers and guitar-strumming caballeros (gentlemen) 

posing in the courtyard garden. One advertisement 

proclaimed: “In all California there is 

no more romantic building than the Casa de 

Bandini, located in Old Town San Diego. Here, 

where once the dashing Dons and lovely senoritas 

recreated the social grace of aristocratic Castille, 

in this one-time province of Spain, has endured 

for nearly a century and a quarter the tradition of 

a great family. Out of the pages of the past onto 

the stage of the present comes a restored and 

brilliant Casa de Bandini. In this transition from 

yesterday to today, nothing of its former charm or 

beauty has been lost. Much of California’s history 

has centered in this truly magnificent specimen 

of real California architecture. . . . It was the home 

of Don Juan Bandini, noted caballero. Today it is 

still owned by the Bandini family, in the person 

of Cave Couts, grandson of Don Juan. On May 25, 

a few days previous to the opening of the California 

Pacific International [Exposition], the Casa 

de Bandini once again will assume its traditional 

place as the center of California’s social gaiety.” 76 

During this time, the Casa de Bandini hosted a 

full repertoire of theatrical, literary, and historical 

events, including evening historical lectures 

and slide shows and workshops by the San Diego 

State Teachers College on “early California plays.” 

The Daughters of the American Revolution and 

other organizations held dinners and meetings, 

usually in the old sala, now a dining area. There 

was even a Spanish costume ball. Theatrical performances 

often focused on the rich pageantry of 

events associated with the region’s early history. 

Evening performances of Heart’s Desire, a play 

about the Bandinis set at the casa in 1846 during 

the U.S.-Mexican War, were staged on the 

rear patio and balcony, glowing with footlights. 

0 


A reviewer characterized “Don Juan Bandini” as 

“a man of culture and refinement” and observed 

that “Bandini, his wife Dolores, and his three 

beautiful daughters, Ysidora, Arcadia and Josefa, 

were the center of social activities in San Diego.” 

He noted that “each night scores of their friends 

and acquaintances gathered to dance and enjoy 

the beauty of the Bandini home and garden.” 

Such plays and the promotional literature of the 

day helped popularize a legendary Bandini who 

was celebrated and remembered for his Old 

World gentility and rank—the “Prince of Hosts,” 

in the words of historian and San Diego Union 

columnist Winifred Davidson. 77 

Of course, Couts’s remodel played upon the 

refrain of an imagined past. The building was 

not a “magnificent specimen of real California 

architecture” but the Cosmopolitan Hotel remodeled 

in a Steamboat Revival architectural style. 

The casa’s historic adobe walls and other features 

were concealed beneath cement stucco façades. 

Balconies and porches that had never existed 

in Bandini’s time were decorated with white 

vertical lath. 78 

Couts’s work crews salvaged and reused nearly 

everything from Seeley’s hotel. They covered the 

massive adobe walls with chicken wire and then 

applied a thick lime plaster over them. This not 

only served as a bonding agent for the stucco, but 

also insulated the adobe from the stucco, allowing 

it to breathe and wick away moisture. The 

hotel’s original door and window openings on 

the second story were boarded up with roof decking. 

These sections stand out from the redwood 

clapboard siding, providing a perfect blueprint 

of the locations and dimensions of the doors and 

windows of the Cosmopolitan Hotel. In addition, 

the stucco layered over chicken wire and tarpaper 

protected the clapboard and square-top ironcut 

nails. 

With the country then mired in the Great Depression, 

it was both costly and impractical for contractors 

to replace existing building materials 

The building is a veritable 

museum of historic fabric, 

layer upon layer revealing 

the secrets of lost crafts 

and building practices. . . . 

Such firsthand evidence is 

the single most important 

source of information 

about the building’s 

history. Nothing—historic 

photographs, drawings, 

written records, or off-site 

salvaged materials—can 

replace it. 

with goods shipped by boat or train. As a result, 

the building is a veritable museum of historic 

fabric, layer upon layer revealing the secrets of 

lost crafts and building practices. In some areas 

of construction, such as the brass pipe for the 

water lines and tongue-and-groove Douglas 

fir flooring on the second floor, Couts did not 

scrimp on money. 

Nonetheless, there was a concerted effort to reuse 

existing material. As a result, much of the historic 

fabric and many architectural features were 

concealed and preserved on-site. Such firsthand 

evidence is the single most important source 

of information about the building’s history. 

Nothing—historic photographs, drawings, written 

records, or off-site salvaged materials—can 

replace it. Unknowingly, Bandini’s grandson 

helped save a family historic landmark for future 

restoration. 79 

1


Restoration 

Tourism and Myth: The Cardwell 

Ownership, 1945–1968 

In 1945, the proprietors James H. and Nora 

Cardwell bought the Casa de Bandini from the 

Couts estate for $25,000. 80 With their financial 

backing, their son Frank renovated it into an 

upscale motel in the image of a Spanish Colonial 

hacienda. The Cardwells hired local architect 

Lloyd Ruocco, an associate of the noted San Diego 

architect, Richard Requa, for the redesign. 81 

Undertaken during 1947–50, when the building 

stood vacant, the renovation was extensive. 

Prominent Steamboat Revival features such as 

the lath, railing, and posts were removed. The 

building assumed a quasi-Spanish Colonial 

appearance with its stucco columns, decorative 

wrought-iron trim, rustic wooden posts and railings 

on the balcony, and ceramic and stone tiles. 

Tropical plants such as palms, banana trees, and 

birds of paradise decorated the courtyard, and 

succulents bordered a large lawn. City directories 

listed the property as the Casa de Bandini Hotel 

under James H. Cardwell’s management from 

1950 to 1965. Cardwell claimed that the remodel, 

which included soundproofing the rooms and 

overhauling the electrical and water systems, cost 

$100,000. 82 

In 1930, Cave Couts Jr.’s work crews covered the massive 

exterior walls of the Casa de Bandini with cement stucco. 

This photograph documents the surprise discovery by renovation 

crews of the intact adobe brick on the first floor, 

with traces of lime paint dating to the Seeley period. The 

patch of thick lime plaster in the upper corner was applied 

in 1930. The adobe’s walls—some 12 ft. high and 31⁄2 ft. 

thick—are an enduring testament to the grueling ordeal of 

nineteenth-century hand labor. 


Cardwell portrayed his hotel as representative 

of early Old Town’s Spanish period even 

though it had no association with either the 

historic building or the community. Tourist brochures 

described the “lavish restoration” as the 

embodiment of “the charm of the early Spanish 

atmosphere.” Images of costumed dancers and 

musicians with guitars and Caribbean drums 

graced many of the pages. 83 

Conflicting Goals: A State Historic 

Park, 1968–2007 

In 1968, the 12.5 acres surrounding the historic 

plaza became Old Town San Diego State Historic 

Park. On December 18 of that year, the state of 


California acquired the Casa de Bandini and 

other Old Town properties from the Cardwells 

for $898,176. 84 Over the next decade, the Casa 

de Bandini stood empty, except for two years, 

1974–76, during which it operated as the park’s 

visitor center. In 1978, it was leased to Diane 

Powers, a talented interior designer who had successfully 

launched her stylish Bazaar del Mundo 

in the park’s historic Casa de Pico Motor Hotel 

in 1971. 85 

Completed in 1950, Frank and Nora Cardwell’s three-year, 

$100,000 renovation transformed the historic building into 

a lavish vernacular Spanish Colonial hacienda. The massive 

stucco columns, wide arcade, decorative wrought-iron 

fixtures, and stone front steps created a false sense of history 

and perpetuated old San Diego’s association with the 

then-popular Spanish heritage fantasy. 


Over the next two years, Powers altered the rear 

courtyard and first floor to accommodate indoor 

and outdoor dining. Decorated with her unique 

and bright décor, the dining ambiance was more 

South American, especially Peruvian, than Spanish 

or Mexican. Powers installed new lighting 

and doors, timbered false beams, glass panels in

wall partitions, and stone and ceramic tiles and 

regraded and raised the courtyard outdoor dining 

area around a large fountain. She expanded 

and upgraded kitchen facilities in the adobe end 

room of the Calhoun Street wing, adding a foodpreparation 

area and a separate freezer space. 

Much of the building’s façade, especially along 

Mason Street, was concealed beneath a tangle 

of tropical shrubbery. 86 The second-story guest 

rooms were converted into offices and storage 

spaces. 87 

The state’s long-term plan to restore the building 

to its appearance as the Cosmopolitan Hotel triggered 

internal divisions and disagreements over 

the state’s preservation standards. Apparently, 

local staff had allowed Powers to remove portions 

of historic interior walls in the first-floor dining 

area, dating to Seeley’s or possibly Akerman’s 

time, without the knowledge or approval of the 

Resource Preservation and Interpretation Division 

(RPID) of Parks and Recreation. 88 

On May 23, 1979, the issue reached a head when 

RPID head James P. Tryner sent a memo to Richard 

A. May, chief of the Development Division, 

stating that “this project must be stopped immediately” 

to prevent further “destruction of historic 

interior walls that are composed of full-dimension 

timbers, square nails, and other material aspects 

indicating a 19th-century date.” In subsequent 

correspondence, Tryner and Dr. Knox Mellon, the 

State Historic Preservation Officer, explained that 

the removal of historic fabric should be kept to a 

minimum, or if that was not possible, properly 

documented, marked, and stored. On June 18, 

May wrote Tryner that the rear partition wall in 

the proposed dining area, already altered with a 

door opening, “will be completely removed.” 89 

Historians, archaeologists, and other preservation-minded 

individuals argued that Powers’s 

remodel of the Casa de Bandini was but another 

example of a park run amuck by commercialism. 

State Senator James Mills, who helped spearhead 

the park’s creation, told the state Park and Recreation 

Commission in 1980 that “Old Town . . . has 

taken on the theme of a shopping center.” He 

accused the state of allowing Powers to take a 

150-year-old building “with an unhistoric appearance 

and make it much more unhistoric than it 

was before.” Writer-historian Richard W. Amero 

called the Bazaar del Mundo and Casa de Bandini 

remodels a “garish intrusion into a historic state 

park” and blamed the Department of Parks and 

Recreation for allowing it to occur. Others, such 

as park concessionaire Geoffrey Mogilner, argued 

that the building should have been restored 

under the state plan as the Cosmopolitan Hotel 

rather than remodeled as an exotic contemporary 

restaurant. 90 

Public sentiment, however, sided with Powers. 

Under her management, the Casa de Bandini 

Restaurant became an immediate success and 

extremely popular with local San Diegans. The 

San Diego Union described its opening in 1980 as 

the dawn of a “new era”: “Every effort has been 

made to create the house that thrived 100 years 

ago. Intricacies of California’s history and memorabilia 

are scattered throughout, as well as the tile 

and paint artistry of Craftsmen from Mexico and 

Southern California. Furnishings and statuary of 

rich wood and brass make every corner a source 

of charm; woven upholstery and wall hangings, 

from the looms of Mexico and Guatemala grace 

every room. Outside the sunny patio surrounds 

a romantic fountain on the very site of Juan 

Bandini’s original structure. Patrons dine in an 

environment of lush gardens, colorful umbrellas, 

shrubbery and trees that closely duplicate the 

surroundings that Juan Bandini himself enjoyed. 

An extensive menu incorporates the best of 

Spanish Mexican and Early California cuisine. A 

sampling; Especial de San German, Red Snapper, 

Taco Feast, (and) Crab Enchiladas.” 91 

Powers, like Couts and Cardwell before her, promoted 

the casa’s history as a fanciful recreation 

of a past that had never existed in early San 

 


Diego. Over this fifty-year period, the building’s 

historic identity and meaning became a masquerade 

concealed by imposing stucco columns 

and walls, wrought iron grillwork, ceramic and 

stone tiles, and exotic gardens. By the 1980s, 

it had taken on the appearance of a luxurious 

quasi-Spanish Colonial hacienda that in no way 

resembled either Bandini’s original home or 

Seeley’s hotel. 

Why had this happened Historic architect Ione 

Stiegler argues that the alterations were “commercially 

motivated . . . always conducted under 

the claim of authentic restoration representing 

California’s romantic Spanish past.” This raises 

several questions: Why did Couts, Cardwell, 

Powers, and so many others embrace what the 

social reformer and journalist Carey McWilliams 

has called the “Spanish heritage fantasy” What 

explains the nostalgia for an idealized Spanish 

heritage that seemed to grip southern California 

in general and San Diego in particular 92 

San Diego, like much of southern California, 

was an instant creation that had evolved over 

several decades into a modern, sophisticated, and 

progressive city, despite its limited size. Its civic 

leaders and boosters were aware that its bayside 

location, warm and health-inducing climate, 

unspoiled beauty, and Spanish origins made it 

a unique and inviting place, a harbinger of an 

urban future designed as much for leisure as 

for work. This period of cultural transformation 

was framed by the 1915–16 Panama-California 

and 1935–36 California Pacific International 

Expositions. Internationally acclaimed, the fairs 

showcased the city’s prominence and introduced 

millions to Spanish Colonial architectural styles 

and the region’s identity with a romantic Spanish 

past. During its 377 days of operation, the second 

exposition attracted 7.2 million visitors. “The 

world,” remarked board chairman G. Aubrey 

Davidson, had become “San Diego conscious.” 93 

At the heart of Spanish 

fantasy in Old Town 

is the man Juan 

Bandini. . . . He was the 

epitome of a Spanish 

don, “the aristocracy of 

the country.” Bandini, 

in short, became an 

American invention, a 

caricature of his real self. 

Newcomers and tourists, largely white and middle 

class, came to San Diego with the expectation 

of finding what historian Phoebe S. Kropp has 

called “the Spanish-inspired good life.” Developers, 

entrepreneurs, publicists, architects, artists, 

and writers promoted this Anglo-American version 

of the past not only to further commerce 

and growth, but also to instill a regional identity 

and pride. As historian Kevin Starr points out, its 

allure stemmed in part from the fact that it “had 

behind it the force of history, in that California 

began as part of the Spanish Empire.” 94 

At the heart of the Spanish fantasy in Old Town 

is the man Juan Bandini. In the words of his 

grandson Cave J. Couts Jr., he was a “noted caballero” 

who embodied the grace and elegance of 

Old Spain. 95 In this remote frontier society, his 

proud bearing, education, flamboyant dress, 

and extravagant ways set him apart. He was the 

epitome of a Spanish don, “the aristocracy of the 

country,” according to Dana. 96 Bandini, in short, 

became an American invention, a caricature of 

his real self.

This is the cultural memory enshrined in San 

Diego’s folk annals and traditions. Bandini is 

remembered, as one writer recently put it, as a 

“legendary renaissance Californio” who entertained 

“legions of notables.” 97 His home in Old 

Town likewise has become fused with the memory 

of him as a don whose life embodied the 

traditions of Old Spain. Even the building itself, 

despite multiple uses, alterations, and changes in 

name, is registered on the California State Historical 

Landmarks as the Casa de Bandini. 98 

Postscript: California State Park’s 

Restoration, 2007–2010 

In April 2010, California State Parks completed a 

three-year, $6.5 million rehabilitation and restoration 

of the historic landmark, returning it to its 

appearance as the Cosmopolitan Hotel. Roughly 

80 percent of the original fabric and features 

have been preserved or accurately reconstructed, 

including the hotel’s redwood clapboard siding, 

turned wooden columns and baluster railings, 

wood-shingled hip roof, chimneys, tongue-andgroove 

wainscoting and flooring, and doors, door 

fenestrations, windows, and trim. In addition, 

much of the adobe brick, remnants of whitewashed 

walls, most of the original cobblestone 

footprint, and hand-hewn lintels dating to Bandini’s 

time were preserved. 

This was an unprecedented historic restoration, 

arguably the most important one currently in the 

state. Few other buildings rival its scale or size, 

blending of adobe and wood-framing construction, 

association with significant people and 

events, and retention of historic fabric. 99 

The building is important for another, perhaps 

more compelling reason: It allows us the opportunity 

to ask how we should interpret it and those 

connected to it. As an adobe mason who worked 

on the building, I am still haunted by what I 

saw and felt. I remember seeing a fragment of a 

smooth, white-plaster medallion buried in debris, 

patches of fading lime paint and plaster on interior 

walls, and always the long red-brown adobe 

bricks with their deep X-grooved, Mission-era 

scratch marks. They are part of a living tradition, 

but whose tradition We will never know 

the answer. Those workers—Indian, Californio, 

Mexican, immigrant, or American; men, women, 

or children—are gone, missing from our cultural 

memory, but their legacy survives in their toil, in 

what they left behind. 100 

Victor A. Walsh is a historian and adobe conservator 

with the San Diego Coast District of California State Parks. 

He earned a Ph.D. in American history, with a focus on 

nineteenth-century ethnicity and race, from the University of 

Pittsburgh in 1984 and taught as a lecturer at San Francisco 

State University, the University of San Francisco, and College 

of San Mateo. In 1991, he won the Carlton C. Qualey Award 

for his article on Irish drinking customs (published in the 

Journal of American Ethnic History), followed in 2004 by the 

Institute of History Preservation Award for his article on the 

Casa de Estudillo of Old Town San Diego (published in The 

Journal of San Diego History). In 2008, he published an article 

in California History on Torrey Pines State Reserve, another 

one of his parks. 

 


“Saludos from your comadre”: 

Compadrazgo as a Community Institution in 

Alta California, 1769–1860s 

By Erika Pérez 

“. . . inasmuch as the province [i.e. territorio] depends more exclusively than any other portion of 

Spanish America on extraneous supplies, and here, accordingly, foreigners and natives cordially 

mingle together as members of one and the same harmonious family.” 

—Sir George Simpson (1841–42) 1 

In 1851, Victoria Bartholomea Reid, the missionized 

Gabrielino wife of Scotsman Hugo Reid, 

wrote to the Los Angeles businessman and landowner 

Abel Stearns hoping to enlist his help during 

a time of personal distress. Unable to locate 

her husband, Victoria asked her “dear compadre” 

Stearns for assistance in finding him, closing her 

letter, “remember me to my comadre Arcadia.” 2 

Like the Reids, the Stearns were an interethnic 

couple: Abel Stearns was a Massachusetts-born 

merchant and his wife Arcadia Bandini was a 

Californiana. 3 However, the Stearns held greater 

political and social clout than the Reids due to 

their wealth. Aware of this asymmetry, Victoria 

invoked the bonds of obligation and reciprocity 

inherent in compadrazgo (godparentage), an 

institution of Catholic sponsorship that required 

compadres (spiritual coparents) to offer each other 

assistance and respect. Her letter demonstrates 

that interethnic and intercultural ties forged 

through Catholic sponsorship during the Mexican 

era still maintained social currency in the 

early years of American conquest in southern 

California. 

Practiced throughout the Spanish, Mexican, and 

American eras, compadrazgo in southern California 

generated spiritual and familial bonds of 

intimacy between people of different cultures, 

nationalities, genders, and socioeconomic strata. 4 

This intimacy constitutes moments of sexual contact 

and marriage as well as cultural exchanges 

and the spectrum of emotions generated from 

colonial encounters—from affection and loyalty 

to suspicion, ambivalence, and hate. 5 

This article represents an ongoing exploration 

into compadrazgo’s meaning, applications, and 

participants. It argues that compadrazgo emerged 

as an effective instrument in establishing interethnic 

ties that furthered community formation 

in southern California, embodying both spiritual 

and material dimensions. Within the mission 

system, compadrazgo also offered native peoples 

a new way of ritualizing and affirming kinship 

bonds, though these ties, paradoxically, were 

threatened by the missionization process itself 

through invasion and demographic decline. In 

this article, the focus on godparentage in southern 

California rests not on whether it developed

differently than other regions, but rather in its 

ability to withstand transitions in political power 

and changing social climates, offering a new perspective 

on an established practice that helped 

shape California’s early history and the American 

West. 6 

The Mission Era 

Rooted in Iberian Catholic traditions, Spanish- 

Mexican settlers replicated compadrazgo in 

southern California and other regions of the 

Spanish borderlands. 7 Godparents promised to 

aid in the spiritual upbringing of their godchild, 

assuming the role of spiritual coparents alongside 

the individual’s natural parents. In colonial 

Latin America, compadrazgo’s emphasis on the 

relationship between godparent and godchild 

or between compadres varied, depending upon 

region, time period, and the participants’ ethnicity, 

race, class, and gender. In southern California, 

Catholic sponsorship represented more 

than a mere transplanting of respected customs 

for the benefit of colonial settlers. Its practice 

furthered the spiritual conquest of the region 

by encouraging Spanish-Mexican Christians, 

or gente de razón (people of reason), to sponsor 

native peoples, modeling Spanish-Catholic values 

and behaviors to neophytes (new converts). 8 

Conquest depended upon the establishment of 

indigenous Catholic communities that would 

eventually become integrated into the Spanish 

empire as taxpaying populations and act as a 

defensive buffer zone to thwart imperial rivals. 9 

Thus, compadrazgo not only advanced a spiritual 

purpose in southern California, but addressed 

economic and political goals as well. 

From the very beginning of California’s mission 

system, asymmetrical relationships developed 

between Spanish Mexicans and indigenous communities. 

Godparents listed in various southern 

California mission registers during the missions’ 

founding years were overwhelmingly Spanish- 

Mexican soldiers, servants, and their wives. At 

Mission San Buenaventura, 88.9 percent of all 

baptisms of Indian males from 1782 to 1787 were 

sponsored by Spanish Mexicans, the overwhelming 

majority of them soldiers and their female 

kin. From 1783 to 1787, gente de razón godparents 

sponsored an average of 85.4 percent of 

Indian female baptisms. 10 

Later, native communities provided increasing 

numbers of baptismal sponsors to neophytes, 

demonstrating their adaptation to Catholic sponsorship. 

Only three years after its 1771 founding, 

Mission San Gabriel witnessed a surge in both 

Alta and Baja California Indian godparents, the 

latter arriving with Franciscans in Alta California 

in 1769, as illustrated below. 

Baptismal Sponsorship of Alta California Indians at Mission San Gabriel 

Godparents 

1771–1773 

(76 baptisms) 

1774–1775 

(173 baptisms) 

1800–1801 


1810–1811 


Gente de razón 95.3% 23.2% 7.1% 9.8% 

Baja California Indian 2.9% 36.1% 0.6% 0% 

Alta California Indian 1.8% 38.1% 52% 85.2% 

Zero (0) 0% 1.3% 36.8% 1.0% 

Dual: 1 male, 1 female 0% 1.3% 3.5% 4.0% 

 


An example of an Iberian tradition transplanted to California is this 1857 certification of the May 7, 1844 baptism 

record for Maria Alejandra Atherton, daughter of Faxon Dean Atherton and Dominga Goñi, from Valparaiso, Chile, 

1857. In 1840, the American-born Atherton settled in Chile, where he became a successful merchant and married the 

daughter of the prominent Goñi family. The Spanish Catholic practice of compadrazgo is evident in the listing of the 

names of the godparents, “Padrinos, Francisco Prietos and Guadalupe Goñi.” 

Faxon Dean Atherton Papers, Vault MS 5, California Historical Society

y offering indigenous sponsors. This godparenting 

analysis also reveals periods of demographic 

decline: 1800 to 1801 witnessed a rate of 36.8 

percent of Indian baptisms without a named 

godparent, signifying a baptism performed due 

to danger of death. Finally, the sample taken from 

1810 to 1811, consisting of 568 Indian baptisms, 

reveals that 85.2 percent of neophytes received 

Indian godparents. As this table indicates, Baja 

California Indians played a stronger role during 

the early years at Mission San Gabriel, as did 

gente de razón godparents, but by 1800, local 

Indians sponsored themselves for baptism in 

significant numbers, reflecting the emergence of 

new indigenous Catholic communities. 11 

Mission San Gabriel Arcángel was the fourth in the chain 

of twenty-one California missions, often referred to as the 

“Godmother of the Pueblo of Los Angeles.” The mission’s 

baptismal font, a hammered copper basin still intact today, 

was the site of more than 25,000 baptisms between the 

mission’s founding in 1771 and 1834—the largest number of 

baptisms in the mission chain. 


Although the San Buenaventura and San Gabriel 

missions’ founding years demonstrated the most 

intensive rates of interethnic sponsorship, no set 

formula existed as to when mission communities 

or missionaries transitioned away from gente de 

razón to neophyte godparents. The slight delay 

in the development of intracommunity godparentage 

exhibited in Alta California also occurred 

earlier in colonial Mexico, revealing similarities 

in the evolution of indigenous godparentage. 12 

Nevertheless, the presence of soldiers and their 

families at missions meant that gente de razón 

godparents continued occasionally to sponsor 

indigenous Californians throughout the mission 

period. 13 

While gente de razón godparents in this sample 

peaked at a rate of 95.3 percent from 1771 to 1773, 

their numbers quickly plummeted to 23.2 percent 

from 1774 to 1775. These were transitional, as 

sponsorships of native baptisms by Baja California 

Indian godparents increased to 36.1 percent 

and those by Alta California Indians—local neophytes—to 

38.1 percent. Apparently, missionaries 

here were less concerned with the duration of 

Catholic training among indigenous godparents 

than with the desire to encourage new baptisms 

Sponsorship Selection 

One telling indication of the uneven nature of 

compadrazgo in early southern California is the 

lack of reciprocal sponsorship between Indian 

Christians and Spanish Mexicans. Despite the 

presence of indigenous Christians by the 1790s, 

they remained excluded as sponsors of Spanish 

Mexicans for baptism; the rare exception 

consisted of Christian Indian brides of Spanish- 

Mexican husbands who sponsored jointly. 14 This 

lack of mutual sponsorship is hardly surprising. 

0 


The first page of the baptismal register of the Mission San Buenaventura was signed by Father Junípero Serra on Easter Sunday, 

March 31, 1782, the day the mission was founded. By 1816, more than 1,000 neophytes were living at the mission. The 

Chumash neophyte María Rosa and her husband Bartolomé Miguel Ortega, owner of Rancho las Vírgenes (Rancho Talepop 

in mission records), were godparents to Chumash from surrounding villages. Such kinship relationships, though spiritual in 

nature, generated social, political, and economic associations between native people and their Hispanic neighbors. 

Braun Research Library, Autry National Center; P.17775 

1

Interethnic compadrazgo ties in 

Spanish Alta California flowed 

vertically, connecting people across 

class and ethnic lines, rather than 

horizontally among social equals. 

Such sponsorship of gente de razón godchildren 

would require that they and their natural parents 

pay respect and deference to Indian padrinos 

(godparents). 15 Spanish-Mexican settler Antonio 

Franco Coronel recalled the typical exchange 

between godparent and godchild, stating, “When 

young people met their godparents anywhere, 

they were obliged to take off their hats and ask 

a blessing. The godparents’ obligation was to 

substitute for the parents if they should die, if 

necessary provide for the godchild’s keep and 

education, and give good advice.” 16 The social, 

political, and economic hierarchies instituted 

by Spanish-Mexican colonizers in Alta California 

required that they remain at the top of the 

godparenting complex above native peoples. 17 

Interethnic compadrazgo ties in Spanish Alta 

California, then, flowed vertically, connecting 

people across class and ethnic lines, rather than 

horizontally among social equals. 18 

An obvious question that emerges from this study 

is whether Franciscans selected godparents for 

Indian neophytes, or whether Indians exercised a 

choice or preference in their spiritual coparents. 

According to James Sandos, the Father President 

Junípero Serra selected a Spanish soldier as the 

proposed godfather to a Diegueño baby who was 

to receive Spanish clothing and serve as the first 

baptism in Alta California. 19 Certainly the lack of 

familiarity between Spanish Mexicans and native 

Californians suggests that missionaries assigned 

godparents in the early years of conquest. However, 

on at least seventy-four occasions, native 

relatives stood as godparents, implying that some 

families exercised a preference. For example, an 

Indian woman Gertrudis stood as madrina to 

her nephew Diego from the village of Apinjaibit 

at Mission San Gabriel in 1811. That same year, 

María Cleofe was madrina to her brother Juan de 

la Cruz at Mission San Gabriel. 20 

Interethnic Compadrazgo 

Interethnic kinship bonds between Spanish 

Mexicans and native peoples offered material 

incentives and encouraged cultural exchanges. 

These intimate ties may have stabilized tensions 

following violent encounters that generated 

deep-seeded animosity and mistrust between 

these groups. 21 Food proved welcome to native 

Californians in the aftermath of ecological and 

microbial revolutions that threatened traditional 

food sources and their health. 22 “Out from the 

presidio come great heaps of tortillas sent by 

godfathers for their godsons,” wrote Father Serra 

in a letter to Father Guardian Francisco Pangua 

in 1774, continuing, “Even though each day a 

mighty cauldron of pozole is filled and emptied 

three times over [at the mission], these poor little 

fellows still have a corner for the tortillas their 

godfathers send them.” Not only food but other 

material goods possibly drew Indians into compadrazgo 

relationships with Spanish soldiers. 

Again noting the attraction of compadrazgo in 

a letter to Viceroy Bucareli dated 1775, Father 

Serra indicated that “heaps of remnants given in 

exchange, or as gifts by godfathers to their spiritual 

sons” were welcomed by families. 23 

Anecdotal examples reveal that some indigenous 

godchildren maintained contact with gente de 

razón godparents after sponsorship. During 

the 1830s and 1840s, interethnic tensions grew 

in the San Diego region, and unconverted and 

Christianized native peoples plotted to kidnap 

gente de razón women and attack ranchos (Spanish-Mexican 

land grants). Candelaria, the Indian 

 


In this 1885 photograph of a mission ramada (shady place), a gente de razón couple (seated, left, and standing, right) 

visits with mission Indians at Mission San Juan Capistrano. Though gente de razón couples godparented one another’s 

children, often reaffirming blood bonds or longstanding friendships, their sponsorship of neophytes established bonds of 

obligation and reciprocity where none existed before, furthering the conquest of Alta California. 


goddaughter and servant of Doña Josefa Carrillo 

de Fitch, revealed the plot saving her godmother 

and others. 24 Whether Candelaria’s actions were 

due to affection for her godmother, loyalty, or fear 

that she would become ensnared in the plot’s 

ensuring investigation is unclear. Nevertheless, 

she alerted rancho owners of impending danger. 

Chumash Fernando Librado recalled seeing his 

gente de razón godfather Ramón Valdez at Mission 

Santa Ines for the Corpus Christi celebration 

where Librado sang the Catalan mass. 25 While 

Librado’s testimony reveals no emotion toward 

his padrino, Candelaria’s example demonstrates 

the difficulty for some indigenous godchildren in 

balancing loyalty to the indigenous community 

and gente de razón godparents. 26 

The existence of sponsorship rituals among 

indigenous Californians offers one possibility for 

convergence between indigenous and Catholic 

rituals. Precontact sponsorship practices such as 

Indian puberty rituals, which assigned same-sex 

sponsors to adolescent initiates, possibly eased 

Indian acceptance of Catholic godparentage. 

For example, Luiseño adolescents underwent 

the Mani (toloache, or jimson weed) ceremony, 

which required the participation of village elders

Indigenous Compadrazgo 

Puberty rituals such as the toloache ceremony enlisted adult 

sponsors, often of the same sex, who imparted sacred knowledge 

and new responsibilities upon initiates. Catholic sponsorship 

may have resonated with native Californians, possibly easing 

their acceptance of compadrazgo. 


who instructed younger initiates in the songs 

and other cultural teachings of their people. The 

Cahuilla kiksawal puberty ceremony also required 

sponsorship by adult members who paired with 

initiates to teach them and assist them through 

the process. During the waxan (pit-roasting ceremony), 

Gabrielino women cared for and sang to 

younger women who reached the age of maturity, 

typically the onset of menarche. 27 Diegueño, 

Luiseño, and Cahuilla girls also experienced rituals 

and sponsorship by adult women in their 

communities. 28 Evidence of some traditional 

male leadership roles, such as village captains, 

persisting within the mission system is further 

indication that native peoples transplanted some 

traditional roles and practices to the mission 

setting. 29 

Defined by acts of reciprocity and obligation, 

compadrazgo among native Californians was 

unlikely to include the same offerings of European 

goods or foods as interethnic godparentage. 

However, indigenous godparents maintained 

more frequent contact with godchildren by residing 

at the mission or a neighboring ranchería 

(Indian village), thereby offering enhanced 

spiritual sustenance and intimacy. Furthermore, 

indigenous godparents quite possibly contributed 

financially to traditional or indigenous-influenced 

ceremonies and dances to commemorate life 

events, as did Latin American godparents. 30 

According to Fernando Librado, a “godfather 

might pay the paha [ceremonial leader] $2.50,” 

who in turn gave the money to a village or 

mission captain to pay for the performance of 

the Fox Dance at a wedding or baptism. This 

payment to honor important events remained 

consistent with the ceremonial complex in early 

southern California. 31 Thus, intracommunity 

godparents potentially fulfilled the material and 

spiritual needs of their community as well. In 

fact, indigenous compadrazgo offered native 

peoples greater fulfillment of traditional kinship 

and community obligations than did interethnic 

godparentage, especially if indigenous godparentage 

included payments for indigenous rituals. 

Whatever significance godparentage held for 

indigenous Catholics, mission records provide 

examples of individual neophytes sponsoring 

scores of their community members, a pattern 

not typical of all missionized peoples. In a 

sample analysis of Mission San Gabriel baptisms 

for the year 1811, a few individuals stand out. Of 

forty-four total Gabrielino male and female neophytes 

and their spouses mentioned that year as 

godparents, five (11.4 percent) godparented fellow 

mission Indians more than 100 times each 

throughout their lifetime, an uncharacteristic 

level of sponsorship. María del Carmen sponsored 

as many as 180 indigenous godchildren 

 


A large body of knowledge of Chumash Indian language, lore, traditional history, and Chumash-Christian adaptations 

has been preserved through the relationship between the Chumash Fernando Librado Kitsepawit and the 

linguist-ethnographer John P. Harrington, who recorded Librado’s tribal knowledge. Born circa 1930s and raised 

at Mission San Buenaventura, where he was baptized, Librado recalled how an indigenous godfather contributed 

financially to a traditional wedding or baptism ritual. 


between 1783 and 1806. Even more impressive 

was Ana María, who stood as godmother to 202 

neophytes in her community between 1808 

and 1815. 32 

Indigenous men also were prolific godparents 

during the Spanish period. At Mission San Diego 

de Alcalá, Thomas Locau served as a spiritual 

parent to over sixty Indian converts from 1786 

to 1804. 33 Justo and Benito José of Mission San 

Gabriel sponsored 165 and 175 mission community 

members, respectively. Those individuals 

who sponsored mass community members for 

Catholic sacraments illustrate the impact of one 

person within a mission community. Southern 

California mission records reveal that every mission 

maintained a core group of Indian godparents 

who resided in houses adjacent to the 

mission or in a neighboring ranchería. These 

people may have been called upon frequently 

because missionaries entrusted them to serve as 

Catholic role models and assigned them; alternatively, 

local Indians turned to individuals whom 

they accepted as community sponsors. 

In contrast to the minority who frequently sponsored, 

many neophytes did not. Thirty-three of 

the forty-four Gabrielinos studied (or 75 percent) 

sponsored fewer than ten people during their 

lifetime. Ana María’s husband, Rogerio, never 

appeared as a baptismal godparent, and María del 

Carmen’s husband, Marcelino, sponsored only 

two baptisms. Others from that locale, including 

married couples Pasqual and Pasquala and 

Victorico and Victorica, sponsored only one baptism 

each. 34

Given the symbolic importance of conversions 

of native elites in each cycle of conquest by the 

Spanish, some of the prolific sponsors probably 

participated to maintain their elite status. The 

wife of an Indian captain, María Serafina Hilachap, 

sponsored twenty-four San Diego neophytes 

in the 1780s and 1790s, ensuring a sense of continuity 

for her community by her visibility at the 

mission. Indian captains residing at rancherías 

and missions personally sponsored Indians 

for sacraments, or had close family members 

undergo sacraments, a minimum of 241 times at 

Mission San Diego de Alcalá from 1769 to 1840, 

seventy-three times at Mission San Fernando Rey 

from 1798 to 1816, seventy-three times at Mission 

San Gabriel from 1774 to 1823, and thirteen 

times at Mission San Buenaventura from 1783 

to 1804—a conservative accounting. 35 Although 

this represented a small percentage of all sacraments 

administered to Indians, the participation 

of Indian captains and their kin encouraged commoners 

to accept Catholic sacraments. 

Fray Fermín Francisco de Lasuén noted how one 

Indian captain drew converts to Mission Santa 

Barbara. Commending José María, a Chumash 

leader at the mission, Lasuén wrote that “he 

collaborates in bringing about the subjection, 

pacification, and education of those who are 

Christians, and the conversion of the pagans. He 

is beloved by the whole nation.” 36 However, the 

degree of authority wielded by these “captains” 

remains uncertain. As Edward Spicer notes in 

his research on northern Mexico, some designated 

as “captains” may have been individuals 

who showed more willingness to establish contact 

with missionaries. Thus, while the designation 

of some captains in Alta California mission 

registers signifies a continuation of precontact 

leadership roles among elites, others who lacked 

such status during this era made new claims of 

authority or represented a faction willing to collaborate 

with missionaries. 37 

Campadrazgo by Foreign Converts 

Compadrazgo was perpetuated not only among 

Spanish-Mexican inhabitants and indigenous 

Californians, but also among foreign-born 

merchants entering California from the 1820s 

onward. Such participation in compadrazgo by 

extranjeros (foreigners) linked them to existing 

family networks, enhanced their business and 

interpersonal connections, and furthered their 

acculturation. The aforementioned Abel Stearns 

and Hugo Reid engaged in a business partnership 

and friendship over a number of years 

before they memorialized their closeness through 

Catholic godparentage. Prior to Stearns’s marriage 

in 1841 to the elite Californiana Arcadia 

Bandini, Reid assured his friend that “should 

there be anything which my family can do for 

you in household affairs in order to facilitate 

matrimonial matters, command with the necessary 

confidence of a friend.” 38 Shortly thereafter, 

Reid stood as a sacramental witness at Stearns’s 

wedding, as did other merchant traders who 

sponsored their foreign-born peers for Catholic 

baptism and marriage to Alta California women. 

Reciprocation of compadrazgo ties among converted 

extranjeros and native-born Catholic 

inhabitants remained a common practice in 

Mexican California. Years after his friend’s wedding, 

Reid wrote Stearns stating, “I am obliged 

to use other measures to accelerate [sic] our compadrazco,” 

and he offered tortas de pan (loaves 

of bread) made by his wife Victoria, Stearns’s 

“comadre,” as an enticement to the couple’s 

request that the Stearns sponsor their son Carlitos 

Reid for holy confirmation in March 1843. 

In letters exchanged after the event, the two men 

referred to each other as “compadre” and to his 

compadre’s wife as “comadre,” honorific terms of 

affection that acknowledged their socioreligious 

and kinship bonds. 39 Despite his wife’s reluctance 

to write, Reid frequently included “saludos 

from your comadre,” offering Victoria’s affection 

in letters to the Stearns. 40 Following Carlitos’s 

 


A daughter of Doña Dolores Estudillo and Don Juan 

Lorenzo Bruno Bandini, one of San Diego’s most 

distinguished citizens, Arcadia Bandini de Stearns 

Baker (1852–1912) (right) married Abel Stearns, the 

Los Angeles cattle baron and trader (below), in 1841 

at Mission San Gabriel. She was fourteen and he was 

forty-three. Stearns would become Los Angeles’s greatest 

landowner and Arcadia one of the state’s wealthiest 

women at the time of her death. The influential 

Stearns were compadres to Scotsman Hugo Reid and 

his wife Victoria Bartholomea Reid, a Gabrielino 

woman from the village of Comicrabit. Acculturated 

foreigners such as Reid and Stearns, fluent in Spanish 

and comfortable with local customs, relied upon compadrazgo 

to integrate themselves into Californio society 

and further their business dealings in the region. 


confirmation, Reid turned to Stearns for advice 

and assistance during moments of economic distress, 

demonstrating the men’s ability to speak of 

intimate concerns. 

A world within a world emerged in Mexican and 

transitional California through mutual sponsorship 

for baptism and marriage among interethnic 

couples. Scottish-born Reid sponsored the Englishman 

Henry “Perfect Ugo” Dalton for baptism 

at Mission San Gabriel in 1847, paving the way 

for Dalton’s marriage to Californiana Doña Guadalupe 

Zamorano. Significantly, Reid had previously 

worked as an agent for Dalton’s trading 

company in Peru, and the men sacramentalized 

their relationship through godparentage. When 

the Belgian-born, naturalized Mexican citizen 

Victor Eugene August “Don Agustin” Janssens 

married María Antonia Pico on January 27, 1843, 

the Scottish shipmaster Señor Juan Wilson and 

his Californiana wife Doña Ramona Carrillo de 

Pacheco attended as the couple’s witnesses. One 

year later, Janssens and Wilson entered into a 

proprietary partnership in a Santa Barbara store, 

their business relationship strengthened by compadrazgo 

and their shared history as husbands

A world within a world 

emerged in Mexican and 

transitional California 

through mutual sponsorship 

for baptism and marriage 

among interethnic couples. 

of Californianas and patriarchs of growing mixed 

families. 41 

Godparentage also strengthened existing blood 

ties among Californianas who married foreigners, 

as in the case of the Carrillo family. Doña 

María Josefa Carrillo and her Boston-born husband 

William “Guillermo” Dana requested that 

María Josefa’s father Carlos Carrillo and her sister 

María Antonia Carrillo sponsor the couple’s 

one-day-old daughter, María Josefa Antonia 

Sirila Dana, in 1829. María Josefa’s cousin Doña 

Ramona Carrillo and her Scottish-born husband 

John “Don Juan” Wilson sponsored Juan Francisco, 

another child of María Josefa and William 

Dana, for baptism in 1836. In 1840, the Wilsons 

bestowed the same honor upon the Danas by asking 

them to serve as baptismal sponsor to their 

daughter María Ygnacia Felipa Wilson. In 1845, 

the Wilsons also godparented Ysabel Robbins, 

the daughter of Ramona’s cousin Encarnación 

Carrillo and her American husband Thomas 

“Tomas” Robbins. As these examples indicate, 

Californianas often played a pivotal intermediary 

role by incorporating foreign-born husbands into 

local godparenting networks, while simultaneously 

reaffirming preexisting kinship bonds. 42 

Godparentage also reinforced ethnic and national 

links among Frenchmen during the Mexican and 

early American eras. The presence of increasing 

numbers of extranjeros from France and the British 

Isles evidenced the increasing cosmopolitan 

flavor of southern California beginning in the 

1820s. Several French husbands of Californianas 

sponsored the children of Gallic countrymen. For 

example, Luís Bauchet of France and his Californiana 

wife Basilia Alanis sponsored Espiridion 

Baric, the son of Carlos and Sofia Baric of “Burdeos” 

(Bordeaux), France. Frenchman Victor 

Leon Prudhomme and his wife María Merced 

Tapia requested that bachelor Estevan Jourdain of 

France and Basilia Alanis, Luís Bauchet’s widow, 

stand as godparents to their daughter María Emidia 

Tomasa Prudhomme in 1848. 43 

Like the French, men from the British Isles and 

New England sponsored compatriots for baptism 

and marriage and were godparents to their mixed 

offspring produced from unions with Californianas. 

Irishman James “Santiago” Burke and his 

wife Josefa Borunda became padrinos to the son 

of Gorge [George] Antonio Allen of Ireland and 

his Californiana wife Petra Bermudez on October 

19, 1832. Anita de la Guerra and her Boston-born 

husband Alfredo [Alfred] Robinson became the 

spiritual parents of José María Alfredo Hill, son 

of Bostonian Daniel Hill and Rafaela Ortega. Hill 

and Ortega honored the godfather Don Alfredo 

Robinson by bestowing his name upon the child. 

In the Mexican era, extranjeros, often joined by 

their Californiana wives, godparented interethnic 

offspring for baptism at least forty-three times 

prior to 1848 in southern California and fourteen 

additional times during the early American 

period. 44 Evidence of continuing participation in 

compadrazgo by extranjeros after American conquest 

lends credence to their continued respect 

for this socioreligious practice, despite the formal 

transfer of political power into American hands. 45 

Compadrazgo and Indian Labor 

Although Catholic godparentage offered potential 

material benefits to some Indian converts during 

the Spanish era and provided one way for them 

 


to ritualize and reaffirm kinship ties, over time 

the practice evolved into a tool for Californios and 

extranjeros to access Indian labor. According to 

Antonio Franco Coronel, Indian children, probably 

Yumas orphaned and captured in warfare 

with Spanish Mexicans, arrived in southern California 

in 1840 or 1841 with a settler from Sonora. 

Coronel took an interest in a girl aged twelve or 

fourteen years old, testifying “I acquired her as a 

houseservant [sic], [and] had her baptized Encarnación.” 

46 Recall as well the Indian goddaughter 

Candelaria, who revealed an Indian conspiracy 

to attack ranchos in San Diego. Her proximity to 

her godmother as the family servant suggests the 

This christening bib of fine needle lace from the 1800s was 

owned by Francisca Vallejo McGettigan, granddaughter 

of Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, who married Charles D. 

McGettigan in San Francisco. California-born wives 

of Frenchmen, New Englanders, and British Islanders 

integrated their husbands into existing kinship networks 

through marriage and Catholic sponsorship. These couples 

mutually sponsored each other for marriage and the mixed 

children produced from such unions for baptism. Increasing 

numbers of interethnic families emerged in places such 

as Monterey and Santa Barbara by the 1840s. 

Autry National Center; 2004.22.4.11

incorporation of some godchildren into households 

as laborers. As these examples reveal, baptism, 

godparentage, and Indian labor occasionally 

intersected in Mexican California. This “exploitation 

of Native American labor” continued into the 

American period, signifying a cultural compatibility 

rather than a clash. 47 

Foreigners and Californios, indeed, shared a 

paternalistic ideology with respect to native 

peoples in the early American era. This Catholic 

paternalism or maternalism dating to the Spanish 

era converged with new American indenture 

laws in the 1850s and 1860s that codified into 

law the inability of Indians to exercise freedom of 

movement or independence. According to Tomás 

Almaguer, kidnappings and auctions of Indians 

resulted in the trafficking of approximately 4,000 

children between 1852 and 1867. 48 Children without 

families to defend them certainly fell victim 

to indentures and vagrancy laws, which is not to 

suggest that all of these trafficked children were 

baptized by locals or even Catholic. However, the 

possibility remains that godparentage paved the 

way for the binding of Indian children to southern 

California households or ranchos during the 

early American era through claims of spiritual 

obligation. 

One motivation for sponsorship of Indian 

children for baptism by Californios and extranjeros 

at this time lay in their ability to check 

competition from outsiders for Indian labor. 

Alternatively, others possibly thought that they 

could better protect indigenous peoples from 

abuse by newcomers through sponsorship and 

the regulation of Indian labor. Whether or not 

Indian children were incorporated into southern 

California households as godchildren, the widescale 

trafficking of and market for Indian labor 

decimated native communities by tearing apart 

existing family units. 

A few examples of indentured servant agreements 

and legal petitions in the mid to late nineteenth 

century reveal how Californianas relied 

upon new American legal instruments to attach 

Indian godchildren to their households and family 

ranchos. Doña Ysidora Bandini de Couts, 

Arcadia Bandini’s sister and the Californiana 

wife of the American military man and ranchero 

Cave J. Couts, submitted a petition through 

her husband to retrieve her runaway godson 

Francisco in 1858. 49 Introduced into Catholic 

godparenting practices by Ysidora, Couts vigorously 

defended her claim to the local justice of 

the peace. 50 In accordance with American laws 

passed in the early 1850s and 1860s, Indian children 

were subject to indentured servitude until 

the age of eighteen (later extended to twenty-five). 

Indian vagrants, that is, those considered unemployed 

without any regular attachment to a rancho 

or home, also fell vulnerable to involuntary 

servitude through the auctioning of their bodies 

and labor to the highest bidder. 51 

Significantly, Ysidora’s petition cited preexisting 

godparenting ties while parroting the language 

of American indenture agreements. The document 

stated that she held “care and control of 

said Indian Boy, and that said child has been provided 

with suitable food and clothings[.]” It also 

indicated that the boy had resided on the Couts’s 

ranch, Rancho Guajome, but was “enticed away 

by others,” suggesting interference from outsiders. 

Justice William C. Ferrell, citing the “custom 

of the country”—specifically, Ysidora’s baptism of 

Francisco in church—ordered the boy’s return to 

the rancho, where he was to remain until the age 

of eighteen. 52 

During the 1850s and 1860s, the Couts-Bandini 

family participated in other indentures that 

bound native peoples and at least one black 

minor to them. 53 Ysidora’s adoption of American 

indenture practices is evidenced by a contract 

dated April 1855 for Juan, a boy of ten or eleven 

years of age. Her obligations included a payment 

of $2.50 per month to Vicente and Comada, 

Juan’s adopted parents, in exchange for the boy’s 

0 


Abel Stearns gave Rancho Guajome as a wedding gift to his American brother-in-law, Cave J. Couts, who married 

Ysidora Bandini, Arcadia’s sister, in 1851. The Couts family placed indentured children and godchildren to work on 

the rancho and in the household as servants and laborers. One godchild, Francisco, was the subject of an 1858 petition 

for recovery after running away from his godmother’s home. 


services and labor; she also agreed to provide 

clothing and provisions to Juan until adulthood. 

One phrase in the agreement is revealing of the 

cultural superiority shared among Californios 

and Americans over native peoples at this time: 

“This boy is thus bound for his own good, as well 

as for the maintenance of Vicente + his woman 

Comada.” Only upon reaching the age of maturity, 

would Juan be “set free or at liberty.” 54 

The contract also prevented Juan’s removal from 

Ysidora’s control in the event of his adopted parents 

Vicente and Comada’s deaths. This agreement’s 

language would be echoed in the petition 

for Ysidora’s godson Francisco three years later. 

Conveniently, Cave Couts, who was a witness 

to Juan’s indenture agreement, and William B. 

Couts, his brother, who witnessed a different 

agreement in 1866, both did so in their capacity 

as justices of the peace in the San Luis Rey 

township. 55 Although the family probably did not 

baptize all children who fell under their control 

as indentures, Couts certainly increased the productivity 

and value of his land with the sweat and 

labor of his wife’s Indian godchildren and those 

indentured to the family. Adding further context 

to his willingness to defend his wife’s compadrazgo 

claims, Couts came from a slave-owning 

family in Tennessee. 

Californio households bound Indian godchildren 

and adopted children, passing them to other 

1

Compadrazgo remained embedded 

with multiple layers of meaning 

and power in California from the 

Spanish period into the Mexican 

and early American eras. 

family members like moveable property in wills. 

María Gabriela Pollorena’s will, dated May 11, 

1832, bequeathed to her natural daughter a Yuma 

orphan whom she considered “almost a daughter, 

named Teresa.’” 56 At least sixty-six Yuma captives 

were baptized at southern California missions 

between 1826 and 1848 and incorporated into 

Californio households, by chance coinciding 

with the rise of the rancho era and the need for 

Indian labor in Mexican California. Following the 

American conquest, Californianas continued the 

practice of transferring Indian children through 

wills. Juana Ballesteros bequeathed her orphaned 

godchild Francisco to her natural son in a will 

dated July 24, 1859: “I confer and place [as] the 

guardian of my god child, an orphan of father 

and mother, and under age, named, Francisco, 

to my son Juan Avila to take care and educate . . . 

until he becomes of age or till he marries, should 

he marry before his minority.” 57 These two wills, 

one authored during the Mexican period and the 

other in the American, reveal the persistence of 

unequal and intimate ties between Indian godchildren, 

orphans, and Californiana godmothers 

and guardians. 

Shaping the American West 

Clearly, compadrazgo remained embedded with 

multiple layers of meaning and power in California 

from the Spanish period into the Mexican 

and early American eras. Indian converts in Alta 

California, forced to adopt compadrazgo under 

missionization, nonetheless managed to use it to 

regenerate community ties severely undermined 

by invasion and demographic decline. Not only 

did this socioreligious practice establish intimate 

ties between ethnic groups with no prior 

familiarity, it also aided in the incorporation and 

acculturation of newcomers such as foreign-born 

merchants. Californianas utilized godparentage 

to enhance their prominence and esteem in their 

respective communities and families. In later 

years, Spanish Mexicans and Anglo Americans 

shared an ideology of paternalism toward native 

peoples, as evidenced by the language of obligation 

and reciprocity invoked by godparents and 

in new American indenture servitude laws that 

regulated Indian bodies at mid-century. The institution 

of compadrazgo played a key role in shaping 

families and communities in the American 

West, a notion that historians of California are 

now appreciating, although almost certainly further 

research on compadrazgo’s intersection with 

labor practices is likely to yield fresh perspectives. 

Erika Pérez is currently a visiting assistant professor in 

American Cultures Studies at Loyola Marymount University 

in Los Angeles, where she teaches undergraduate courses on 

colonial American history, nineteenth-century U.S. history, 

and twentieth-century race, gender, and sports history. She 

completed her dissertation, “Colonial Intimacies: Interethnic 

Kinship, Sexuality, and Marriage in Southern California, 

1769–1885,” in August 2010 at the University of California, 

Los Angeles under the guidance of Stephen Aron. Her 

research and teaching interests include the Spanish Borderlands/American 

West, gender and sexuality, Native American 

history, and Chicano-Latino Studies. A native of southern 

California with family roots in El Paso, Texas, she developed 

her research on compadragzo after twice becoming a godmother. 

 


n o t e s 

Invisible Borders: Repatriation and 

Colonization of Mexican Migrant 

Workers along the California 

Borderlands during the 1930s, By 

Benny J. Andrés Jr., PP 5–21 

I would like to thank David García and Alicia 

Carrillo for research assistance. My sincerest 

gratitude goes to Tom Rogers, Mary 

Ann Irwin, Shelly Kale, and Janet Fireman 

for their insightful comments and editorial 

suggestions. I also thank four anonymous 

readers for their comments. 

1 Statement of Harry Chandler, U.S. Congress, 

House Committee on Immigration 

and Naturalization, Western Hemisphere 

Immigration: Hearings on H.R. 8523, H.R. 

8530, and H.R. 8702, 71st Cong., 2nd sess. 

(Washington, DC: Government Printing 

Office, 1930), 70; http://babel.hathitrust. 

org/cgi/ptid=mdp.39015014316932, acc. 

Jan. 16, 2011. 

2 The Brawley News (hereafter cited as TBN), 

Dec. 14, 1934; for the figure of 152 repatriates, 

see the Calexico Chronicle (hereafter 

cited as CC), Dec. 17, 1934; for the origin of 

the families, see CC, Dec. 15, 1934. 

3 TBN, Dec. 14, 1934. 

4 For the agency of peasants, see James C. 

Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms 

of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University 

Press, 1985). 

5 According to the 1920 census, 2.7 percent 

of Mexican alien men over the age of 21 

in California were naturalized. California 

Mexican Fact-Finding Committee, Mexicans 

in California, Report of Governor C. C. Young’s 

Mexican Fact-Finding Committee (San Francisco, 

CA: R and E Research Associates, 

1970 [© 1930]), 63. 

6 Mercedes Carreras de Velasco, Los 

Mexicanos que devolvió la crisis, 1929–1932 

(Tlatelolco, MX: Secretaría de Relaciones 

Exteriores, 1974). For the best scholarly 

treatment on Mexican repatriation, see 

Fernando Saúl Alanís Enciso, Que se queden 

allá: El gobierno de México y la repatriación 

de mexicanos en Estados Unidos (1934–1940) 

(Tijuana, MX: El Colegio de la Frontera 

Norte, 2007). 

7 For studies of repatriation during the 

Great Depression, see Manuel Gamio, Mexican 

Immigration to the United States: A Study 

of Human Migration and Adjustment (New 

York: Arno Press and The New York Times, 

1969 [© 1930]) and The Mexican Immigrant: 

His Life-Story (New York: Arno Press and 

The New York Times, 1969 [© 1931]); Paul 

S. Taylor, A Spanish-Mexican Peasant Community: 

Arandas in Jalisco, Mexico (Berkeley: 

University of California Press, 1933); James 

C. Gilbert, “A Field Study in Mexico of the 

Mexican Repatriation Movement” (master’s 

thesis, University of Southern California, 

1934); Emory S. Bogardus, The Mexican in 

the United States (Los Angeles: University of 

Southern California Press, 1934). 

8 In chronological order, see Carey McWilliams, 

Factories in the Field: The Story of 

Migratory Farm Labor in California (Hamden, 

CT: Archon Books, 1969 [© 1935]), 129 

and North from Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking 

People of the United States (New York: Praeger, 

1990 [© 1948]), 176; Abraham Hoffman, 

Unwanted Mexican Americans in the 

Great Depression: Repatriation Pressures, 

1929–1939 (Tucson: The University of Arizona 

Press, 1974); Francisco E. Balderrama, 

In Defense of La Raza: The Los Angeles Mexican 

Consulate and the Mexican Community, 

1929 to 1936 (Tucson: The University of 

Arizona Press, 1982); Dennis N. Valdés, Al 

Norte: Agricultural Workers in the Great Lakes 

Region, 1917–1970 (Austin: University of 

Texas Press, 1991), chaps. 3 and 4; George 

J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: 

Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano 

Los Angeles, 1900–1945 (New York: Oxford 

University Press, 1993), chap. 10; Zaragosa 

Vargas, Proletarians of the North: A History 

of Mexican Industrial Workers in Detroit and 

the Midwest, 1917–1933 (Berkeley: University 

of California Press, 1993), chap. 5; Camille 

Guérin-Gonzales, Mexican Workers and 

American Dreams: Immigration, Repatriation, 

and California Farm Labor, 1900–1939 

(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University 

Press, 1994); David G. Gutiérrez, Walls and 

Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, 

and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley: 

University of California Press, 1995), 72–74; 

Dionicio N. Valdés, Barrios Norteños: St. Paul 

and Midwestern Mexican Communities in 

the Twentieth Century (Austin: University of 

Texas Press, 2000), chap. 3; Matt García, A 

World of Its Own: Race, Labor, and Citrus in 

the Making of Greater Los Angeles, 1900–1970 

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina 

Press, 2001), chap. 3; Francisco E. Balderrama 

and Raymond Rodríguez, Decade of 

Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s, 

rev. ed. (Albuquerque: University of New 

Mexico Press, 2006), 236–63; Gabriela F. 

Arredondo, Mexican Chicago: Race, Identity, 

and Nation, 1916–39 (Urbana: University 

of Illinois Press, 2008), chap. 3; Kathleen 

Mapes, Sweet Tyranny: Migrant Labor, 

Industrial Agriculture, and Imperial Politics 

(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 

216–20. 

9 Paul S. Taylor, Mexican Labor in the United 

States: Migration Statistics, vols. 2 and 3 

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 

1933) and vol. 4 (1934); California Mexican 

Fact-Finding Committee, Mexicans in California, 

chap. 1. For an excellent contemporary 

analysis of Mexican circular migration, 

see Josef Barton, “At the Edge of the Storm: 

Northern Mexico’s Rural Peoples in a New 

Regime of Consumption, 1880–1940,” in 

Land of Necessity: Consumer Culture in the 

United States-Mexico Borderlands, ed. Alexis 

McCrossen, 217–47 (Durham, NC: Duke 

University Press, 2009) and “Borderland 

Discontents: Mexican Migration in Regional 

Contexts, 1880–1930,” in Repositioning North 

American Migration History: New Directions 

in Modern Continental Migration, Citizenship, 

and Community, ed. Marc S. Rodriguez, 141– 

205 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester 

Press, 2004). 

10 Donna R. Gabaccia, “Is Everywhere 

Nowhere: Nomads, Nations, and the Immigrant 

Paradigm of United States History,” 

The Journal of American History 86, no. 3 

(Dec. 1999): 1115–34. 

11 See, for example, Repatriation of Mexican 

Nationals, file 55957/456, Department of 

Labor and Naturalization Service, Record 

Group 85, National Archives, Washington, 

DC. 

12 Andrés Landa y Piña, El servicio de 

migración en México (Talleres Gráficos de 

la Nación, MX: Secretaría de Gobernación, 

1930); Arthur F. Corwin, “Mexican Policy 

and Ambivalence toward Labor Emigration 

to the United States,” in Immigrants and 

Immigrants: Perspectives on Mexican Labor 

Migration to the United States, ed. Arthur F. 

Corwin, 179–94 (Westport, CT: Greenwood 

Press, 1978). 

13 John J. Dwyer, The Agrarian Dispute: The 

Expropriation of American-Owned Rural Land 

in Postrevolutionary Mexico (Durham, NC: 

Duke University Press, 2008); Casey Walsh, 

Building the Borderlands: A Transnational 

History of Irrigated Cotton along the Mexican- 

Texas Border (College Station: Texas A & M 

University Press, 2008). 

14 Paul S. Taylor, Mexican Labor in the United 

States: Imperial Valley (New York: Arno Press 

and The New York Times, 1970 [© 1930]).

n o t e s 

For the Imperial Valley’s defense of undocumented 

migrants, see file 0766-0775, 0782- 

0786, 0793-0796, 0828-0837, 0857-0861, 

roll 15, Records Group 85, Records of the 

Immigration and Naturalization Service 

Series A, Subject Correspondence Files 

pt. 2: Mexican Immigration 1906–1930, 

National Archives and Records Administration 

(Bethesda, MD: University Publications 

of America, 1993); Louis Bloch, “Report on 

the Mexican Labor Situation in the Imperial 

Valley,” 22nd Biennial Report of the Bureau 

of Labor Statistics of the State of California, 

1925–1926 (Sacramento: California Bureau 

of Labor Statistics, 1926): 116–23; Mark 

Reisler, By the Sweat of Their Brow: Mexican 

Immigrant Labor in the United States, 

1900–1940 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 

1976), 60–67. For a general history, see 

Benny J. Andrés, “Power and Control in the 

Imperial Valley: Nature, Agribusiness, Labor 

and Race Relations, 1900–1940” (PhD diss., 

University of New Mexico, 2003). 

15 For the history of the CRLC from the company’s 

perspective, see Dorothy P. Kerig, 

“Yankee Enclave: The Colorado River Land 

Company and Mexican Agrarian Reform 

in Baja California, 1902–1944” (PhD diss., 

University of California, Irvine, 1988); for 

the Mexican view of the CRLC, see Pablo 

Herrera Carrillo, Reconquista y colonización 

del valle de Mexicali y otros escritos paralelos 

(Mexicali, MX: Universidad Autónoma de 

Baja California, 2002), chaps 17–24; also 

important are Eugene K. Chamberlin, “Mexican 

Colonization versus American Interests 

in Lower California,” Pacific Historical 

Review 20, no. 1 (Feb. 1951): 43–55; Robert 

H. Duncan, “The Chinese and the Economic 

Development of Northern Baja California, 

1889–1929,” Hispanic American Historical 

Review 74, no. 4 (Nov. 1994): 615–47. 

16 David Acosta Montoya, “Precursores del 

agrarismo” y “El Asalto a Las Tierras” en el 

Estado de Baja California (Mexicali, MX: 

Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, 

1985), 26–86. 

17 TBN, June 12, 1920. 

18 Oscar Sánchez Ramírez, Crónica agrícola 

del valle de Mexicali (Mexicali, MX: Universidad 

Autónoma de Baja California, 1990), 

82–84, 101–4. 

19 For the ban, see Duncan, “The Chinese,” 

633; TBN, Nov. 7, 1925. 

20 TBN, Sept. 12 and 15, 1924; Sánchez 

Ramírez, Crónica agrícola, 72–82; Carrillo, 

Reconquista y colonización, 162–64; Abelardo 

L. Rodríguez, Memoria administrativa 

del gobierno del Distrito Norte de la Baja 

California, 1924–1927 (Mexicali, MX: Universidad 

Autónoma de Baja California, 1993 

[© 1928]), chap. 4. 

21 Statement of Harry Chandler, 72. 

22 Taylor, Mexican Labor in the United States: 

The Imperial Valley, 17–18. 

23 Taylor, Mexican Labor in the United States: 

Migration Statistics, 4:36–49. 

24 Statement of Harry Chandler, 62, 64. 

25 Carrillo, Reconquista y colonización, 

179–80. 

26 TBN, Jan. 14, 1930. 

27 Balderrama and Rodríguez, Decade of 

Betrayal, 199–200. 

28 “Report Rendered to the Honorable Federal 

Board of Investigation by the Comité 

Mexicano de Bienestar Social (Mexican 

Social Welfare Committee) of Brawley, California, 

February 1934,” carton 14, folder 38, 

n.p., Inventory of the Paul S. Taylor Papers, 

MSS 84/38C, The Bancroft Library Archival 

Collections, University of California, 

Berkeley. 

29 Spanish and English translation of an 

excerpt from “Report Submitted by General 

Juan Andrew Almaz[á]n, Secretary of 

Communications and Public Works, to the 

President of the Republic, with Reference 

to His Journey through the Northwestern 

Part of the Country, Mexico, July, 1930,” 

29–37, in the Spanish report, file Mexico, 

folder 1, Imperial Irrigation District Archive, 

Imperial, CA. 

30 TBN, Sept. 30 and Oct. 2, 1930. 

31 Natalia Molina, “Constructing Mexicans 

as Deportable Immigrants: Race, Disease, 

and the Meaning of “Public Charge,” Identities: 

Global Studies in Culture and Power 17 

(2010): 641–66 and Fit to Be Citizens: Public 

Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879–1939 


2006), 120–30, 136–41. 

32 Jaime R. Aguila, “Protecting ‘México de 

Afuera’: Mexican Emigration Policy, 1876– 

1928” (PhD diss., Arizona State University, 

2000) in Dissertations & Theses: Full Text 

(Publication No. AAT 9990715), 65–82, ret. 

May 6, 2011. 

33 TBN, Apr. 20, 1925. 

34 Statement of C. B. Moore, U.S. Congress, 

Senate Committee on Immigration, Restriction 

of Western Hemisphere Immigration: 

Hearings on S. 1437, 70th Cong., 1st sess. 

(Washington, DC: Government Printing 

Office, 1928), 61; http://babel.hathitrust. 

org/cgi/ptid=mdp.39015014316940, acc. 

Jan. 16, 2011. 

35 TBN, Apr. 10, 1926. 

36 Agnes K. Hanna, “Social Services on 

the Mexican Border,” National Conference 

of Social Work (1935): 692–702; Norman 

D. Humphrey, “Mexican Repatriation from 

Michigan Public Assistance in Historical 

Perspective,” The Social Service Review 15, 

no. 3 (Sept. 1941): 497–513; www.jstor.org/ 

stable/30013706, acc. July 5, 2010. 

37 Andrés, “Power and Control,” 223–28. 

38 TBN, May 2, 1934. 

39 Andrés, “Power and Control,” 230–35. 

40 For the 1934 strikes, see Cletus E. Daniel, 

Bitter Harvest: A History of California 

Farmworkers, 1870–1941 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell 

University Press, 1981), chap. 7; Gilbert G. 

González, “Company Unions, the Mexican 

Consulate, and the Imperial Valley Agricultural 

Strikes, 1928–1934,” The Western 

Historical Quarterly 27, no. 1 (Spring 1996), 

60–73 and Mexican Consuls and Labor 

Organizing: Imperial Politics in the American 

Southwest (Austin: University of Texas Press, 

1999), 174–96; Andrés, “Power and Control,” 

288–315. 

41 TBN, June 6, 1934. 

42 Ibid., Nov. 15 and 16, Dec. 27, 1934. 

43 CC, Apr. 16 and 22, May 8, 1935. 

44 Dwyer, The Agrarian Dispute, 46, 59; CC, 

Sept. 19, 1934; for the land sale, see CC, 

Sept. 21, 1934. 

45 Dwyer, The Agrarian Dispute, 181. 

For Lázaro Cárdenas’s relations with 

campesinos as the governor of Michoacán, 

see Christopher R. Boyer, Becoming 

Campesinos: Politics, Identity, and Agrarian 

Struggle in Postrevolutionary Michoacán, 

1920–1935 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University 

Press, 2003), chap. 6. 

46 CC, Dec. 15, 1934. 

47 Ibid., Dec. 17, 1934, Jan. 11, 1935. 

48 Ibid., Mar. 4 and 27, July 23, Nov. 21, Dec. 

6 and 17, 1935, and May 6, 1936. 

49 CC, Mar. 6, 1935; for the CRLC’s perspective 

of land sales and expropriation, see 

Kerig, “Yankee Enclave,” 314–81. 

 


50 CC, Mar. 5 and May 28, 1935 and July 9, 

1936. 

51 Ibid., Apr. 6, 12, 13, and 15, 1935. 

52 CC, Nov. 12, 23, and 25, 1935; Dwyer, The 

Agrarian Dispute, 48; CC, Jan. 23 and 27 and 

May 14, 1936. 

53 CC, Nov. 21, 1935 and Feb. 11 and Apr. 17, 

1936. 

54 Ibid., Nov. 21, 1935, July 20 and Sept. 17, 

1937. 

55 CC, Sept. 27, 1934; for sinophobia, see 

Marco Antonio Samaniego López, “Formación 

y consolidación de las organizaciones 

obreras en Baja California, 1920–1930,” 

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 14, 

no. 2 (Summer 1998): 329–62; www.jstor. 

org/Mon., July 24 23:41:58 2006, acc. July 

24, 2006. 

56 CC, Apr. 2, 1936. 

57 Ibid., Jan. 5, 1937. 

58 Dwyer, The Agrarian Dispute, 61. 

59 CC, July 15, 1936. 

60 Ibid., June 8 and Aug. 5, 1936. 

61 Ibid., Sept. 30 and Oct. 8, 1936. 

62 Dwyer, The Agrarian Dispute, 44–45. 

63 Acosta Montoya, “Precursores del 

agrarismo,” 73–77, 87–109, 129–37; Sánchez 

Ramírez, Crónica agrícola, 104–6. For 

agrarista identity and agency, see Boyer, 

Becoming Campesinos, chap. 4. 

64 CC, Jan. 28, Feb. 2, and Mar. 4, 1937; 

Sánchez Ramírez, Crónica agrícola, 111–14. 

65 CC, Mar. 13 and 16, 1937; the Calexico 

Chronicle converted the peso amount to 

$277,500. Kerig, “Yankee Enclave,” 358. 

66 CC, Mar. 13 and 30, Apr. 1, 7, and 17, 

1937. 

67 Ibid., Apr. 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 

May 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 1937; for “striking 

farmers,” see CC, May 11 and 12, 1937. 

68 CC, Apr. 16, June 28 and 29, 1937; Kerig, 

“Yankee Enclave,” 380; for the 1915–46 statistics, 

see María Eugenia Anguiano Téllez, 

Agricultura y migración en el Valle de Mexicali 

(Tijuana, MX: El Colegio de la Frontera 

Norte, 1995), 100; for a breakdown of the 

different categories of colonies in Mexicali 

from 1915 to 1945, see 102 (Table 8). 

69 CC, Mar. 23 and June 21 (quote) and 22, 

1937. 

70 CC, Oct. 7 (quote) and 28, 1937; TBN, 

Feb. 7, 1938; CC, Apr. 6 and Aug. 3, 1938, 

Dec. 14, 1939 and, for hundreds of ethnic 

Mexicans destroying pea vines in anger 

because of a lack of jobs, Jan. 14, 1939. 

71 CC, July 5, 6, 7, and 10, 1939; TBN, July 

5, 10, and 13, 1939; for Mexico’s agreement 

to pay the CRLC and 318 other American 

owners for expropriated land, see Dwyer, 

The Agrarian Dispute, 258–59. 

72 CC, July 18, Aug. 24, Oct. 23, 24, and 26, 

1939; Chamberlin, “Mexican Colonization,” 

55; Duncan, “The Chinese,” 620. 

If Walls Could Speak: San Diego’s 

Historic Casa de Bandini, By Victor A. 

Walsh, Pp 22–46 

The author wishes to thank Shelly Kale 

for reviewing the manuscript and pointing 

out the important conceptual link between 

cultural memory and historic preservation; 

Ellen Sweet, an independent historian, for 

her extensive research; California State 

Parks senior interpreter Mary Helmich for 

comments on the Seeley stage operation; 

California State Parks archaeologist Nicole 

Turner for assistance with images; and Nena 

Reid and Cynthia Hernandez for transcriptions 

and translations of Spanish-language 

documents. 

Caption sources: Victor Walsh, “The Cosmopolitan: 

A Resurrection of the Past,” Save 

Our Heritage Organisation Magazine 41, no. 

1 (2010); Benjamin Ignatius Hayes, Pioneer 

Notes from the Diaries of Judge Benjamin 

Hayes, 1849–1875 (Los Angeles: M. T. Wolcott, 

1929); “That Delightful Dance, Seeley’s 

Place a Treasury of Delight Tuesday Night,” 

The Daily World, Sept. 26, 1872; “A. L. Seeley’s 

Personal Story,” typescript, n.d., Document 

Vertical File, San Diego Coast District 

Library (hereafter cited as SDCDL); James 

Mills, “Journalistic Remarks on the Los 

Angeles and Tucson Mails,” San Diego Historical 

Society Quarterly 3, no. 3 (July 1957); 

“Historical Miscellany,” San Diego Historical 

Society Quarterly 4, no. 1 (Jan. 1958); Virginia 

Scharff and Carolyn Brucken, “The House 

of the Three Women: A Family Legacy in the 

American Southwest,” California History 86, 

no. 4 (September 2009); Ellen L. Sweet, “A 

Landmark Saved: Couts Preservation Work,” 

Cosmopolitan Chronicle 3, no. 14 (June 12, 

2009); California Pacific International Exposition: 

Official guide, program and souvenir 

picture book (San Diego, CA: G. R. Wolcott, 

1935); Arthur Conan Doyle, The Boscombe 

Valley Mystery (Strand Magazine, 1891). 

1 A. P. Nasatir and Lionel U. Ridout, 

“Report to the Mayor and City Council and 

Historical Site Board on Historical Survey of 

Old Town Plaza” (typescript, 1967), 11. 

2 They include Save Our Heritage Organization 

(San Diego), IS Architecture (La Jolla), 

Heritage Architecture and Planning (San 

Diego), and ASM Affiliates Inc. (Carlsbad). 

Soltek Pacific Construction (San Diego) was 

the general contractor. Funding was provided 

by the California Cultural and Historic 

Endowment, California State Parks, and 

previous concessionaire Delaware North 

Companies. 

3 The French historian Pierre Nora has 

argued that memory is attached to places or 

“sites” that are concrete and physical—such 

as battlefields, cathedrals, buildings, or 

burial places that embody tangible notions 

of the past—as well as nonmaterial—such 

as spectacles, rituals, and public displays 

or commemorations that impart an aura of 

the past. He calls such places of collective 

significance “sites of memory.”’ See Steven 

Hoelscher and Derek H. Alderman, “Memory 

and Place: Geographies of a Critical 

Relationship,” Social and Cultural Geography 

5, no. 3 (Sept. 2004): 347–55; Greg Hise, 

“Sixty Stories in Search of a City,” California 

History 83, no. 3 (2006): 8–26. 

4 Bill Manson, “Who’s Looking Out for 

These Ladies” San Diego Reader 39, no. 39 

(Sept. 30, 2010): 24–41. 

5 Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, 

vol. 2 (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft & 

Company, 1885), 708–9; Margaret Gaffey 

Kilroy, historical and biographical notes 

regarding Juan Bandini manuscript and 

typescript (1985), box 1, folder 7, Bandini 

Family Papers, MSS Coll. 101, Special Collections, 

Young Research Library, University 

of California, Los Angeles (hereafter cited 

as Bandini Family Papers); José Bandini, A 

Description of California in 1828, trans. Doris 

Marion Wright (Berkeley, CA: Friends of 

the Bancroft Library, 1951), vi–vii; Arcadia 

Bandini Brennan, Arcadian Memories of California, 

32 (typescript, 1952), box 1, folder 5, 

MSS C-D 5206, Bancroft Library, University 

of California, Berkeley. This source is also 

available at the San Diego History Center, 

San Diego. The Bancroft collection also contains 

photographs and additional folders on 

the family, including copies of the Bandini 

crest and shield. The crest, entitled Laus Dio 

Bandini, features two snakes coiled around 

a cross; the shield, entitled Bandini Giustiniani—Prince 

of Rome, the double-headed 

eagle.

n o t e s 

6 Bancroft, History, 2:261, 440, 708; Bandini, 

A Description of California, vii; Brennan, 

Arcadian Memories, 12. Sometime 

after Ysidora’s death in 1801, José Bandini 

married Manuela Masuelos y Capaz of Arequipa, 

Peru, by whom he fathered six children. 

The fifth child, Manuel Antonio, born 

on June 13, 1814, became the twenty-fourth 

archbishop of Lima. 

7 Bancroft, History, 2:546–47. One vara is 

33.3 in. 

8 See Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of 

California, vol. 3 (San Francisco: The History 

Company, 1885), 136, 189, 612, 633; Katherine 

L. Wagner, “Native of Arica: Requiem 

for a Don,” The Journal of San Diego History 

17, no. 2 (Spring 1971): 3–4; H. D. Barrows, 

“Juan Bandini,” Historical Society of Southern 

California 4 (1899): 243–44; William E. 

Smythe, History of San Diego, 1542–1908, vol. 

1 (San Diego: The History Company, 1908), 

164–67; Patricia Baker, “The Bandini Family,” 

The Journal of San Diego History 15, no. 1 

(Winter 1969): 26–27; Daily Alta California, 

Aug. 23, 1849; San Diego Herald, Apr. 22, 

1854; Los Angeles Times, Sept. 24, 1944, in 

Brennan, Arcadian Memories, 63–64. 

9 Bancroft states that José Bandini built the 

house; Bancroft, History, 2:708. It is more 

likely that it was a joint effort, given the 

scope of construction, the fact that the older 

Bandini suffered from gout, and that the 

house lot was owned by Juan Bandini. 

10 Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, “Plano de la 

Casa Havitacion de Don Juan Bandini en 

San Diego,” n.d., box 1, folder 211, Alviso 

Family Papers, MSS C-B 66, Bancroft 

Library. Vallejo visited the house in 1829, 

but the date of his drawing, apparently from 

memory, is unknown. The drawing shows 

two doorways on opposite sides of the 

zaguán (entrance hall) facing the side street. 

Four other doorways opened out onto the 

inner patios. One interior doorway opened 

into the sala. See also “Juan Bandini,” (typescript, 

n.d.), Bandini I, Documents Vertical 

File, Department of Parks and Recreation, 

San Diego Coast District Library, San Diego 

(hereafter cited as “Juan Bandini” SDCDL). 

11 One of the rooms facing Calhoun Street 

had a tabique (thin partition wall) that did 

not support the weight of the structure. 

12 The kitchen may not have been constructed 

with ceiling-high adobe walls. ASM 

Affiliates archaeologists, hired to assist 

in archaeological excavations, uncovered 

a brick-lined, sandstone-block drainage 

system beneath the earthen floor from the 

rear or upper courtyard that cut across the 

room emptying onto the Calhoun St. side; 

Jerry Schaefer, draft report, 2010 (hereafter 

cited as Schaefer 2010). It most likely dates 

back to the late 1840s or early 1850s, since 

the bricks are American. Bandini may have 

hired a skilled Mormon mason in 1847 to 

build a brick-lined well on the patio. The 

drain may have been part of that job. Judging 

from the ash and charcoal deposits, 

open hearths were used for cooking. 

13 The traspatio (rear patio) occupied 

higher ground above the lower patio. ASM 

Affiliates archaeologists uncovered the 

cobblestone foundation of an adobe wall 

dividing the two patios, whose purpose was 

to reduce sediment runoff onto the lower 

patio during rainstorms. 

14 The absence of doorways and steps may 

also indicate that this socially elevated family 

sought privacy from the din of public 

activities on the plaza. ASM Affiliates 

archaeologists uncovered remnants of a cobblestone 

foundation within the footprint of 

the original 1829 south wing along Calhoun 

Street. There is a remnant lintel embedded 

in the adobe wall. The foundation below 

the lintel drops more than a foot, suggesting 

that a doorway may have existed here. 

The original street grade at this location is 

about 1 1 ⁄2 ft. below the adobe base, making 

it feasible to build a doorway here. Stephen 

Van Wormer (ASM Affiliates archaeologist), 

in discussion with the author, Apr. 25, 2008; 

Schaefer 2010. 

15 For an informed discussion of the 

pedestal-type design at the corner and south 

and west sides of the building, see Nini 

Minovi, David Felton, and Karen Hildebrand, 

Historic Structural Investigations at 

the Cosmopolitan Hotel, Old Town San Diego 

State Historic Park (Sacramento, CA: Department 

of Parks and Recreation, Archaeology, 

History and Museum Division, 2007), 58. 

16 Alfred Robinson, Life in California (Oakland, 

CA: Biobooks, 1947), 12. 

17 See Ione R. Stiegler et al, Historic Structures 

Report for the Casa de Bandini (La Jolla, 

CA: Department of Parks and Recreation, 

2004), 15, 19–20, 28; Fred A. Tinker, 

“Casa Bandini: Its Owner and His Days of 

Intrigue, Joy and Despair,” in La Campana 

de Escuela . . . Old School House Historians, 

ed. Dr. James R. Moriarty, 55 (n.p.: Old 

Town San Diego, 1974); Brennan, Arcadian 

Memoirs, 34; Merle Clayton, “The Bandinis: 

Grandees in an Era of Grandeur,” San Diego 

Magazine 21, no. 6 (Apr. 1969): 155–56; 

Bandini to John M. Cooper, 7 de Julio de 

1828, 7 de Agosto de 1829, 7 de Octubre de 

1829, 7 de Noviembre de 1829, 21 de Marzo 

de 1831, Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo Papers, 

MSS X-X 2 Film, Bancroft Library (hereafter 

cited as Vallejo Papers). 

18 The practice of removing human wastes 

and nonburnable trash to the beach helps 

explain why archaeologists before and during 

the restoration discovered only a few 

shallow trash sites on the property dating 

to Bandini’s time. On-site inspections also 

revealed remnants of lime wash and plaster 

on the first-floor adobe walls, including an 

entire section of lime plaster underneath the 

stairway in the entrance hall leading to the 

second story when the building operated as 

the Cosmopolitan Hotel. Lime wash or paint 

was commonly used in nineteenth-century 

hospitals because of its hygienic properties. 

Scott Wolf, Associate Archaeologist, ASM 

Affiliates, Inc., in correspondence with the 

author, June 13, 2011; Brennan, Arcadian 

Memories, 34; Bandini Era Finishes, draft 

report, n.d., 1–6. 

19 Symthe, History of San Diego, 133; Daily 

Alta California, Feb. 27 and May 17, 1851; 

Stiegler et al, Historic Structures, 21; Tinker, 

“Casa Bandini,” 55–57; John S. Griffin, A 

Doctor Comes to California (San Francisco: 

California Historical Society, 1943), 76; 

Brennan, Arcadian Memories, 23; Walter 

Gifford Smith, The Story of San Diego (San 

Diego: City Printing Co., 1892), 50; William 

Heath Davis, Seventy-five Years in California, 

ed. Harold A. Small (San Francisco: John 

Howell Books, 1967), 215; John L. White, 

“Founder of Fort Yuma; Excerpts from the 

Diary of Major Samuel P. Heintzelman, 

U.S.A., 1849–1852” (master’s thesis, University 

of San Diego, 1975), 14–15. 

20 Brennan, Arcadian Memories, 34–35. 

21 Robinson, Life in California, 33–34; 

Hubert Howe Bancroft, California Pastoral 

(San Francisco: The History Company, 

1888), 412, 416. 

22 Bandini often mailed presents to his 

daughters and, in his correspondence to 

Stearns, frequently sent them unsolicited 

advice about how to behave. In one letter, he 

wrote: “I beg you to tell Ysidorita to change 

the clothes of her brothers, to mend them 

so they are not raggedy, to arise early and 

clean her room and the room of her sister, 

to make the coffee, to sweep early, and to 

dust, for this exercise is good for the health 

and is beneficial to the interest and to the 

 


good education as well” and Bandini to 

Stearns, 16 de Septiembre de 1842, box 1, 

folder 1, Bandini Family Papers. See also 

Bandini to Stearns, 8 de Diciembre de 1841, 

SG box 5, Abel Stearns Coll., Huntington 

Library, San Marino, CA (hereafter cited as 

Stearns Coll.). 

23 Bandini to Stearns, 29 de Mayo de 1846, 

Bandini to Stearns, 23 de Junio de 1846, SG 

box 6, Stearns Coll. 

24 William Ingraham Kip, The Early Days 

of My Episcopate (New York: T. Whittaker, 

1892), 59 (quote). 

25 See Richard L. Kagan, Urban Images of the 

Hispanic World, 1493–1793 (New Haven: Yale 

University Press, 2000), 129–32. 

26 Bandini was the “leading spirit” of insurrection 

against Alvarado, despite the fact 

that he had been appointed administrator 

of San Gabriel Mission by the governor. 

On Christmas night in 1838, Alvarado sent 

troops to Bandini’s casa to arrest him. The 

house was packed with guests, including 

Pio and Andrés Pico, who were watching 

a performance of the traditional Pastorela 

in the sala. Bandini was not present and 

thus escaped arrest. The Picos, who supported 

the revolt, were taken prisoners. See 

Smythe, History of San Diego, 164–65. 

27 Juan Bandini, Apuntes Para la Historia de 

la Alta California Desde el año de su fundacion 

en 1769 hasta año de 1845, 6, 264–84, 283 

(quote), MSS C-D, Bancroft Library; Bandini 

to Mariano G. Vallejo, 21 de Marzo de 1836, 

Vallejo Papers; “Abel Stearns Correspondence 

and Legal Papers, 1832–1868,” box 2, 

folder 1, Bandini Family Papers; Bancroft, 

History, 3:188–89, 200–10, 247, 367, 371–75, 

419–20, 478–99, 515–21, 556–66, 613; 

Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, 

vol. 5 (San Francisco: The History Company, 

1886), esp. 282–83; Ray Brandes and James 

Robert Moriarty III, History and Archaeological 

Report, Master Plan Old Town San Diego 

State Historic Park (Sacramento, CA: Department 

of Parks and Recreation Archives, 

1974), 315; Baker, “The Bandini Family,” 

23–24; Tinker, “Casa Bandini,” 56–57. 

28 See Bandini to Larkin, 28 de Junio de 

1844, no. 127, MSS C-B 38, pt. 1, and Bandini 

to Larkin, 26 de Febrero de 1845, no. 

41, MSS C-B 39, pt. 3, Documents for the History 

of California, Bancroft Library. 

29 See box 5, folder 18 (Juan Bandini), 

Joseph Mesmer Papers, MSS Coll. 539, 

Special Collections, Young Research Library, 

UCLA; Carolina Lokrautz, “María Arcadia 

Bandini, First Century Families” (typescript, 

1962), 6, box 6, California Ephemera Collection, 

MSS Coll. 200, Special Collections, 

Young Research Library, UCLA; Cave J. 

Couts to Abel Stearns, Feb. 8, 1852, box 2, 

folder 3, Bandini Family Papers. 

30 See John Charles Frémont, Memoirs of My 

Life (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001), 

564; Extracts from Private Journal-Letters of 

Captain S. F. DuPont, while in command 

of the Cyane, during the war with Mexico, 

1846–1848 (Wilmington, DE: Ferris Bros., 

1885), 98; Bancroft, History, 5:326–28, 330, 

356, 433; Benjamin Hayes, Emigrant Notes, 

456, 459, MSS C-E 62, Bancroft Library; 

Mark J. Denger, “Historic California Posts, 

Forts DuPont and Stockton,” http://www. 

militarymuseum.org/DuPont-Stockton. 

html; Bandini to Vallejo, 29 de Enero de 

1847, Vallejo Papers; Smith, The Story of San 

Diego, 89; Baker, “The Bandini Family,” 24; 

Tinker, “Casa Bandini,” 58–59. 

31 In one of the few battles fought in 

California, Kearny’s column suffered 31 

casualties, including 19 killed, while the 

Californios under General Andrés Pico lost 

one soldier. 

32 For a general discussion of San Diego 

during the war, see Smythe, History of San 

Diego, 200–27; Richard Griswold del Castillo, 

“The U.S.-Mexican War in San Diego, 

1846–1847: Loyalty and Resistance,” The 

Journal of San Diego History 49, no. 1 (2003): 

21–41; Hayes, Emigrant Notes, 459. 

33 Stiegler et al, Historic Structures Report, 

23–24; Daily Alta California, Jan. 1, 1853; 

Hayes, Emigrant Notes, 229; “Keen Memory 

of Angelo Smith, Who Lived in the Day of 

the Bandinis, Pedrorenas, and Other Noted 

Spanish Families” (news clipping, San 

Diego Union), box 68, Old Town History 

Subject Vertical File, San Diego Historical 

Center (hereafter cited as Subject Vertical 

File, SDHC). According to “Letter from San 

Diego” published in the Daily Alta California, 

Mar. 28, 1869, Bandini built a balcony 

to provide seating “for the judges who 

resided over those taurine tournaments” of 

not long ago. The balcony was accessible 

by either a trap door or possibly a stairway. 

Benjamin Hayes (Emigrant Notes, 319) notes 

the discovery of the trap door. 

34 Hayes, Emigrant Notes, 591. 

35 Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before 

the Mast (New York: Penguin Books, 1964), 

222–23; see also Lokrantz, “María Arcadia 

Bandini,” 4. 

36 Hayes, Emigrant Notes, 226; Bandini to 

Vallejo, 21 de Agosto de 1836, 21 de Marzo 

de 1836, Vallejo Papers; Bandini to Stearns, 

23 de Junio de 1846, SG box 6, Stearns Coll. 

37 William H. Thomes, On Land and Sea: 

California in Years 1843–1845 (Chicago: Laird 

& Lee, Publishers, 1892), 257. 

38 Bandini to Stearns, 7 de Junio de 1847, 

SG box 6, Stearns Coll., as quoted in Wagner, 

“Native of Arica,” 5. 

39 “Law Report,” Daily Alta California, Oct. 

16, 1854; Juan Bandini, “Los títulos de los 

terrenos en California,” Southern Californian, 

11 de Abril de 1855; see also Southern 

Californian, 23 de Mayo de 1855, reprinted 

in Benjamin Hayes, Scrapbooks, California 

Notes and Incidents, vol. 4, 488–91, The Bancroft 

Library. 


24–25; Pitt, Decline of the Californios (Berkeley, 

University of California Press, 1966), 

111; Charles R. Johnson to Abel Stearns, May 

26, 1851, SG box 36, Stearns Coll.; Wagner, 

“Native of Arica,” 5–7. 

41 See business advertisements in the San 

Diego Herald, Aug. 26, Sept. 16, 1854, Feb. 

3, 1855; Brandes and Moriarty, History and 

Archaeological Report, 320; Henry Miller’s 

1856 sketch of San Diego in California 

Mission Sketches by Henry Miller, Bancroft 

Library. 

42 See sales advertisements in Spanish and 

English in the San Diego Herald, Dec. 15, 

1855. Other property listed in the transfer 

included 2,000 head of cattle, 300 horses, 

and 300 sheep of “all classes, ages, and 

descriptions” in California and Lower 

California, as well as Rancho Jurupa, the 

Gila House site (destroyed in an 1858 

windstorm), and Bandini’s mark and cattle 

brand. See Wagner, “Native of Arica,” 10; 

Stiegler et al, Historic Structures Report, 26. 

43 Stearns to Cave J. Couts, Nov. 16, 1864, 

SG box 37, CT 2223, Stearns Coll.; Benjamin 

Hayes, Notes on California Affairs, 

490–93, box 1, folder 9, MSS C-E 81, Bancroft 

Library. The earthquake also cracked 

Thomas Whaley’s sturdy brick home in 

several places. Other damaged buildings 

included the Pico and Wrightington adobes 

and the Colorado House, a three-story woodframe 

hotel. 

44 See “Seeley Stable” (brochure), 1, box 68, 

Subject Vertical File, SDHC; Richard B. 

Yale, “Albert Lewis Seeley, Stage Line Operator, 

U.S. Mail Contractor, Innkeeper” (Sac-

n o t e s 

ramento: Department of Beaches and Parks, 

Jan. 1973), 3, 21–23, 34–35, Dick Yale Papers, 

SDCDL; Barbara Palmer, “Albert Seeley,” 

Old Town Character Studies: Sketches and 

Sources (San Diego: San Diego Coast District, 

Department of Parks and Recreation, 

2001), n.p, SDCDL. On Seeley’s residence, 

see City of San Diego, Population Manuscript 

Census Schedule, 1870, and County of San 

Diego, Tax Assessment List (1873–1874), box 

6, item 28, Public Records Coll., SDHC 

(hereafter cited as Tax Assessment List, 

SDHC). 

45 Franklin House advertisement, San Diego 

Union, Oct. 10, 1868; letter to the editor in 

defense of Seeley, San Diego Union, Apr. 14, 

1869; “How The Mails Are Not Carried to 

San Diego,” San Diego Union, Mar. 24, 1869, 

and “The Mails Again,” San Diego Union, 

Apr. 7, 1869; “Letter from San Diego (From 

Our Own Correspondent),” San Francisco 

Daily Evening Bulletin, June 6 and 15, 1868. 

46 For Seeley’s use of inheritance money 

to build the hotel, see Daniel Cleveland, 

“Pioneer Tells of Romance of San Diego,” 

San Diego Union, Dec. 13, 1925. American 

businessmen often converted single-story 

Mexican adobes into commercial operations 

by adding wooden second stories. 

The Exchange Hotel, Franklin House, and 

American Hotel in Old Town followed this 

construction pattern. 

47 See William H. Godfrey, Apr. 1872, photographs 

15519, 20203-2, 20203-3, 20203-4, 

and Parker, 1874, photograph OP 16391-38, 

Photograph Coll., SDHC; Stiegler et al, 

Historic Structures Report, 30–33; San Diego 

Union, June 22, 1873. 

48 San Diego Union, Sept. 8, 1869. 

49 See, for example, San Diego Union, Jan. 6, 

Mar. 3, Oct. 20, and Nov. 17, 1870. 

50 San Diego Union, July 20, 1873 (quote). 

51 These measurements are based on the 

witness marks of the original rooms and 

discovery of toe-nosed studs with iron-cut, 

square-head nails. 

52 In 1930, Cave J. Couts Jr. completely 

rehabilitated the hotel guest rooms on the 

second floor, including refinishing them 

with lath and lime plaster and installing 

bathrooms in the smaller box-size rooms 

overlooking the rear courtyard. On-site 

inspections have uncovered remnants of 

first-floor ceiling lath and 2” x 3” studs toe 

nailed to floor plates with iron-cut, squarehead 

nails in several second-story rooms, 

indicating that Seeley, most likely, had 

used lath and lime plaster to cover interior 

walls. On room furnishings, see Inventory 

of Effects of Franklin House, Old Town, 

Tyler Curtis & Co. vs. James W. Cullen and 

Manuel Torres, 17th District Court, Case 435, 

October 1870, box 13, file 1, Public Records 

Coll., SDHC (hereafter cited as Inventory of 

Effects, SDHC). 

53 See Cosmopolitan Hotel Register, Apr. 21, 

1870–July 1, 1887, California State Library, 

Sacramento (CSL); Ellen L. Sweet, Cosmopolitan 

Register Names (typescript, Mar. 27, 

2008), SDCDL. The latter source provides a 

list of all registered guests whose names are 

legible from 1870 to 1874, the dates of their 

stay, and a brief biographical vignette of 

each individual. After that year, the names 

were seldom recorded in the register. 

54 Bruce Coons (historical consultant) in 

discussion with the author, Aug. 29 and 

Sept. 9, 2008; Susan L. Buck, Cross-Section 

Paint Microscopy Report, Cosmopolitan Hotel, 

San Diego, California , unpublished draft (La 

Jolla, CA: IS Architecture, 2008), 128–31. 

An advertisement in the Cosmopolitan Hotel 

Register refers to a billiard room. 

55 This popular punch was a blend of lemon 

juice and pulp, sugar, boiling water, brandy, 

rum, and sometimes porter. See Jerry 

Thomas, The Bar-Tenders Guide or How to 

Mix Drinks (New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, 

1887). 

56 San Diego Union, June 9, 1870 (quote), 

July 20, 1873, Aug. 24, 1876; Inventory of 

Effects, SDHC. 

57 Buck, Cross-Section Paint Microscopy 

Report, 104–6; San Diego Union, June 9, 

1870 (quote), July 27, 1873, “The Ball at Old 

Town,” Jan. 8 and 25, 1874, July 1, 1874, 

June 1, 1875; “Christmas Social Party, Cosmopolitan 

Hotel, Thursday Evening, Dec. 

24, 1874,” Invitations, Documents Vertical 

File, SDHC. 

58 “Letter from San Diego,” San Francisco 

Daily Evening Bulletin, Dec. 21, 1869. In his 

opinion, Porter considered the bullfight a 

spectacle of torment more akin to bull baiting 

than bull fighting: “When a poor terrorstricken 

bull could not be made to face any 

kind of an enemy, not even by fire crackers, 

the muchachos [boys] would fasten a tin can 

to his tail and then his gyrations caused 

immense applause. One would frequently 

break through the barrier and escape outside 

in a vain endeavor to fly from his tormenters; 

but he was speedily captured by 

the hijos [sons] on horseback, and dragged to 

the scene of his suffering again.” 

59 Richard Pourade, The Glory Years (San 

Diego: Union-Tribune Publishing Company, 

1964), 46–47; Mary A. Helmich and 

Richard D. Clark, Interpretive Program, Old 

Town San Diego State Historic Park, vol. 2 

(Sacramento: Department of Parks and Recreation, 

1991), n.p.; Kevin Moore, Historic 

Information Design Report, Historic Windmill 

Reconstruction Project, Old Town San Diego 

State Historic Park (Cloverdale, CA: Rock 

Ridge Windmills, LLC, 2008), esp. 3–4; San 

Diego Union, June 23, 1870, Jan. 18, 1874; 

Tax Assessment List (1873–74), 28, SDHC; 

see also Schiller, 1869, photograph 3861-A 

and Godfrey, 1872, photograph 80:3286, 

Photograph Coll., SDHC. 

60 San Diego Union, Mar. 24, 1869, June 23 

and July 4, 1874; “Information Sheet Seeley 

Stable,” 3–4, Seeley Documents Vertical 

File, SDCDL; Yale, “Albert Lewis Seeley,” 11; 

James D. Sleeper, “The Best Parts of California 

as Seen from a Seeley & Wright Stage,” 

Butterfield Express 5, no. 3 (Jan. 1967): 1; San 

Diego Daily World, Dec. 1, 1871. 

61 Hubert Howe Bancroft, Personal Observations, 

MSS C-E 113, 19, Bancroft Library; 

“Who Was Albert Seeley” (brochure, n.d.), 

Seeley Documents Vertical File, SDCDL; 

San Diego Union, Jan. 6, 1876; William 

Henry Bishop, “Southern California,” 

Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 66, no. 391 

(Dec. 1882): 62. Bancroft came to Old Town 

to arrange to buy Hayes’s vast collection of 

scrapbooks, manuscripts, and papers on 

Southern California—“the most valuable in 

the state,” according to this distinguished 

historian, with the exception of his own. 

62 Railroad development out of Los Angeles 

had affected Seeley’s business by the 

late 1870s. The run from San Diego to Los 

Angeles, for instance, was shortened to San 

Diego to Anaheim, where the railroad could 

pick up the mail. It reduced the run from 

23 to 17 hours. Winifred Davidson, “Tales of 

the Old Southwest,” San Diego Union, Sept. 

24, 1939; “Who Was Albert Seeley”, San 

Diego Union, May 3, 1887; Abstract of Titles: 

Old Town, Block 451, Public Records Coll., 

SDHC. 

63 Susan Davis Tiffany, “Memory Like the Ivy 

Clings”: Reminiscences of One Who Lived in 

the Bandini House 1898–1911 (unpublished 

manuscript, 1973), 42–43, 45, 51, SDHC; 

Los Angeles Times, Dec. 17, 1899; “California 

Olive Oil,” San Diego Union, Apr. 22, 1902; 

“Medals Received from Two Expositions,” 

 


San Diego Union, Sept. 6, 1902, “Akerman 

& Tuffley, San Diego Manufacturers Win 

Gold Medal for Olive Oil,” San Diego Union, 

Oct. 7, 1900; “San Diego Olive Oil Gets 

First Prize at London,” San Diego Union, 

Nov. 22, 1902; Stiegler et al, Historic Structures 

Report, 34–35. 

64 Tiffany, “Memory Like the Ivy Clings,” 

11–12. 

65 Ibid., 1–5. 

66 Ibid., 49–50. 

67 Nancy Carol Carter, “San Diego Olives: 

Origins of a California Industry,” The Journal 

of San Diego History 54, no. 3 (Summer 

2008): 150–51; “Akerman & Tuffley to Have 

Big Modern Pickling and Oil Factory,” San 

Diego Union, Apr. 9, 1911. 

68 “California Olive Oil” (quote). 


37–40; Casa de Bandini, 1928, photograph 

S-442 and Passmore, Jan. 4, 1930, photograph 

1136B, Photograph Coll., SDHC. 

70 See Ellen L. Sweet, “A Landmark Saved: 

Bandini-Couts Family, 1924–1930,” Cosmopolitan 

Chronicle 3, no. 13 (June 5, 

2009); deed of title to Cave Couts Jr., July 

21, 1928, box 79, folder 10, Cave Johnson 

Couts Papers, The Huntington Library, 

San Marino, CA (hereafter cited as Couts 

Papers). 

71 Invoice from Ingle Manufacturing 

Company, June 25, 1930, box 79, folder 

10, Couts Papers; Stiegler et al, Historic 

Structures Report, 41; William F. Mennell, 

“Bathrooms,” Part II, Cosmopolitan Chronicle 

2, no. 17 (Jan. 2, 2009); “Home of Don 

Juan Bandini,” Old Town San Diego, San 

Diego County, California, Historic American 

Buildings Survey, HABS Survey CAL.46 

and Index Cal.37-Olto 2–1 (1937), Library of 

Congress. See also Guy J. Giffen, 1935, photographs 

17076 and 17155, Braun Research 

Library, Autry National Center, Los Angeles, 

CA. 

72 Phoebe S. Kropp, California Vieja: Culture 

and Memory in a Modern American Place 


2006), 44; Stiegler et al, Historic Structures 

Report, 42–43; Victor A. Walsh, “Una Casa 

del Pueblo—A Town House of Old San 

Diego,” The Journal of San Diego History 50, 

no. 1 & 2 (Winter/Spring 2004): 1–16; Hazel 

W. Waterman, “Restoration of Typical Spanish 

California Dwelling Known as ‘Marriage Place 

of Ramona,’” 6 (quote), Hazel Waterman 

Papers, MSS-226, box 1, folder 12, SDHC; Event,” “Historic Casa To Be Scene of Lecture; 

Show,” “College to Offer Early Califor- 

“Bandini Home, Old Town,” n.d., box 79, 

folder 13, Couts Papers; Los Angeles Times, nia Play Course,” “Bandini Home in Old 

June 12, 1932; Cave J. Couts to Mrs. S. I. San Diego Scene of Stirring Drama of City’s 

Harritt, July 24, 1924 (quote), box 45, Couts Early History, Back in Year 1846,” “Long 

Papers; Robert G. Wright, Interview with Ago in San Diego, Don Juan Was Prince of 

Elaine Sweet (June 17, 1973), 7, SDHC. Hosts” (news clippings, 1930s), San Diego 

73 Union and San Diego Tribune, Old Town, 

Gregg P. Hennessey, “Creating a Monument, 

Re-Creating History: Junipero Serra 

Casa de Bandini, box 67, Subject Vertical 

File, SDHC. 

Museum and Presidio Park,” The Journal of 

78 

San Diego History 45, no. 3 (Summer 1999): Stiegler et al, Historic Structures Report, 

136–65; George W. Marston, “History of San 45. 

Diego City Parks, 1936,” 11–13, George W. 79 For a discussion of the Cosmopolitan 

Marston Papers, MSS-35, box 2, folder 37, 

Hotel restoration, see Minovi et al, Historic 

item 3b, SDHC; Victor A. Walsh, “A History 

Structural Investigations at the Cosmopolitan 

of the Old Town Plaza,” (unpublished typescript, 

2006), 4, SDCDL. 

Hotel, esp. 10–16, 57; Victor A. Walsh, “The 

Art of Historic Detection,” Parts I and II, 

74 Winifred Davidson (San Diego Historical 

Society) to Couts, Nov. 14, 1934, box 46, 2008), no. 6 (Apr. 18, 2008) and “The Chal- 

Cosmopolitan Chronicle 1, no. 5 (Apr. 11, 

folder 2, Faulconer to Couts, July 18, 1935, lenge of Historic Preservation,” no. 8 (May 

box 79, folder 11, Mrs. Fisher to Couts, Apr. 2, 2008). 

8, 1940, box 79, folder 13, Couts Papers. 80 Couts died in July 1943. 

75 The exposition’s popularity further convinced 

long-time civic leader George Mar- 

81 Requa passed away in June 1941 and thus 

played no role in the design. 

ston, along with Richard Requa, the fair’s 

82 

chief architect, that the historic community Stiegler et al, Historic Structures Report, 

could be turned around by focusing on its 48, 50, “Historic Residence at Old Town 

Spanish heritage. In 1937, the San Diego to Be Remodeled Soon,” San Diego Tribune 

Chamber of Commerce hired the architect Sun, June 20, 1945; “Casa de Bandini,” Old 

to design the area around the plaza into San Diego (San Diego: San Diego County 

a popular Mexican Mart, modeled after Historical Days, 1950), 10, Old Town Documents 

Vertical File, SDCDL; Casa de Ban- 

Los Angeles’s then popular Olvera Street. 

The first step in Marston’s revitalization dini Motel, circa 1955, photographs 1742 

effort was the Casa de Pico Motor Hotel, an and 12423-1355, Old Town Buildings, box 

upscale Spanish Colonial auto court that 128, Photograph Coll., SDHC; Casa de Bandini, 

ca. 1960, photograph OTSD-46 and 

opened in 1940 on Calhoun Street. Unlike 

Olvera Street, Old Town, Requa argued, ca. 1968, photograph OTSD-70, Photograph 

should be set aside as an historic district Coll, SDCDL. 

without modern buildings interspersed 


among historic ones. His plan did not materialize 

due, in part, to his unexpected death 

49; “Casa de Bandini,” Old Town San Diego, 

10; Mary Lloyd, Saludos Amigos: The Birthplace 

of California (Potrero, CA: Mary Lloyd, 

in 1941. See “Mexican Village Plan Outlined 

to Chamber Chiefs,” San Diego Union, Nov. 

1950), 24. 

13, 1936; “Requa Outlines Plan to Create 

84 

Old Mexico Town,” San Diego Union, Feb. Stiegler et al, Historic Structures Report, 

19, 1937; “Mexican Mart Plan at Old Town Is 55; Architectural Survey and Report, Bandini 

Explained,” San Diego Union, Feb. 26, 1937; House (June 15, 1971), 4, Department of 

Mary Taschner, Richard Requa: Southern California 

Architect, 1881–1941 (master’s thesis, Northern Service Center (NCS), Sacramento, 

Parks and Recreation, Unit File Archives, 

University of San Diego, 1982), 164–69. CA. 

76 “Lease between Cave J. Couts, Lesser 

85 “Diane and Bob Powers,” Los Angeles 

and Margaret Adams Faulconer, Lessee,” Times, June 22, 1980; Betty Quale, Interview 

with Diane Powers (July 29, 1993), esp. 

box 79, folder 11, Couts Papers; “The Casa 

de Bandini, Social Center of Old California, 11–13, SDHC. According to Powers, “the real 

Restored to Former Brilliance,” San Diego inspiration” for the creation of the bazaar 

Union, Apr. 28, 1935 (quote) . 

was her visit to the Bazaar Sabado outside of 

77 Mexico City. 

“Where Flag Was Made Setting of D.A.R.

n o t e s 


55–56; Bandini House Development Plan, 

Apr. 26, 1979, sheet 1, Department of Parks 

and Recreation, San Diego Coast District. 

87 Wall alterations consisted of blocking up 

interconnecting doorways between Couts’s 

bathrooms and guest rooms; Bandini House 

Development Plan, sheet 2. 

88 In the 1880s, round or wire iron nails 

were beginning to be used instead of 

square-head, iron-cut nails in the construction 

trade in the United States. By 1898, 

when Akerman converted the old hotel into 

a boardinghouse, round iron nails were 

widely used, but given Old Town’s dismal 

economic situation and the condition of the 

building, Akerman’s work crews may have 

also reused iron-cut nails from Seeley’s 

time. 

89 Kenneth W. McClellan (Development 

Division, Department of Parks and Recreation) 

to Alice A. Huffman (Deputy Director, 

DPR), May 29, 1980; James P. Tryner 

(Resource Preservation and Interpretation 

Division, DPR) to Richard May (Development 

Division, DPR) May 23, 1979; Tryner 

and Dr. Knox Mellon (State Historic Preservation 

Officer) to John H. Knight (Associate 

Director of Operations, DPR) June 1, 1979; 

Mellon to Knight, June 5, 1979; May to 

Tryner, June 18, 1979, NSC. 

90 George Frank, “Business Blamed for 

‘Historic Lie’ in Old Town Park,” Los Angeles 

Times, Sept. 13, 1980 (quote); Robert Montemayor, 

“New History for Old Town Park, 

Rebuilding of Historic Homes Favored,” Los 

Angeles Times, Apr. 11, 1981; Richard C. Paddock, 

“The Saga of Diane Powers and Her 

Old Town Bonanza,” Los Angeles Times, June 

21, 1981; Richard W. Amero, “Old Town 

Buff Yearns for Fidelity,” San Diego Evening 

Tribune, Mar. 19, 1981 (quote). See also Harriet 

Kimbro, “Bazaar del Mundo—Old Town 

Cinderella or Her Pumpkin,” unpublished 

paper delivered at the 17th Annual Institute 

of History, San Diego (1985), SDHC. 

91 San Diego Union, May 25, 1980, as quoted 

in Stiegler et al, Historic Structures Report, 

55. 


45; Carey McWilliams, Southern California 

Country: An Island on the Land (New York: 

Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1946), 70–83; Victor 

A. Walsh, “Stop the Old Town Myths,” 

Voice of San Diego, Dec. 27, 2005; Matthew 

F. Bokovoy, The San Diego World Fairs and 

Southwestern Memory, 1880–1940 (Albuquerque: 

University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 

xvi–xx. 

93 See Uldis Ports, “Geraniums vs. Smokestacks, 

San Diego’s Mayoralty Campaign of 

1917,” The Journal of San Diego History 21, 

no. 3 (Summer 1975): 51–56; Kropp, California 

Vieja, esp. 103–32; Roger M. Showley, 

Perfecting Paradise (Carlsbad, CA: Heritage 

Media Corp., 1999), 80–87; Bokovoy, The 

San Diego World Fairs and Southwestern 

Memory, esp. xvi–xvii, 50–55, 80–86, 114, 

141–64; Richard W. Amero, “The Making of 

the Panama-California Exposition, 1909– 

1915,” The Journal of San Diego History 36, 

no. 1 (Winter 1990): 1–47; David Marshall 

and Iris Engstrand, “San Diego’s 1935–1936 

Exposition, A Pictorial Essay,” The Journal 

of San Diego History 55, no. 4 (Fall 2009): 

177–90; Richard S. Requa, Inside Lights on 

the Buildings of San Diego’s Exposition, 1935 

(San Diego: n.p., 1937), 5 (quote). 

94 Kropp, California Vieja, 261–69; Kevin 

Starr, Americans and the California Dream, 

1850–1915 (Santa Barbara/Salt Lake City: 

Peregrine Smith, Inc., 1981), 390, 396–97. 

95 “The Casa de Bandini,” San Diego Union, 

Apr. 28, 1935. 

96 Dana, Two Years Before the Mast, 222. 

97 Vonn Marie May, “Old Town: Whose History 

Is It Anyway” Voice of San Diego, Nov. 

28, 2005. 

98 It was listed on Dec. 6, 1932. The text 

reads: “This adobe house was constructed 

about 1827 by José and Juan Bandini. As 

headquarters of Commodore Robert F. 

Stockton in 1846, it was the place where Kit 

Carson and Edward Beale delivered their 

urgent message of December 9, 1846, calling 

for reinforcements to be rushed to the 

aid of General Kearny.” See California Historical 

Resources, Office of Historic Preservation, 

State of California; http://www. 

ohp.parks.ca.gov/listed_resources/default. 

aspnum=72. 

99 See Victor A. Walsh, “The Cosmopolitan 

Hotel: A Resurrection of the Past,” Save Our 

Heritage Organisation Magazine 41, no. 1 

(2010): 2–11. See also Minovi et al, Historic 

Structure Investigations at the Cosmopolitan 

Hotel, esp. 10–16, 102–5. As of May 1, 2011, 

this restoration project has won California 

State Parks and Recreation’s William Penn 

Mott Award (2010), Old Town Chamber 

of Commerce’s Certificate of Excellence 

(2010), Save Our Heritage Organisation’s 

People in Preservation Award (2010), and 

the City of San Diego’s Excellence in Historic 

Preservation Award (2011). 

100 Except for the jehus (stage drivers), virtually 

nothing was found in the historic record 

about servants and other workers at the 

Casa de Bandini and Cosmopolitan Hotel, 

not even references to their names. 

“Saludos from your comadre”: 

Compadrazgo as a Community 

Institution in Alta California, 

1769–1860s, By Erika Pérez, PP 47–62 

The author thanks Shelly Kale and Janet 

Fireman for their editorial assistance and 

comments, and the anonymous reviewers 

for their helpful suggestions. 

Caption sources: John G. Douglass and 

Patrick B. Stanton, “Living during a Difficult 

Time: A Comparison of Ethnohistoric, 

Bioarchaeological, and Archaeological 

Data during the Mission Period, Southern 

California,” Society for California Archaeology 

(SCA) Proceedings 24 (2010); Harry 

W. Crosby, Antigua California: Mission and 

Colony on the Peninsula Frontier, 1697–1768 

(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico 

Press, 1994); John R. Johnson, “The Trail to 

Fernando,” Journal of California and Great 

Basin Anthropology 4, no. 1 (1982); Fernando 

Librado, The Eye of the Flute: Chumash Traditional 

History and Ritual as Told by Fernando 

Librado Kitsepawit to John P. Harrington, eds. 

Travis Hudson, Thomas Blackburn, Rosario 

Curletti, and Janice Timbrook (Banning, 

CA: Malki Museum Press, 1981). 

1 Sir George Simpson, Narrative of a Voyage 

to California Ports in 1841–1842 (San Francisco: 

Thomas C. Russell, 1930), 123. 

2 Victoria Reid to Abel Stearns, May 1851, in 

Susanna Bryant Dakin, A Scotch Paisano in 

Old Los Angeles: Hugo Reid’s Life in California, 

1832–1852 Derived from His Correspondence 

(Berkeley: University of California 

Press, 1978), 194. In her letter, Victoria 

refers to Stearns as “mi querido compadre.” 

Natural and spiritual co-parents use the 

term compadres when referring to each other 

in the plural form; when used singularly, 

compadre (co-father) is the masculine form 

and comadre (co-mother) is the feminine. 

In this essay, I use the terms godparent and 

sponsor interchangeably. 

3 California-born woman of Spanish- 

Mexican descent. 

0 


4 California’s Spanish era ranged from 1769 

to 1821, the Mexican years from 1821 to 

1848, and the American period from 1848 

onward. 

5 My definition of intimacy is influenced by 

Ann Laura Stoler’s study of Indonesia and 

how state institutions furthered the goals of 

empire by regulating intimate matters such 

as sexuality, definitions of legitimacy, and 

labor. See Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge 

and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate 

in Colonial Rule (Berkeley/Los Angeles: 

University of California Press, 2002). See 

also Sylvia Van Kirk, Many Tender Ties: 

Women in Fur-Trade Society, 1670–1870 

(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 

1980); Jacqueline Peterson and Jennifer 

S. H. Brown, eds., The New Peoples: Being 

and Becoming Métis in North America (Winnipeg: 

The University of Manitoba Press, 

1985); Asunción Lavrin, ed., Sexuality & 

Marriage in Colonial Latin America (Lincoln: 

University of Nebraska Press, 1989); Martha 

Hodes, ed., Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries 

in North American History (New York: 

New York University Press, 1999); Albert 

L. Hurtado, Intimate Frontiers: Sex, Gender, 

and Culture in Old California (Albuquerque: 

University of New Mexico Press, 1999); 

Susan Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and 

French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter 

in the Western Great Lakes (Amherst: University 

of Massachusetts Press, 2001); and 

María Raquél Casas, Married to a Daughter 

of the Land: Spanish-Mexican Women and 

Interethnic Marriage in California, 1820–1880 

(Reno/Las Vegas: University of Nevada 

Press, 2007). 

6 For ongoing exploration of this subject, see 

Erika Pérez, Colonial Intimacies: Interethnic 

Kinship, Sexuality, and Marriage in Southern 

California, 1769–1885 (PhD diss., University 

of California Los Angeles, 2010) and “The 

Paradox of Kinship: Native-Catholic Communities 

in Alta California, 1769–1840s,” in 

On the Borders of Love and Power, ed. Crista 

DeLuzio and David W. Adams (forthcoming, 

the University of California Press). For 

a study on northern California missions 

that reaches a similar conclusion about 

compadrazgo’s regenerative potential for 

native kinship ties, see Quincy D. Newell, 

Constructing Lives at Mission San Francisco: 

Native Californians and Hispanic Colonists, 

1776–1821 (Albuquerque: University of New 

Mexico Press, 2009), chap. 5. 

7 I use the term Spanish-Mexican to 

describe the colonial settlers of Alta California. 

Although most were born in Mexico, 

these people emphasized their Spanish 

ancestry while minimizing their indigenous 

and African roots. A few inhabitants of 

Alta California from the administrative and 

officer class, such as Don José de la Guerra 

y Noriega, were of Spanish birth but represented 

a minority. 

8 José Antonio Esquibel, “Sacramental 

Records and the Preservation of New Mexico 

Family Genealogies from the Colonial Era to 

the Present,” in Seeds of Struggle/Harvest of 

Faith: The Papers of the Archdiocese of Santa 

Fe Catholic Cuatro Centennial Conference on 

the History of the Catholic Church in New 

Mexico, ed. Thomas J. Steele, S. J., Paul 

Rhetts, and Barbe Awalt, 29 (Albuquerque: 

LPD Press, 1998). 

9 Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest: The 

Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United 

States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533– 

1960 (Tucson: The University of Arizona 

Press, 1962), 292–93, 304; Virginia M. 

Bouvier, Women and the Conquest of California, 

1542–1840: Codes of Silence (Tucson: The 

University of Arizona Press, 2001), 33–34. 

10 Averaging the rates of Indian male baptisms 

with gente de razón godparents. The 

rates are as follows: (1782) 100%; (1783) 

88.9%, (1784) 85.7%, (1785) 96.6%, (1786) 

85.7%, (1787) 96.2% (N=553.1/6 for an 

average of 92.2%). No Indian females were 

baptized at Mission San Buenaventura 

in 1782. The subsequent annual rates of 

Indian females sponsored by gente de razón 

godparents are as follows: (1783) 77.8%, 

(1784) 94.4%, (1785) 96.6%, (1786) 69.6%, 

(1787) 88.5% (N=426.9/5 for an average of 

85.4%). Baptismal information derived from 

Mission San Buenaventura Baptisms, US/Can 

Reel #913170, Latter-Day Saints Los Angeles 

Family History Library, Los Angeles, CA 

(hereafter cited as LAFHL). See also Sidney 

W. Mintz and Eric R. Wolf, “An Analysis 

of Ritual Co-Parenthood (Compadrazgo),” 

Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 6, no. 4 

(Winter 1950): 353. Mintz and Wolf note that 

“Spaniards who were members of exploring 

parties frequently served as sponsors for 

Indian converts.” 

11 Statistics for the years 1771–75 derived 

from Mission San Gabriel Arcangel Baptisms 

1771–1819, US/Can Film #2643, LAFHL. 

Statistics for the sample years of 1800–1 

and 1810–11 were derived from Baptism and 

Godparent Databases for Mission San Gabriel, 

The Huntington Library, Early California 

Population Project Database, 2006 (hereafter 

cited as ECPP). 

12 Ritual sponsorship became commonplace 

among the Tlaxcalans of colonial Mexico 

within a few decades of their general acceptance 

of Catholic baptism and marriage. 

See Hugo G. Nutini and Betty Bell, Ritual 

Kinship: The Structure and Historical Development 

of the Compadrazgo System in Rural 

Tlaxcala, vol. I (Princeton, NJ: Princeton 

University Press, 1980), 343, 346. 

13 For examples of ongoing gente de razón 

sponsorship of native Californians in the 

1840s, see Mission San Juan Capistrano 

Baptism Database, nos. 04568-04572 

(5/15–8/21/1842), 04580 (9/12/1842), 04585 

(11/15/1842), 04591-04592 (5/10/1843), 

ECPP. 

14 For sponsorship of a gente de razón child 

by Indian Maria Bernarda and her gente de 

razón husband, soldier Antonio Cota, see 

Mission San Gabriel Baptism Database, no. 

01300 (Feb. 10, 1786), ECPP; for Indian 

bride Maria Guadalupe and her gente de 

razón soldier husband Salbador Cariaga 

[Salvador Careaga]’s sponsorship of two 

gente de razón and one mestizo (mixed) 

child, see Mission San Juan Capistrano Baptism 

Database, nos. 00907 (Dec. 2, 1788), 

01069 (Apr. 11, 1791) and Mission San 

Diego Baptism Database, no. 01296 (Oct. 

20, 1787), ECPP. I have not come across any 

lone Indian or native couple sponsoring a 

gente de razón child. 

15 Padrino means godfather and madrina 

means godmother in Spanish; the plural 

form padrinos usually refers to a pair of godparents, 

one of each gender. 

16 Antonio Coronel, Tales of Mexican California, 

ed. Doyce B. Nunis Jr. and trans. Diane 

de Avalle-Arce (Santa Barbara, CA: Bellerophon 

Books, 1994), 79. 

17 Anthropologists note that asymmetry 

in compadrazgo was common in Europe 

as well as in colonial Latin America. For a 

material interpretation of compadrazgo, see 

Mintz and Wolf, “An Analysis of Ritual Co- 

Parenthood (Compadrazgo),” 341–68. For 

a spiritual and theological interpretation of 

Catholic sponsorship, see Stephen Gudeman, 

“Spiritual Relationships and Selecting 

a Godparent,” Man 10, no. 2 (June 1975): 

221–37. Gudeman (p. 234) argues “the nonreciprocal 

form forces parents to have more 

co-parents than the reciprocal form, and this 

creates greater social cohesion.” 

18 For a discussion of vertical and horizontal 

flows in compadrazgo relationships, see 

Mintz and Wolf, “An Analysis of Ritual 

1

n o t e s 

Co-Parenthood (Compadrazgo),” 342, 347– 

48, 363–64. For a comparison of compadrazgo 

in the Iberian and Spanish colonial 

context, see George M. Foster, “Cofradía and 

Compadrazgo in Spain and Spanish America,” 

Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 9, 

no. 1 (Spring 1953): 9. 

19 James A. Sandos, Converting California: 

Indians and Franciscans in the Missions (New 

Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 42. 

Research on early Mexico remains uncertain 

about whether missionaries appointed godparents, 

made godparent recommendations 

to converts, or whether Spaniards volunteered. 

See Nutini and Bell, Ritual Kinship, 

336–37. 

20 Mission San Gabriel Baptisms Database, 

nos. 05083 and 05086, ECPP. For additional 

examples from San Luis Obispo in 

the north to San Diego in the south, see the 

Godparent Database in the ECPP. 

21 José Antonio Esquibel maintains that 

interethnic compadrazgo “created the initial 

spiritual and social bonds between the Spanish 

and their Indian compadres, forming 

the very foundation of the Catholic community 

of New Mexico that still thrives today.” 

He does not, however, question whether 

Indians welcomed this. See Esquibel, “Sacramental 

Records,” 29, 31. Discussions of 

rape and other acts of violence against California 

peoples have been discussed by other 

scholars; see, for example, Sandos, Converting 

California, 51–52. 

22 Steven W. Hackel, Children of Coyote, 

Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish 

Relations in Colonial California, 1769–1850 

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina 

Press, 2005), chap. 3; Also, David Igler, 

“Diseased Goods: Global Exchanges in the 

Eastern Pacific Basin, 1770–1850,” American 

Historical Review 109, no. 3 (June 2004): 

693–719. 

23 Junípero Serra, Writings of Junípero Serra, 

vol. 2, ed. Antonine Tibesar, Publications of 

the Academy of American Franciscan History 

(Washington, DC: Academy of American 

Franciscan History, 1956), 71–73, 307. 

24 Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz, 

trans., Testimonios: Early California 

through the Eyes of Women, 1815–1848 

(Berkeley: Heyday Books and The Bancroft 

Library, 2006), 131–32 (testimonio of Juana 

Machado). 

25 Fernando Librado, Breath of the Sun: Life 

in Early California as Told by a Chumash 

Indian, Fernando Librado to John P. Harrington, 

ed. Travis Hudson (Banning and 

Ventura, CA: Malki Museum Press and Ventura 

County Historical Society, 1979), 48. 

26 Unfortunately, additional anecdotal 

material about godparents in missionary 

records or by native Californians is generally 

lacking for southern California. Searching 

for signs of native peoples’ resistence to 

compadrazgo, but finding none, I reviewed 

the following works: Junípero Serra, The 

Writings of Junípero Serra, 4 vols., ed. Antonine 

Tibesar, O.F.M., Publications of the 

Academy of American Franciscan History 

(Washington, DC: Academy of American 

Franciscan History, 1955/6); Fermín Francisco 

de Lasuén, The Writings of Fermín 

Francisco de Lasuén, 2 vols., ed. and trans. 

Finbar Kinneally (Washington, DC: The 

Academy of American Franciscan History, 

1965); Gerónimo Boscana, Chinigchinich: A 

Revised and Annotated Version of Alfred Robinson’s 

Translation of Father Gerónimo Boscana’s 

Historical Account of the Belief, Usages, 

Customs and Extravagancies of the Indians 

of this Mission of San Juan Capistrano Called 

the Acagchemem Tribe, annotations John P. 

Harrington (Banning, CA: Malki Museum 

Press, 1978); Juan Cortés, The Doctrina and 

Confesionario of Juan Cortés, ed. and trans. 

Harry Kelsey (Altadena, CA: Howling Coyote 

Press, 1979); Maynard Geiger, O.F.M., 

ed. and trans., Fray Antonio Ripoll’s Description 

of the Chumash Revolt at Santa Bárbara 

in 1824 (Santa Barbara, CA: Mission Santa 

Barbara, 1980); José Señán, “The Ventureño 

Confesionario of José Señán, O.F.M.,” University 

of California Publications in Linguistics 

47, ed. Madison S. Beeler (Berkeley/Los 

Angeles: University of California Press, 

1967); Pablo Tac, Indian Life and Customs at 

Mission San Luis Rey, eds. and trans. Minna 

and Gordon Hewes (San Luis Rey, CA: Old 

Mission, 1958); Librado, Breath of the Sun 

and The Eye of the Flute. 

27 Lowell John Bean and Charles R. Smith, 

“Serrano,” in Handbook of North American 

Indians, ed. Robert F. Heizer and William C. 

Sturtevant, 3:572 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian 

Institution). 

28 For Fernando Librado’s testimony about 

the coexistence of Indian and Catholic marriage 

rituals, see Librado, Breath of the Sun, 

28. For a discussion of Nahua and Spanish 

parallels in marriage ceremonies, see Lisa 

Sousa, “Tying the Knot: Nahua Nuptials in 

Colonial Central México,” in Religion in New 

Spain, ed. Susan Schroeder and Stafford 

Poole, 43 (Albuquerque: University of New 

Mexico Press, 2007). For California puberty 

rituals, see Constance Goddard DuBois, 

“The Religion of the Luiseño Indians of 

Southern California,” University Publications 

in American Archaeology and Ethnology 8, 

no. 3 (1908): 77–84, 93–6; Alfred L. Kroeber, 

Handbook of the Indians of California 

(Berkeley: California Book Co., Ltd., 1953), 

856, 858, and 862; William McCawley, The 

First Angelinos: The Gabrielino Indians of Los 

Angeles (Banning and Novato, CA: Malki 

Museum Press and Ballena Press, 1996), 

151–53; Lucile Hooper, “The Cahuilla Indians,” 

University of California Publications in 

American Archaeology and Ethnology 16, no. 

6 (April 1920): 345-8; Ruby Modesto and 

Guy Mount, Not for Innocent Ears: Spiritual 

Traditions of a Desert Cahuilla Medicine 

Woman (Arcata, CA: Sweetlight Books, 

1980), 40. 

29 Steven W. Hackel, “The Staff of Leadership: 

Indian Authority in the Missions of 

Alta California,” The William and Mary 

Quarterly 54, no. 2 (April 1997): 350, 

364–74. 

30 For a discussion of pre-Hispanic rites 

and ceremonies expressed alongside or 

in conjunction with compadrazgo among 

seventeenth-century Tlaxcalans, see Nutini 

and Bell, Ritual Kinship, 352–53 and chap. 8 

for a discussion of the socioeconomic and 

religious motivations in godparent selection; 

Stephen Gudeman, “The Compadrazgo as a 

Reflection of the Natural and Spiritual Person,” 

Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological 

Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 

1971 (1971): 56, 66; Gudeman, “Spiritual 

Relationships and Selecting a Godparent,” 

225; Ann Osborn, “Compadrazgo and 

Patronage: A Columbian Case,” Man 3, no. 

4 (Dec. 1968): 593–608; John M. Ingham, 

“The Asymmetrical Implications of Godparenthood 

in Tlayacapan, Morelos,” Man 5, 

no. 2 (June 1970): 283; and Mintz and Wolf, 

“An Analysis of Ritual Co-Parenthood (Compadrazgo),” 

341–68. 

31 Librado, The Eye of the Flute, 69. For a 

discussion of the term paha, see Librado, 

The Eye of the Flute,19, 112, and Thomas 

Blackburn, “Ceremonial Integration and 

Social Interaction in Aboriginal California,” 

in Native Californians: A Theoretical Retrospective, 

ed. Lowell J. Bean and Thomas 

C. Blackburn, 229, 231–33, and 240–43 

(Ramona, CA: Ballena Press, 1976). Blackburn 

notes that indigenous leaders used 

ceremonies to distribute foods and goods to 

 


lesser members of the community, thereby 

enhancing their esteem and power. 

32 See Mission San Gabriel Baptism and 

Godparents Database, ECPP. Analysis of 

each and every person who served as baptismal 

sponsor throughout the mission 

system’s existence represents a daunting 

task, but employing an arbitrary sample 

and conducting a broad search by name of 

each godparent or spouse denoted in those 

records yielded telling results. 

33 See Mission San Diego Baptism and Godparents 

Database, ECPP. 

34 See Mission San Gabriel Baptism and 

Godparents Database, ECPP. 

35 Space limitations prevent the exhaustive 

listing of each appearance of Indian 

captains in the southern California mission 

databases, ECPP. 

36 Fermín Francisco de Lasuén to Marqués 

de Branciforte, Apr. 25, 1797, in Lasuén, 

Writings, 2:18. 

37 Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, 249; Hackel, 

“The Staff of Leadership,” 350, 364–74. 

38 Dakin, A Scotch Paisano, 77. 

39 Ibid., 106, 107. 

40 Dakin, A Scotch Paisano, 149, 153, 194. 

41 For Dalton’s baptism, see Mission San 

Gabriel Baptisms, no. 08909, ECPP; Dakin, 

A Scotch Paisano, 12. For an example of 

foreign witness testimony in Diligencias 

Matrimoniales, see investigation of Jesse 

Ferguson and María Rendon in San Gabriel 

Mission Matrimonial Investigation Records 

[digitized], William McPherson Collection, 

Special Collections, Libraries of The 

Claremont Colleges, http://ccdl.libraries. 

claremont.edu/collection.phpalias=mir, acc. 

May 31, 2010; Agustín Janssens, The Life 

and Adventures in California of Don Agustín 

Janssens, 1834–1856, William H. Ellison, 

ed., and Francis Price, ed. and trans. (San 

Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1953), 

117–18. For marriages among bicultural 

offspring and with foreigners, see Catholic 

Church, Mission San Luis Obispo, Extracts 

of Church Records, 1769–1917, US/Can Film 

Reel #944282, item 4, Thomas Workman 

Temple, II and Zoeth Skinner Eldredge, 

trans. and comp. (Salt Lake City: Genealogical 

Society of Utah, ca. 1987), LAFHL; see 

entries after 1858, for example nos. 893, 

896, 902, 907, 932. 

42 Santa Barbara Presidio Baptisms Database, 

nos. 840, 1270, 1381, 1705, and 1178, 

1209, 1299, 1331, 1417, 1627, 1699, ECPP. 

43 For Espiridion Baric, see Los Angeles 

Plaza Church Baptisms Database, no. 

965 (Feb. 12, 1840) and for María Emidia 

Tomasa Prudhomme no. 1917 (Aug. 6, 

1848), ECPP. 

44 See Santa Barbara Presidio nos. 00878, 

00951, 01056, 01064, 01084, 01148, 01156, 

01171, 01184, 01199, 01257, 01270, 01299, 

01326, 01331, 01348, 01455, 01545, 01627, 

01699, 01705, Baptismal Book II entries: 

01719Y [original no. 10], 01729Y [20], 

01810Y [101], 01836Y [127], Los Angeles 

Plaza Church nos. 00502, 00965, 01264, 

01486, 01583, 01632, 01783, San Diego 

nos. 06639, 06916, 06968, 07010, San 

Gabriel nos. 08742, 08980, Santa Ines nos. 

01427, 01514, 01578, and San Luis Obispo 

nos. 02936, 02947; from 1848 onward, 

see Santa Barbara Presidio Baptism Book 

II, nos. 01894Y [original no. 185], 01926Y 

[217], 01944Y [235], 2013Y [304], Los Angeles 

nos. 01810, 01876, 01883, 01917, 01926, 

01950, 01976, 01982, and San Luis Obispo 

nos. 03056, 03123, Baptisms Database, 

ECPP. 

45 For Gorge Antonio Allen (Jr.’s) baptism, 

see Santa Barbara Presidio Baptisms Database, 

no. 951. For José María Alfredo Hill’s 

baptism, see no. 1064 (July 9, 1934), ECPP. 

46 Coronel, Tales of Mexican California, 67. 

47 Michael Magliari, “Free Soil, Unfree 

Labor: Cave Johnson Couts and the Binding 

of Indian Workers in California, 

1850–1867,” Pacific Historical Review 73, no. 

3 (Aug. 2004): 358. 

48 Tomás Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines: The 

Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California 

(Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of 

California Press, 1994), 149–50. 

49 Cave J. Couts graduated from West 

Point and arrived in California with the 

U.S. Army. He married Ysidora Bandini on 

April 5, 1851, and received Rancho Guajome 

from his brother-in-law Abel Stearns as a 

wedding gift. See biographical sketch written 

by “Cuevas,” the son of Cave Johnson 

Couts and Ysidora Bandini, box 89, folder 

1, and for the petition and William Caswell 

Ferrell’s judgment in Cave J. Couts vs. Francisco, 

May 6, 1858, see CT 204, box 4, Cave 

J. Couts Papers, The Huntington Library, 

San Marino, California (hereafter cited as 

Couts Papers). 

50 For the Tennessee Couts’s participation 

in slavery, see letters from John F. Couts to 

Cave J. Couts discussing slave purchases 

and transactions, CT 386, CT 388-391 (letter 

1), box 8, Couts Papers. Couts served as a 

justice of the peace in San Luis Rey township 

from 1854–62. His brother William 

Blount Couts also served as a local justice 

of the peace. For Cave J. Couts’s cases, see 

box 4, and for documents indicating Cave J. 

Couts’s election in 1853, see CT 500, box 9, 

Couts Papers. 

51 Robert F. Heizer and Alan J. Almquist, 

The Other Californians: Prejudice and Discrimination 

under Spain, Mexico, and the 

United States to 1920 (Berkeley/Los Angeles: 

University of California Press, 1971), chap. 

2; Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines, chap. 5; 

W. W. Robinson, The Indians of Los Angeles: 

Story of the Liquidation of a People, Early 

California Travels Series, vol. 7 (Los Angeles: 

Glen Dawson, 1952), 2–3; Magliari, 

“Free Soil, Unfree Labor,” 349–89. For an 

overview of the 1860 statutes adopted in 

California, see A. S. Ensworth to Cave J. 

Couts, Jan. 10, 1860, CT 199 (8), box 4, 

Couts Papers. 

52 CT 204, box 4, Couts Papers. 

53 For Couts family indenture agreements, 

see CT 193 (40), CT 193 (49), CT 207, CT 

2615, box 4, and CT 309, box 6, Couts 

Papers. 

54 “Vicente & Comada, bind their son Juan 

to Da. Ysidora B. de Couts,” Apr. 20, 1855, 

CT 193 (4), Couts Papers. 

55 “Vicente & Comada,” Couts Papers. See 

also “Indenture of Indian mother, Jacinta, 

binding her son to Isidora Couts” for 3 

years, Aug. 13, 1866, CT 207, box 4, Couts 

Papers. The indenture agreement, wills, and 

petition mentioned in this section contain 

no testimony from the Indian children 

themselves. 

56 Will cited in Michael J. González, This 

Small City Will Be a Mexican Paradise: 

Exploring the Origins of Mexican Culture in 

Los Angeles, 1821–1846 (Albuquerque: University 

of New Mexico Press, 2005), 133. 

57 There are records of 41 Yuma baptized 

at San Diego (including one baptism in 

1805), 15 at Los Angeles Plaza Church, 4 at 

San Gabriel, 1 at San Buenaventura, and 6 

at San Juan Capistrano, Baptism Database, 

ECPP. “Copies of Petition for Probate of 

Will of Juana Ballestero, 1859,” File A5746- 

34, Avila Family Papers Collection No. 1239, 

Seaver Center for Western History Research, 

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles 

County, California.

e v i e w s 

Edited by James J. Rawls 

Racial Propositions: 

Ballot Initiatives and 

the Making of Postwar 

California 

By Daniel Martinez HoSang 

(Berkeley: University of California 

Press, 2010, 392 pp., $60.00 cloth, 

$24.95 paper) 

Alien Neighbors, 

Foreign Friends: 

Asian Americans, 

Housing, and the 

Transformation of 

Urban California 

By Charlotte Brooks (Chicago: 

University of Chicago, 2009, 

352 pp., $40.00 cloth) 

The Color of America 

Has Changed: How 

Racial Diversity Shaped 

Civil Rights Reform in 

California 1941–1978 

By Mark Brilliant (New York: 

Oxford University Press, 2010, 

384 pp., $34.95 cloth) 

Reviewed by Stan Yogi, coauthor of 

Wherever There’s a Fight: How Runaway 

Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers, 

and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in 

California 

This trio of books examines the 

complex ebb and flow of California civil 

rights history in the twentieth century, 

especially during the post–World War 

II era. 

In Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives 

and the Making of Postwar California, his 

fascinating study of six decades of ballot 

initiatives with racial implications, 

Daniel Martinez HoSang convincingly 

argues that electoral debates about 

these propositions were confined to 

a historic framework, emphasizing 

individual rather than systemic racism. 

Proponents often characterized initiatives 

such as the 1964 effort to ban fair 

housing laws and the 1996 proposition 

to end affirmative action as “civil 

rights” measures. This framing permitted 

a majority white electorate to deny 

or ignore California’s history of racism 

and disclaim any responsibility for perpetuating 

policies damaging the rights 

of racial minorities. Opponents of these 

racially charged initiatives consequently 

were compelled to shape their arguments 

within circumscribed parameters 

set by the propositions’ backers. 

HoSang’s provocative analysis merits 

the attention of scholars, organizers, 

and advocates interested in the 

intersection of race and the initiative 

process. 

Charlotte Brooks’s Alien Neighbors, 

Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, 

and the Transformation of Urban 

California provides some of the history 

that the voters HoSang writes 

of forgot, ignored, or didn’t know. In 

the 1930s and 1940s, for example, 

the Federal Housing Administration 

required racial restrictions on homes 

it underwrote. And residents in many 

California neighborhoods organized 

to exclude racial minorities. Brooks 

argues that housing discrimination 

against Chinese and Japanese immigrants 

and their families in San Francisco 

and Los Angeles reflected U.S. 

relations with China and Japan. Her 

framework is compelling, especially 

regarding the treatment of Chinese 

and Japanese Americans from the late 

nineteenth century through World 

War II. But the analysis is less strong 

when applied to Cold War fears of 

the People’s Republic of China and 

complicated intracommunity tensions 

between Chinatown leaders who 

supported Taiwan and other Chinese 

Americans who were sympathetic to 

the People’s Republic. 

 


The book could benefit from editing to 

eliminate repetition and typographical 

errors, but Brilliant usefully complicates 

civil rights history beyond a blackwhite 

framework and demonstrates 

how California’s multiracial past contributed 

to multiple concurrent victories 

and setbacks for racial equality. 

Nevertheless, Alien Neighbors, Foreign 

Friends is a significant addition to historical 

understanding of Asian American 

integration into previously white 

neighborhoods in Los Angeles and 

San Francisco. 

Brooks writes of a public housing 

project in San Francisco’s Chinatown 

that put Chinese American leaders at 

odds with civil rights advocates who 

promoted desegregation of public 

housing. Mark Brilliant examines 

incidents such as this in The Color 

of America Has Changed: How Racial 

Diversity Shaped Civil Rights Reforms 

in California 1941–1978. His exploration 

of judicial and legislative efforts to 

combat racial discrimination in education, 

employment and housing, and to 

win farm workers’ rights and bilingual 

education reveals that despite attempts 

to organize a singular California civil 

rights movement, the varied historical 

experiences and manifestations of discrimination 

confronted by the state’s 

African Americans, Asian Americans, 

and Latinos in the 1940s through the 

1970s resulted in separate, sometimes 

conflicting civil rights agendas. 

The Father of All: The 

de la Guerra Family, 

Power, and Patriarchy 

in Mexican California 

By Louise Pubols (Berkeley: 

University of California Press and 

San Marino: Huntington Library, 

2010, 448 pp., $44.95 cloth) 

Reviewed by Brett Garcia Myhren, University 

of Southern California 

Beginning with José de la 

Guerra and his wife María Antonia 

Carrillo, then following their descendants, 

Louise Pubols tracks the de la 

Guerra family of Santa Barbara in her 

exploration of Californio society. With 

incredible detail, she recasts the history 

of early nineteenth-century California, 

focusing on “the critical obligations 

and dependencies that family relations 

demanded” instead of “government 

actions, landholdings, or military conquest.” 

Organizing her analysis around 

patriarchy and its methods for maintaining 

and distributing power, Pubols 

brings a fresh perspective to many 

well-worn scholarly trails. 

Because of de la Guerra’s elevated and 

central position in the community, “at 

the center of a dense web of relations,” 

his hands touch a remarkable sampling 

of nineteenth-century politics and 

economics, from elites in Mexico City 

to laborers on local ranchos. Pubols 

makes the most of this material, using 

it to reveal the social machinery operating 

beneath the surface of Californio 

lives. Despite her recognition of de la 

Guerra’s achievements, Pubols does 

not present him as an unblemished 

figure, noting his biases in his treatment 

of Native Americans, women, 

and the lower classes. In fact, Pubols 

excels at uncovering the remarkable 

complexities of the Californios in their 

relations with individuals, institutions, 

and even nations. In all of these cases, 

patriarchy exerts an influence, shaping 

events and reactions. During the 

U.S. occupation, it allowed the de la 

Guerra family to “tread a path between 

cooperation and resistance,” and after 

statehood it “combined relatively 

smoothly with . . . American forms of 

democracy.” 

Pubols’s approach is particularly fascinating 

regarding marriage, where her 

discussions about how various players 

worked with and through the patriarchy 

allow for considerable nuance and

e v i e w s 

invert a number of long-held assumptions. 

For example, some historians 

claim Mexican women facilitated 

U.S. takeover via their marriages to 

foreign merchants. Yet Pubols shows 

how marriage formed part of a calculated 

strategy to “contain the threat” 

of foreign merchants “by integrating 

[them] . . . into familial webs of reciprocity 

and dependence.” 

The risk with this kind of study 

involves questions of broader applicability. 

Though the book intersects with 

global theoretical concepts (like patriarchy 

and its permutations), the subject 

remains intensely local, focused 

primarily on a single town in southern 

California. Some readers will be 

reluctant to engage with a volume that 

devotes nearly 300 pages to analysis 

on this scale, thinking that it contains 

little relevant to the world beyond its 

boundaries, but they will be mistaken. 

This excellent book has a great deal to 

say about families, ethnicity, and gender, 

as well as the levers of power that 

move behind the scenes. In fact, the 

fine-grained analysis and accumulation 

of specific details make the book more 

robust in its theoretical dimensions. 

At the outset, Pubols writes that she 

chose the de la Guerra family because 

she believes “a study on this scale can 

reveal critical historical dynamics that 

a study of an entire class, gender, or 

nationality can overlook.” Her book 

proves that point decisively. 

Berkeley 

By Wendy P. Markel (Charleston, 

SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2009, 

128 pp., $21.99 paper) 

Reviewed by Peter R. Hoffman, Associate 

Professor of Geography and Urban 

Studies, Loyola Marymount University 

In less than two decades, Arcadia 

Publishing has emerged as arguably 

the preeminent publisher of pictorial 

local histories in the United States. 

With more than 6,000 titles in print, 

Arcadia effectively demonstrates that 

a boutique publishing house can successfully 

develop a niche market provided 

the content and graphics of its 

offerings are of sufficiently high quality 

to appeal to both the casual readers 

looking for a quick dose of visual nostalgia 

about their home town and more 

serious scholars seeking insight into 

the historical landscapes and daily life 

of their study area. 

One of the titles in Arcadia’s Postcard 

History Series, Berkeley typifies many 

of the series’ offerings—it’s an intriguing 

amalgam of vintage postcards and 

abbreviated historical commentary in 

the form of short captions. Loosely 

organized into five chapters—“First 

There was the Land,” “Two Towns 

Become One,” “The University Is 

Established,” “Lost History,” and “Specialty 

Cards”—the approximately 200 

postcards depicted are the essential 

essence of the book. The accompanying 

captions typically provide both spatial 

and temporal contexts for the images, 

along with unexpectedly detailed commentary 

about selected key figures and 

events in Berkeley’s history. 

Taken in its totality, this little book 

is seemingly encyclopedic about the 

development of the city of Berkeley 

and its University of California campus 

during the period depicted in the postcards—roughly 

1900 to 1940—but the 

history it presents is difficult to synthesize 

into a collective whole, given the 

fragmented nature of its commentary. 

The lack of an index, the absence 

of dates for many of the postcards 

included, and the somewhat random 

ordering of the individual cards in 

each of the chapters may frustrate the 

serious historian attempting to utilize 

this book in any systematic study of 

Berkeley’s history. Conversely, all these 

same attributes make the book full of 

surprises and curiosities for the casual 

reader looking for some nostalgic 

images and historical trivia about one 

of America’s best-known college towns. 

While the book doesn’t really invite 

a methodical, cover-to-cover read, it’s 

hard to put down—turning each page 

takes the reader around another virtual 

corner and opens up another fascinating, 

monochromic vista of long-ago 

Berkeley. Like any trip down memory 

 


lane, it’s hard to stop, but the destination 

is inevitably equivocal. 

Given their inherent similarities, it 

is impossible to avoid comparisons 

between Berkeley and Picturing Berkeley: 

A Postcard History, edited by Burl 

Willes (Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 

2005). With roughly twice as many 

postcard images, including some identical 

to those in Berkeley, and more substantive 

textual content, Willes’s book 

arguably provides more comprehensive 

coverage of the same Berkeley period 

history. Moreover, Picturing Berkeley has 

somewhat greater aesthetic appeal due 

to its inclusion of some color reproductions 

of original hand-tinted postcards, 

while Berkeley has only black and white 

images. Picturing Berkeley might belong 

on the coffee table in your period-correct 

Berkeley bungalow, but Berkeley 

is certainly worthy of a spot on your 

nightstand. 

Books for Review 

Please send to: 

James J. Rawls 

Reviews Editor, California History 



San Francisco, CA 94105-4014 

JUstinian Caire and 

santa CrUz island 

the rise and fall of a California dynasty 

By Frederic Caire Chiles 

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one of the fabled channel islands of southern california, 

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from its aboriginal chumash population to its acquisition 

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family saga: the story of French émigré Justinian caire 

and his descendants, who owned and occupied the 

island for more than fifty years. the author, descended 

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historians to recount the full, previously untold story. 

Pío PiCo 

the last Governor of mexican California 

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two-time governor of alta california and prominent 

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University of 

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The Joaquín Band 

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lori lee wilson 

The Joaquín Band is a fascinating 

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California Women 

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From the Gold Rush 

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Edited by Robert W. Cherny, Mary 

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California Women and Politics examines 

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and reveals unexpected contours to 

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$40.00 paperback 

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i n d e x 

volume 88 

A 

A View from Telegraph Hill (Alice Burr) 

(88, 1), 64 

Agraristas (88, 4), 13, 18, 19 

Akerman, Edward (88, 4), 35, 36, 44 

Albert, Judy Gumbo (88, 1), 29 

Albert, Stew (88, 1), 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 21, 29 

Alexander, George (88, 2), 49 

All-American Canal (88, 4), 7 

Allen, Steve (88, 3), 55; and The Steve Allen 

Westinghouse Show (88, 3) 55 

Alta California (88, 4), 25, 28; and 

compadrazgo (godparentage), 47–62 

Altamirano, Ysabel (88, 4), 36 

Alvarado, Juan Batista (88, 4), 28 

Andrés, Benny Joseph Jr., “Invisible Borders: 

Repatriation and Colonization of Mexican 

Migrant Workers along the California 

Borderlands during the 1930s” (88, 4), 

5–21 

Angelo, John (88, 1), 12, 15 

Anthony, Susan B. (88, 1), 49, 50 

Argüello, Refugio (Bandini) (88, 4), 24, 27, 

29, 33 

Atherton, María Alejandra (88, 4), 49 

Atherton, Faxon Dean (88, 4), 49 

Automobile Boulevard (Junipero Serra 

Boulevard, San Francisco) (88, 2), 27 

Avella, Steven A., For Both Cross and Flag: 

Catholic Action, Anti-Catholicism, and 

National Security Politics in World War II 

San Francisco (book review) (88, 1), 59 

B 

Bagley, Will, So Rugged and Mountainous: 

Blazing the Trails to Oregon and California, 

1812–1848 (book review) (88, 3), 72–73 

Baja California (88, 4), 5, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 

16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 30 

Balboa Park (San Diego) (88, 4), 38, 40 

Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy (Franz 

Rickaby) (88, 3), 6, 12, 14–15, 16 

Bancroft, Hubert Howe (88, 4), 35 

Bandini, Arcadia (88, 4), 26, 27, 33, 41, 47, 56, 

57, 60 

Bandini, Dolores (88, 4), 27, 30, 33 

Bandini, Juan (88, 4), 22, 23, 24–30, 33, 40, 

42, 44, 45, 46, 57 

Bandini, Ysidora (88, 4), 27, 41, 60–61 

Baptism, Alta California (88, 4), 47–62 

Baptismal Sponsorship of Alta California 

Indians at Mission San Gabriel (chart) (88, 

4), 48 

Bardacke, Frank (88, 1), 13, 14, 15, 16, 17–18, 

29 

Berkeley Barb (newspaper) (88, 1), 15, 16, 17 

Bishop, William Henry (88, 4), 35 

“Bloody Thursday” (People’s Park) (88, 1), 

21–27 

Bloom, Khaled J., Murder of a Landscape: The 

California Farmer-Smelter War, 1897–1916 

(book review) (88, 2), 63 

“’Boes in Facultate: The Short, Creative Life 

of Franz Rickaby,” by Gretchen Dykstra 

(88, 3), 6–21 

Boulder (Hoover) Dam (88, 4), 7, 11, 21 

Bracero Program (88, 4), 6, 21 

Brawley (Imperial County) (88, 4), 5, 9, 10, 16 

Bridge Builders Union (San Francisco) 

(88, 2), 18, 19 

Brilliant, Mark, The Color of America Has 

Changed: How Racial Diversity Shaped Civil 

Rights Reform in California 1941–1978 (book 

review) (88, 4), 75 

Brooks, Charlotte, Alien Neighbors, Foreign 

Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the 

Transformation of Urban California (book 

review) (88, 4), 74–75 

Building Trades Council (San Francisco) 

(88, 2), 6, 7, 13 

Burns, Fritz B. (88, 3), 49 

Burr, Alice, A View from Telegraph Hill (88, 1), 

64 

C 

Caballero (88, 4), 3, 34, 40 

Calexico (Imperial County) (88, 4), 5, 8, 14, 16 

Calexico Chronicle (88, 4), 8, 13, 14 

California Ephemera Project (CHS Collections) 

(88, 1), 3–7; (88, 3), 3–5 

California Pacific International Exposition, 

1935–36 (88, 4), 23, 38–40, 45 

California State Parks (88, 4), 24, 26, 33, 42 

Californio (88, 4), 22, 24, 28, 34, 36, 46, 57, 

61, 62 

Campesinos (88, 4), 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 

19 

Cárdenas, Lázaro (88, 4), 5, 6, 7, 13, 15, 16, 18, 

19, 20, 21 

Cardwell, James H. (88, 4), 42, 43, 45 

Cardwell, Nora (88, 4), 42, 43 

Carpet dyeing (Los Angeles) (88, 3), 47–52 

Casa de Bandini (San Diego) (88, 4), 22, 

24–30, 31, 36, 38, 40, 43, 46 

Casa de Estudillo (San Diego) (88, 4), 24, 25, 

26, 35, 38 

Casey, Michael (88, 2), 8, 9 

Cash, Jon David, “People’s Park: Birth and 

Survival” (88, 1), 8–29 

Central Pacific Railroad (88, 2), 38, 40, 41 

Chadwick, George C. (88, 2), 24 

Chadwick & Sykes (San Francisco) (88, 2), 

24–31 

Cheit, Earl (88, 1), 8 

Chinese Exclusion Convention (88, 2), 23 

Chumash Indians (88, 4), 51, 53, 55, 56 

City Dye Works and Laundry Co. (Los Angeles) 


City Front Federation (San Francisco) (88, 2), 

5, 6, 8, 12, 13, 17, 18, 20 

City Front Federation Strike (San Francisco) 

(88, 2), 4–23 

Claremont (Riverside County) (88, 3), 6, 8, 

16, 17 

Cohnreich, Israel (88, 4), 35 

Colby, William Edward (88, 3), 35, 36 

Colorado River Land Company (CRLC) (88, 4), 

7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 20 

Compadrazgo (godparentage) (88, 4), 47–62 

Concord stagecoaches (88, 4), 32, 34 

Coronel, Antionio Franco (88, 4), 52, 59 

Cosmopolitan Hotel (San Diego) (88, 4), 22– 

46; and California State Parks’ restoration, 

24, 26, 33, 42, 46; and preservation 

controversy, 42–44 

Couts, Cave J. Jr. (88, 4), 23, 33, 36–42, 44, 45 

Couts, Colonel Cave J. (88, 4), 24, 28, 30, 60, 

61 

Culver, Lawrence, The Frontier of Leisure: 

Southern California and the Shaping of 

Modern America (book review) (88, 3), 

73–74 

D 

Dana, Richard Henry Jr. (88, 4), 29, 30, 45 

De Medina, Hipolita Orendain (CHS 

Collections) (88, 4), 3–4 

Delacour, Mike (88, 1), 11–12, 15, 16, 18, 19, 29 

Devil’s Tea Kettle, Geyser Springs, Cal. (907) 

(Eadweard Muybridge) (CHS Collections) 


Dillon, Richard (88, 3), 38 

Diseños (88, 4), 30 

Dolin, Eric Jay, Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The 

Epic History of the Fur Trade in America 

(book review) (88, 3), 72–73 

Draymen’s Association (San Francisco) (88, 2), 

8, 13, 15, 18 

Dupont, Samuel F. (88, 4), 28 

Dykstra, Clarence (88, 3), 20, 21 

Dykstra, Gretchen, “’Boes in Facultate: The 

Short, Creative Life of Franz Rickaby” 

(88, 3), 6–21 

Dykstra, Lillian (Katar Rickaby) (88, 3), 6, 7, 9, 

10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20–21; and marriage 

to Clarence Dykstra, 20 

E 

E. H. Rollins & Sons (88, 2), 47 

“Eastern Promises: The Role of Eastern Capital 

in the Development of Los Angeles, 1900– 

1920,” by Timothy Tzeng (88, 2), 32–53 

Eaton, Frederick (88, 2), 42 

Echeandía, José María (88, 4), 24 

Ejidos (88, 4), 13, 16, 19, 20 

El Camino Real (88, 4), 25

i n d e x 

Elrick, John, “Social Conflict and the Politics 

of Reform: Mayor James D. Phelan and the 

San Francisco Waterfront Strike of 1901” 

(88, 2), 4–23 

Emmons, David M., Beyond the American 

Pale: The Irish in the West, 1845–1910 (book 


Employers’ Association (San Francisco) 

(88, 2), 5, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19 

Estudillo, Dolores (88, 4), 24, 57 

Estudillo, José Antonio (88, 4), 24 

F 

Faulconer, Margaret Adams (88, 4), 38, 40 

First Continental Railroad (88, 2), 41 

Fenyes, Eva Scott (88, 4), 35 

Frémont, John C. (88, 4), 28 

Friday Morning Club (Los Angeles) (88, 1), 

45–47, 50 

Furuseth, Andrew (88, 2), 13, 14, 16, 22 

G 

Gage, Henry T. (88, 2), 14, 18, 19 

Ganz, Rudolph (88, 3), 35 

Gente de razón (88, 4), 48, 50, 52, 53 

Gibson, E. Kay, Brutality on Trial: “Hellfire” 

Pedersen, “Fighting” Hansen, and the 

Seamen’s Act of 1915 (book review) (88, 2), 

66 

Gila House (San Diego) (88, 4), 29, 30 

Glusman, Paul (88, 1), 12, 13, 15 

Gold Rush (88, 4), 29, 30 

Goldberg, Art (88, 1), 13, 14, 15, 20 

Golden Gate Bridge (88, 3), 33; opening day, 34 

Golden Gate International Exposition (1937) 


Golden Gate Park (88, 2), 24, 26, 30; (88, 3), 

24, 26, 33 

Gowan, Teresa, Hobos, Hustlers, and 

Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco (book 


Great Depression (88, 4), 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, 21, 38 

Great Sand Waste (San Francisco) (88, 2), 24, 

26 

H 

Harriman, Edward (88, 2), 38, 40, 41, 47 

Harris, Norman W. (88, 2), 44, 45, 47, 48 

Hayes, Benjamin (88, 4), 25, 28, 35 

Heynes, Roger W. (88, 1), 8, 10, 18–21, 26 

Historia de la Alta California (Juan Bandini) 


Hollywood (88, 3), 40, 41, 46, 54, 56; movie 

studios, 46; sound studios, 46 

Horton, Inge Schaefer, Early Women Architects 

of the San Francisco Bay Area: The Lives and 

Work of Fifty Professionals, 1890–1951 (book 


HoSang, Daniel Martinez, Racial Propositions: 

Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar 

California (book review) (88, 4), 74 

Huntington, Collis (88, 2), 38, 39, 40, 48, 50 

Huntington, Henry E. (88, 2), 32, 38, 39, 41, 

42 

Hydraulic Erosion (Alma Lavenson) (88, 2), 72 

I 

“If Walls Could Speak: San Diego’s Historic 

Casa de Bandini,” by Victor A. Walsh 

(88, 4), 22–46 

Imperial Valley (88, 4), 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 

16, 17, 19, 20, 21 

Imperial-Mexicali Valley (88, 4), 7, 8, 9, 13 

In Front of the St. Charles Hotel, Downieville 

(Alma Lavenson) (88, 3), 80 

Indian puberty rituals (88, 4), 53–54 

“Invisible Borders: Repatriation and 

Colonization of Mexican Migrant Workers 

along the California Borderlands during 

the 1930s,” by Benny Joseph Andrés Jr. 

(88, 4), 5–21 

J 

Jackson, Helen Hunt (88, 4), 38 

James Speyer (88, 2), 39–40, 41, 48–49, 52 

Johnson, Charles Robinson (88, 4), 24, 30 

Junta patriótica (88, 4), 4 

K 

Kearny, Stephen Watts (88, 4), 28 

Knox, Frederick H. (88, 3), 12; and the Dakota 

Playmakers, 12, 13 

Kountze-Leach Syndicate (88, 2), 46, 47, 48, 

49 

Kropp, Phoebe S. (88, 4), 45 

L 

La Republica (newspaper, San Francisco) 


Labor Council (San Francisco) (88, 2), 6, 8, 10, 

14, 16, 20 

Larkin, Thomas (88, 4), 28 

Lavenson, Alma (88, 2), 72; (88, 3), 80 

Leach, Arthur Burtis (banker) (88, 2), 33, 43 

Leary, James P. (88, 3), 14 

Lee, Erika (and Judy Yung), Angel Island: 

Immigrant Gateway to America (book 


Librado, Fernando (Chumash) (88, 4), 53, 54, 

55 

Lincoln Heights (Los Angeles) (88, 3), 42, 43, 

44, 54 

Lincoln Way (San Francisco) (88, 2), 30 

Loma Linda Hospital (Seventh-day Adventists’ 

Hospital) (88, 3), 6, 18–20 

Lomax, Alan (88, 3), 6 

Lomax, John Avery (88, 3), 6 

Los Angeles Aqueduct (88, 2), 32–53 

Los Angeles City Water Company (88, 2), 42, 

43 

Los Angeles Department of Water (88, 2), 43 

“Love Among the Redwoods: The Story of 

Margaret and David Paddock,” by Daimar 

Paddock Robinson (88, 3), 22–43 

Lummis, Charles Fletcher (88, 4), 35 

Lustig, R. Jeffrey, ed., Remaking California: 

Reclaiming the Public Good (book review) 


Lyon, Mike (88, 1), 13, 14, 15 

M 

MacLeish, Archibald (88, 3), 6 

Madigan, Frank (88, 1), 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27 

Markel, Wendy P., Berkeley (book review) 

(88, 4), 76–77 

Mathews, Joe (and Mark Paul), California 

Crackup: How Reform Broke the State and 

How We Can Fix It (book review) (88, 2), 

62 

Mathews, William Burgess (88, 2), 43, 44, 45, 

47, 48, 52 

McCarthy, P. H. (88, 2), 11, 21 

McGettigan, Francisca Vallejo (88, 4), 59 

McPherson, Aimee Semple (88, 3), 45 

McWilliams, Carey (88, 4), 6, 45 

Medina, Emigdio (88, 4), 4 

Mellus, Henry (88, 3), 62 

Merchants’ Association (San Francisco) 

(88, 2), 10, 12 

Metro Studios (Hollywood) (88, 3), 46 

Mexicali (88, 4), 6, 8, 14, 16 

Mexicali Valley (borderlands) (88, 4), 5–21 

Miller, Henry (artist) (88, 4), 25 

Miller, William Cosby (“Big Bill”) (88, 1), 13, 

14, 15 

Mills Seminary, Seminary Park, Alameda 

County, by Edweard Muybridge (88, 4), 88 

Mission District (San Francisco) (88, 3), 22, 36 

Mission San Buenaventura (88, 4), 48, 50, 

51, 55 

Mission San Fernando Rey (88, 4), 56 

Mission San Diego de Alcalá (88, 4), 22, 55, 

56, 

Mission San Gabriel Arcángel (88, 4), 29, 48, 

50, 52, 54, 55, 57 

Mission San Juan Capistrano (88, 4), 53 

Mission Santa Barbara (88, 4), 56 

Mission Santa Inés (88, 4), 53 

Modoc County (CHS Collections) (88, 3), 3–5 

Moore, Harry Humphrey (88, 4), 87 

“Mother of Clubs” (Caroline Severance) (88, 1), 

39, 44, 52 

Moulin, Gabriel (88, 3), 22, 23 

Muir Woods (88, 3), 22, 23, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 

Mulholland, William (88, 2), 32, 42, 43, 44, 45, 

48, 52, 53 

Mutualistas (88, 4), 5–6, 10, 11, 12, 21 

Muybridge, Eadweard (88, 2), 3; (88, 4), 88 

N 

N. W. Halsey & Co. (88, 2), 47 

N. W. Harris & Co. (88, 2), 45, 47 

Newhall, George (88, 2), 14, 16 

0 


O 

Old Mission Olive Works (San Diego) 


Old Town San Diego (88, 4), 22, 23, 29, 30, 31, 

32, 33, 35, 38, 42, 43, 45 

Old Town San Diego State Historic Park 


Olympic Auditorium (Los Angeles) (88, 3), 47 

Otis, Harrison Gray (88, 2), 32, 47 

Owens Master Carpet Dyers (Los Angeles) 

(88, 3), 40–61 

Owens River (88, 2), 44, 45, 51 

Owens Valley (88, 2), 32, 45, 51 

P 

Pacific Electric Railway Company (88, 2), 42 

Pacific Mail Steamship Company (88, 3), 24, 

25 

Paddock, Daimar (88, 3), 33, 35, 36, 39 

Paddock, David Anthony (88, 3), 22, 26–27, 

28, 29–39 

Paddock, Hosea (88, 3), 26 

Paddock, Margaret (Heyde) (88, 3), 22, 24–25, 

28, 29–39; and the Sutro Library (San 

Francisco), 37–38 

Paddock, Stuart Roy (88, 3), 35, 36, 37, 39 

Panama-California Exposition, 1915–16 

(88, 4), 38, 45 

Parkside district (San Francisco) (88, 2), 24–31 

Parkside Realty Company (88, 2), 24, 26, 30 

Parkside Transit Company (88, 2), 24, 30 

Parmelee Art Company (San Francisco) 

(88, 3), 29, 32 

Parry, J. S. (88, 2), 23 

Paul, Mark (and Joe Mathews), California 

Crackup: How Reform Broke the State and 

How We Can Fix It (book review) (88, 2), 

62 

“People’s Park: Birth and Survival,” by Jon 

David Cash (88, 1), 8–29 

Pérez, Erika, “‘Saludos from your comadre’: 

Compadrazgo as a Community Institution 

in Alta California, 1769–1885” (88, 4), 

47–62 

Phelan, James D. (88, 2), 4–23 

Phillips, George Harwood, Vineyards & 

Vaqueros: Indian Labor and the Economic 

Expansion of Southern California, 1771–1877 

(book review) (88, 3), 71–72 

Pico, Pío (88, 4), 29 

Pile Drivers Local #1(San Francisco) (88, 2), 18, 

19, 20, 23 

Pomona College (Claremont, CA) (88, 3), 

6, 16, 17; Hobo Club, 17, 18–19; Franz 

Rickaby Memorial Sundial, 19 

Post-War House (Los Angeles) (88, 3), 49 

Powers, Diane (88, 4), 43–44, 45 

Pubols, Louise, The Father of All: The de la 

Guerra Family, Power, and Patriarchy in 

Mexican California (book review) (88, 4), 

75–76 

Pujo Committee (88, 2), 37, 52 

R 

Ramona (Helen Hunt Jackson) (88, 4), 38 

Ranchería (88, 4), 54, 55 

Ranchos (88, 4), 30, 51, 52, 60 

Read, Jon (88, 1), 13, 15 

Reagan, Ronald (88, 1), 19, 20, 21, 25, 26–27 

Rector, James (88, 1), 22, 24, 26 

Red Roof (El Nido) (Caroline Severance) (88, 

1), 44, 45, 52 

“Rediscovering San Francisco’s Parkside 

Neighborhood” (photo essay) (88, 2), 24–31 

Redwood Empire (88, 3), 28, 30 

Reid, Hugo (88, 4), 42, 56, 57 

Reid, Victoria Bartholomea (88, 4), 47, 57 

Repatriation, Mexican (1930s) (88, 4), 5–21 

Requa, Richard (88, 4), 42 

Reuf, Abe (88, 2), 20, 23, 24 

Rickaby, Franz (88, 3), 6–20; and poems, 9; 

and plays, 6; and Knox College (Galesburg, 

IL), 8–9, 17; and University of North 

Dakota (Grand Forks), 6, 7, 11 

Rickaby, Lillian (Katar Dykstra) (88, 3), 6, 7, 9, 

10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20–21; and marriage 

to Clarence Dykstra, 20 

Robinson, Daimar Paddock, “Love Among 

the Redwoods: The Story of Margaret and 

David Paddock” (88, 3), 22–43 

Rogers, W. Lane (and James R. Smith), The 

California Snatch Racket: Kidnappings 

during the Prohibition and Depression Eras 


Rosenberg, Ed (88, 2), 14 

Ruocco, Lloyd (88, 4), 42 

S 

SS Ecuador (88, 3), 24, 25 

Sailors’ Union of the Pacific (88, 2), 10, 13 

Salomon, Carlos Manuel, Pío Pico: The Last 

Governor of Mexican California (book 


“‘Saludos from your comadre’: Compadrazgo as 

a Community Institution in Alta California, 

1769–1885,” by Erika Pérez (88, 4), 47–62 

San Buenaventura (Ventura County) (88, 1), 

40, 41 

San Diego (88, 4), 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 35, 

44, 45 

San Fernando Mission Land Company 


San Francisco Chronicle (88, 3), 27, 32, 33, 38 

San Juan Capistrano (88, 4), 31, 34 

San Pedro (88, 3), 42, 44 

Scheer, Robert (88, 1), 8, 15 

Schlesinger, Wendy (88, 1), 9, 12, 15, 19, 29 

Schmitz, Eugene (88, 2), 20, 21, 23 

Schrag, Peter, Not Fit for Our Society: 

Immigration and Nativism in America (book 


Schwartz, Davis Francis (artist) (88, 3), 1, 

62–63 

Schwartz, Isabella Ethel (Mellus) (88, 3), 1, 

62–63 

Scott, Adam Sherriff (artist) (88, 3), 63 

Seeley, Albert Lewis (88, 4), 22, 31–35, 41, 42, 

44 

Seeley, Emily (88, 4), 31, 34 

Seeley House (Casa de Bandini, San Diego) 

(88, 4), 31, 33, 34 

Serra, Father Junípero (88, 4), 51, 52 

Severance, Caroline Maria Seymour (88, 1), 

30–31, 33–52; women’s rights, 31, 36–39; 

early childhood education, 45; women’s 

clubs (Los Angeles), 45–47; women’s 

suffrage (Los Angeles), 49–52 

Severance, James Seymour (88, 1), 39–41, 43, 

48 

Severance, Mark Sibley (88, 1), 39–41, 43, 48 

Severance, Theodoric Cordenio (88, 1), 30–49 

Sherman, Moses (88, 2), 47 

Sielen, Alan B., “We Dye for the Stars”: Los 

Angeles Remembered” (88, 3), 44–61 

Sierra Club (88, 3), 27, 29, 30, 34, 35 

“Significant Others: The Defining Domestic 

Life of Caroline Seymour Severance,” by 

Diana Tittle (88, 1), 30–52 

Sitton, Tom, Grand Ventures: The Banning 

Family and the Shaping of Southern 

California (book review) (88, 2), 66–67 

Smith, James R. (and W. Lane Rogers), The 

California Snatch Racket: Kidnappings 

during the Prohibition and Depression Eras 


Smith, Richard Cándida, The Modern Moves 

West: California Artists and Democratic 

Culture in the Twentieth Century (book 


“Social Conflict and the Politics of Reform: 

Mayor James D. Phelan and the San 

Francisco Waterfront Strike of 1901,” by 

John Elrick (88, 2), 4–23 

Southern Pacific Railroad (88, 2), 35, 38–39, 

40, 47, 49, 50 

Spanish heritage fantasy (88, 4), 44–46 

Speyer & Co. (88, 2), 39, 40, 41, 49–50 

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady (88, 1), 49 

Stearns, Abel (88, 4), 24, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 

47, 56, 57 

Stockton, Robert F. (88, 4), 28 

Stone, Lucy (88, 1), 49 

Sutro, Adolph (88, 3), 37 

Sutro Library (San Francisco) (88, 3), 37–38 

T 

Teamsters (San Francisco) (88, 2), 8, 9, 11, 18, 

19 

Telegraph Avenue (Berkeley) (88, 1), 8, 9, 10, 

14, 15, 22, 24 

The Brawley News (88, 4), 8 

Tiffany, Susan Davis (88, 4), 35–36 

1

i n d e x 

Tittle, Diana, “Significant Others: The 

Defining Domestic Life of Caroline 

Seymour Severance” (88, 1), 30–52 

Toloache (Indian puberty ceremony) (88, 4), 

53, 54 

Torabene, Joseph Eric (“Super Joel”) (88, 1), 

13, 14–15 

Tuffley, Robert (88, 4), 35, 36 

Tzeng, Timothy, “Eastern Promises: The Role 

of Eastern Capital in the Development of 

Los Angeles, 1900–1920” (88, 2), 32–53 

U 

U.S. Border Patrol (88, 4), 6, 12, 21 

U.S. Land Act (1851) (88, 4), 30 

U.S.-Mexican War (Mexican-American War, 

1846–48) (88, 4), 28 

Union Labor Party (San Francisco) (88, 2), 20, 

21, 23 

Union Pacific Railroad (88, 2), 41, 47 

University of California, and People’s Park 

Controversy (88, 1), 8–29 

V 

Vachel Lindsay, Nicholas (88, 3), 6, 8, 9, 10 

Vallejo, Mariano Guadalupe (88, 4), 24, 28, 

29, 59 

Van der Ryn, Sim (88, 1), 10, 18, 19, 20, 21, 

26, 29 

Vernon, Edward W., A Maritime History of Baja 

California (book review) (88, 2), 64 

Victoria, Manuel (88, 4), 28 

W 

Walsh, Victor A., “If Walls Could Speak: San 

Diego’s Historic Casa de Bandini” (88, 4), 

22–46 

Water Works Bonds (Aqueduct Bonds) (88, 2), 

42, 43, 44–45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 52 

Waterman, Hazel W. (88, 4), 38 

“We Dye for the Stars”: Los Angeles 

Remembered,” by Alan B. Sielen (88, 3), 

44–61 

Welles, Orson (88, 3), 55; and The Mercury 

Wonder Show, 55 

Wilkie, Laurie A., The Lost Boys of Zeta Psi: A 

Historical Archaeology of Masculinity at a 

University Fraternity (book review) (88, 3), 

70 

Women’s clubs (Los Angeles) (88, 1), 30, 

45–47, 50 

Wright, Charles (88, 4), 31, 32, 34 

Y 

Yorke, Father Peter C. (88, 2), 15, 16, 18 

Yung, Judy (and Erika Lee), Angel Island: 

Immigrant Gateway to America (book 


Volume 88, number 1 



 

California History • volume 88 number 4 2011 

Volume 88, number 4

2011 legends of California 

©2011 photokatz.com 

Julius Blank , Jay Last, Gordon Moore, pictured, left to right 

California Historical Society was proud to celebrate 

California’s Legendary Spirit of Innovation 

in honoring the 2011 Legends of California 

The Traitorous Eight – Founders of Silicon Valley 

Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Jean Hoerni, Eugene Kleiner, Jay Last, 

Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, and C. Sheldon Roberts 

Tuesday, May 10, 2011 

The St. Regis San Francisco 

San Francisco, California 

Thank you to our generous sponsors: 

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Media sponsor: 

individual sponsors: 

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and R. Thomas Decker

d o n o r s 

The California Historical Society is deeply grateful 

to the following individuals, corporations, foundations, 

and government and business organizations 

for their contributions. 

INDIVIDUALS 

$50,000 and above 

Anonymous 

$10,000 to $49,999 

Mr. & Mrs. Reid W. Dennis, Woodside 

Ms. Jeanne S. Overstreet, Bennington, VT 

Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock, San Francisco 

$5,000 to $9,999 

Mr. Sandy & Mrs. Linda Alderson, 

Rancho Santa Fe 

Mr. & Mrs. S. D. Bechtel, Jr., San Francisco 

Mr. John E. Brown, Riverside 

Mr. & Mrs. R. Thomas Decker, San Francisco 

Drs. Maribelle & Stephen Leavitt, San Francisco 

Mr. Bill Leonard, Sacramento 

Mr. & Mrs. Greg Martin, San Francisco 

Mr. Robert A. McNeely, San Diego 

Mr. John L. & Mrs. Susan L. Molinari, 

San Francisco 

Mrs. Cristina Rose, Los Angeles 

Mr. Peter Wiley, San Francisco 

Ms. Helen Zukin, Beverly Hills 

$1,000 to $4,999 

Anonymous 

Katy & John Bejarano, San Mateo 

Jan Berckefeldt, Lafayette 

Mr. & Mrs. Andrew E. Bogen, Santa Monica 

Ms. Joanne E. Bruggemann, Redwood City 

Mrs. John Edward Cahill, San Rafael 

Brian D. Call, Monterey 

Mr. Michael Carson & Dr. Ronald Steigerwalt, 

Palm Springs 

Mr. Robert Chattel, Sherman Oaks 

Mr. David Crosson & Ms. Natalie Hala, 

San Francisco 

Mrs. Leonore Daschbach, Atherton 

Mr. & Mrs. Joseph E. Davis, Laguna Beach 

Mr. & Mrs. Ray Dolby, San Francisco 

Mrs. Gloria Gordon Getty, San Francisco 

Justice & Mrs. Arthur Gilbert, Pacific Palisades 

Mr. Larry Gotlieb, Los Angeles 

Mr. Fredric Hamber, San Francisco 

Mr. & Mrs. Alfred E. Heller, Kentfield 

Mr. Robert & Mrs. Kaye Hiatt, Mill Valley 

Mr. Austin E. Hills, San Francisco 

Mr. Sean A. Johnston, San Francisco 

Mr. George Kennedy, Santa Cruz 

Mr. & Mrs. A.M.D. G. Lampen, San Francisco 

Mr. Hollis G. Lenderking, La Honda 

Mr. Ray & Mrs. Lynn Lent, San Rafael 

Mr. Stephen LeSieur, San Francisco 

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Mr. William S. McCreery, Hillsborough 

Mr. Fielding M. McGehee III & Dr. Rebecca 

Moore, San Diego 

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Ms. Mary Meeker, New York, NY 

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Mr. & Mrs. Burnett Miller, Sacramento 

Mr. Holbrook T. Mitchell, Napa 

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Mr. Ken Moore, Los Altos 

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Mr. Tim Muller, San Francisco 

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Rick & Laura Pfaff, San Francisco 

Dr. Edith & Mr. George Piness, Mill Valley 

Mr. Adolph Rosekrans, Redwood City 

Mrs. Charlotte Schultz, San Francisco 

Mr. H. Russell Smith, Pasadena 

Mr. & Mrs. Steven L. Swig, San Francisco 

John & Andrea Van de Kamp, Pasadena 

Mr. A.W.B. Vincent, Monte Carlo, Monaco 

Stein & Lenore Weissenberger, Mountain View 

David & Rene Whitehead, Sebastopol 

Mrs. Alfred S. Wilsey, San Francisco 

Ms. Sheila Wishek, San Francisco 

Mr. & Mrs. Richard C. Wulliger, 

Pacific Palisades 

Mr. Paul M. Wythes, Palo Alto 

Mr. & Mrs. Lee Zeigler, San Francisco 

$500 to $999 

Ms Judith Avery, San Francisco 

Mr. Milton Axt, San Francisco 

Mr. Ted Balestreri, Monterey 

Ms. Marie Bartee, San Francisco 

Mr. & Mrs. Michael & Marianne Beeman, 

Woodland 

Janet F. Bollinger, Sacramento 

Ms. Lynn Bonfield, San Francisco 

Mr. Ernest A. Bryant, III, Santa Barbara 

Mrs. Dewitt K. Burnham, San Francisco 

Audrey Edna Butcher, Sunnyvale 

Mr. Ted Buttner, Sunol 

Mrs. Park Chamberlain, Redwood City 

Ms. Lisa Chanoff, San Francisco 

Dr. & Mrs. Melvin D. Cheitlin, San Francisco 

Mr. & Mrs. John C. Colver, Belvedere-Tiburon 

Renate & Robert Coombs, Oakland 

Mrs. Suzanne Crowell, San Marino 

Ms. Karen D’Amato, San Carlos 

Mr. & Mrs. William Davidow, Woodside 

Mr. Lloyd De Llamas, Covina 

Frances Dinkelspiel, Berkeley 

Mr. & Mrs. Frederick K. Duhring, Los Altos 

Mr. & Mrs. Gordon Fish, Pasadena 

Mrs. Donald G. Fisher, San Francisco 

Mr. & Mrs. William S. Fisher, San Francisco 

Ms. Linda Jo Fitz, San Francisco 

Mr. & Mrs. William S. Floyd, Jr., Portola Valley 

Ms. Myra Forsythe, San Francisco 

Mr. & Mrs. Launce E. Gamble, San Francisco 

Mr. & Mrs. Milo Gates, Redwood City 

Mr. Harry R. Gibson III, South Lake Tahoe 

Dr. Erica & Hon. Barry Goode, Richmond 

Mr. & Mrs. Richard W. Goss II, San Francisco 

Ms. Lucy Hamilton, Lexington, KY 

Mr. William Alston Hayne, St. Helena 

Mr. & Mrs. Joe Head, San Jose 

Mr. & Mrs. Robert E. Henderson, Hillsborough 

Ms. Ruth M. Hill, Daly City 

Janice & Maurice Holloway, San Francisco 

Mr. William L. Horton, Los Angeles 

Mrs. Katharine H. Johnson, Belvedere-Tiburon 

Mr. & Mrs. G. Scott Jones, Mill Valley 

Mr. Douglas C. Kent, Davis 

Mr. David B. King, Fremont 

Mr. Robert Kleiner, Mill Valley 

Corrine & Mike Laing, Carmichael 

Mrs. Betsy Link, Los Angeles 

Mr. Robert London Moore Jr., Verdugo City 

Ms. Janice Loomer, Castro Valley 

Mr. Bruce M. Lubarsky, San Francisco 

Mr. Stephen C. Lyon, San Francisco 

Mr. Robert S. Macfarlane Jr., Olga, WA 

Ms. Rosemary MacLeod, Daly City 

Neil MacPhail, San Francisco 

Mr. & Mrs. Leonis C. Malburg, Vernon 

Ms. Cathy Maupin, San Francisco 

Ms. Loretta A. McClurg, San Mateo 

Mr. Michael McCone, San Francisco 

Mr. J. Peter McCubbin, Los Angeles 

Mr. Ray McDevitt, Mill Valley 

Mrs. Nan Tucker McEvoy, San Francisco 

Mr. Robert Folger Miller, Burlingame 

Mrs. Bruce Mitchell, Burlingame 

Mr. & Mrs. Peter J. O’Hara, Sonoma 

Susan Olney, San Francisco 

Dr. Douglas K. Ousterhout, San Francisco 

Mr. & Mrs. W. Robert Phillips, Yountville 

Mr. Kevin M. Pursglove, San Francisco 

Mrs. Wanda Rees-Williams, South Pasadena 

Ms. Carol Rhine-Medina, San Francisco 

Mr. Daniel W. Roberts, San Francisco 

Mr. Robert E. Ronus, Los Angeles 

 


Mr. Allen Rudolph, Menlo Park 

Mr. Paul Sack, San Francisco 

Farrel & Shirley Schell, Oakland 

Mr. Randy Shaw & Ms. Lainey Feingold, Berkeley 

Mr. & Mrs. John B. & Lucretia Sias, San Francisco 

Mrs. Thomas Siebert, Springfield 

Ms. Margaretta Taylor, New York, NY 

Ms. Lynne Tondorf, Daly City 

Ms. Catherine G. Tripp, San Francisco 

Jane Twomey, San Francisco 

Mrs. Virginia Van Druten, Lafayette 

Mr. Richard C. Warmer, San Francisco 

Mr. & Mrs. Jeanne & Bill C. Watson, Orinda 

Mr. Paul L. Wattis, Jr., Paicines 

Ms. Barbara J. Webb, San Francisco 

Kathleen Weitz, San Francisco 

Miss Nancy P. Weston, San Francisco 

Walter & Ann Weybright, San Francisco 

Ms. Deborah Zepnick, Calabasas 

$250 to $499 

Ms. Ann C. Abbas, San Francisco 

Mr. George H. Anderson, Hollister 

Mr. Richard Anderson, Redwood City 

Ms. Elizabeth Anderson & Mr. John Rodgers, 

San Francisco 

Mr. Scott C. Atthowe, Oakland 

Mr. & Mrs. Peter Avenali, San Francisco 

Mr. Alessandro Baccari, San Francisco 

Mr. Richard Banks, Santa Barbara 

Mr. & Mrs. George D. Basye, Sacramento 

Mary Ann & Leonard Benson, Oakland 

Bill & Claire Bogaard, Pasadena 

Sandra & William Bond, Carmel 

Mr. & Mrs. Dix Boring, San Francisco 

Betty Borne, San Francisco 

Ms. Dorothy Boswell, Greenbrae 

Ms. Barbara Bottarini, San Francisco 

Mr. DeWitt F. Bowman, Mill Valley 

Mr. Neal Brockmeyer, La Canada-Flintridge 

Mrs. William H. V. Brooke, San Francisco 

Ross & Lillian Cadenasso, Oakland 

Mr. & Mrs. William Cahill, Ross 

Ms. Mary E. Campbell, Mill Valley 

Ms. Christina Cansler, Richmond 

Ms. Christina E Carroll, San Francisco 

Mr. Alfred Cavanaugh, San Francisco 

Mr. Gordon Chamberlain, Redwood City 

Mr. Fred Chambers, San Francisco 

Mrs. Jean Chickering, San Francisco 

Mr. & Mrs. Herman Christensen, Jr., Atherton 

Ms. Marie G. Clyde, San Francisco 

Mr. John Coil, Santa Ana 

Alan & Janet Coleman, Greenbrae 

Mr. David J. Colt, San Francisco 

Mr. Darrell Corti, Sacramento 

Mr. Jeff Craemer, San Rafael 

Ms. Anne Crawford, Half Moon Bay 

Mr. Brandyn Criswell, Saint Helena 

Mr. & Mrs. Gerald B. Cullinane, Oakland 

Mr. Keith Cunningham, Portland, OR 

Ms. Gail C. Currey, San Francisco 

Mr. Walter Danielsen, Livermore 

Mr. Bill Davidson, Redwood City 

T. R. Delebo, M.D., Sausalito 

Mr. & Mrs. R. Dick, Healdsburg 

Mr. Gilmore F. Diekmann, San Francisco 

Ms. Laura Bekeart Dietz, Corona Del Mar 

Mr. & Mrs. William G. Doolittle, Carmel By 

The Sea 

Mr. David A. Duncan, Mill Valley 

Mr. John East, Saratoga 

Mr. Robert M. Ebiner, West Covina 

Mr. & Mrs. Robert F. Erburu, West Hollywood 

Jacqueline & Christian Erdman, San Francisco 

Mr. & Mrs. John Fisher, San Francisco 

Helene & Randall Frakes, San Francisco 

Mr. Mark Franich, Los Altos 

Deborah Franklin, San Francisco 

Mr. Perry Franklin Fry, San Francisco 

Mr. & Mrs. Robert D. Funk, Santa Barbara 

Ms. Ilse L. Gaede, San Francisco 

Mr. Michael S. Gagan, Los Angeles 

Ms. Pam Garcia, Oakland 

Mr. Karl E. Geier, Lafayette 

Mr. Thomas R. Gherini, San Mateo 

Mr. George T. Gibson, Sacramento 

Mr. & Mrs. John Stevens Gilmore, Sacramento 

Mr. J. Jeffrey Green, Monterey 

Mr. James Grieb, Pacifica 

Mrs. Richard M. Griffith Jr., Belvedere-Tiburon 

Ms. Jeannie Gunn, Burbank 

Charles & Ginger Guthrie, Richmond 

Mr. & Mrs. Timothy J. Hachman, Stockton 

Mr. Noble Hamilton, Jr., Greenbrae 

Ms. Beth Harris, West Hollywood 

Mr. & Mrs. L. W. Harris Jr., Carmel 

Dr. & Mrs. R. S. Harrison, San Francisco 

Mr. & Mrs. David Hartley, San Francisco 

Mrs. Barbara Hayden, Pasadena 

Mr. Warren Heckrotte, Oakland 

Ms. Stella Hexter, Oakland 

Mr. Bruce Mason Hill, San Francisco 

Richard Hitchcock, Ph.D., San Lorenzo 

Ms. Linda K. Hmelo, San Francisco 

Charles D. Hoffman, San Francisco 

Mr. Eric H Hollister, Palo Alto 

Ms. Lois J. Holmes, Greenbrae 

Dr. Robert L. Hoover, San Luis Obispo 

Dr. & Mrs. R. W. Horrigan, San Francisco 

Mr. William Hudson, San Francisco 

Mr. Robert C. Hughes, El Cerrito 

Ms. Audrey Hulburd, San Rafael 

Mr. Richard Hyde, Belvedere-Tiburon 

Ms. Carol G. Johnson, Redwood City 

James & Paula Karman, Chico 

Ms. Margaret J. Kavounas, San Francisco 

Harold Kellman, Fremont 

Mr. Michael Kurihara, San Francisco 

Mr. & Mrs. Gary F. Kurutz, Sacramento 

Irmgard Lafrentz, San Jose 

Mr. & Mrs. William C. Landrath, Carmel 

Mr. Jack Lapidos, San Francisco 

Drs. Juan & Joanne Lara, Pasadena 

Mr. Jeri Lardy, El Dorado Hills 

Ms. Judy Lee, Redwood City 

Ms. Jamila Mei Chun Leung & Mr. Siew Weng 

Lee, Berkeley 

Mr. Leandro Lewis, Healdsburg 

Mrs. Maryon Davies Lewis, San Francisco 

Jerri Lightfoot, Fremont 

Mr. & Mrs. John G. Lilienthal, San Francisco 

Mrs. Robert Livermore, Danville 

Mr. Tim Madsen, Santa Cruz 

Mr. John J. Mahoney, Pleasant Hill 

Francis R. Mahony III, June Lake 

Dr. & Mrs. William Margaretten, Burlingame 

Mr. & Mrs. Thomas H. May, Oakville 

Mr. & Mrs. Dean Mayberry, Palo Alto 

Mrs. David Jamison McDaniel, San Francisco 

Mr. David McEwen, Newport Beach 

Mr. Robert McIntyre, Riverside 

Ms. Mary Ann McNicholas, Alameda 

Ms. Rachel Metzger, San Francisco 

Mr. James Miller, San Francisco 

Mr. & Mrs. O’Malley Miller, Pasadena 

Ms. Alicia Morga, San Francisco 

Susan Morris, Belvedere-Tiburon 

Ms. Elaine Myers, San Francisco 

Andrew T. Nadell, M.D., San Francisco 

William & Carland Nicholson, Ross 

Mr. & Mrs. J. E. C. Nielsen, Mill Valley 

Ms. Joanne Nissen, Soledad 

Mr. Stanley Norsworthy, Fresno 

Ms. Mary Ann Notz, Burlingame 

Mr. Thomas E. Nuckols, South Pasadena 

Barbara O’Brien, Daly City 

Ms. Harriett L. Orchard, Carmichael 

Ms. Kathleen O’Reilley, San Mateo 

Dr. Thomas J. Osborne, Laguna Beach

d o n o r s 

Ms. Diane Ososke, San Francisco 

Mr. & Mrs. Richard C. Otter, Belvedere-Tiburon 

Ms. Mary J. Parrish, San Francisco 

Mr. Warren Perry, San Francisco 

James Brice & Carole Peterson, Pleasanton 

Dr. & Mrs. John O. Pohlmann, Seal Beach 

Ms. Bonnie J. Portnoy, San Rafael 

Mr. Herbert C. Puffer, Folsom 

Ms. Carolyn Rees, Caldwell, ID 

Mr. Richard W. Reinhardt, San Francisco 

Mr. James Reynolds, Berkeley 

Mr. Terence Riddle, San Francisco 

Mrs. Benjamin H. Rose III, San Francisco 

Mr. William C. Rowe, Redwood City 

Mr. Rudolfo Ruibal, Riverside 

Mrs. A. Sawyer, Atherton 

Sarah Schulman, El Cerrito 

Mr. Bernard Schulte Jr., Orinda 

Rev. Thomas L. Seagrave, San Mateo 

Mr. & Mrs. Frederic Shearer, Essex, England 

Mr. David Sheldon, Menlo Park 

Ms. Jan Sinnicks, Petaluma 

Mr. & Mrs. J.E.G. Smit, Santa Ynez 

Ms. Harriet Sollod, San Francisco 

Mr. & Mrs. Martin & Sherril A. Spellman, 

Fremont 

Mr. & Mrs. Robert & Susan Spjut, San Francisco 

Mr. & Mrs. Moreland L. Stevens, Newcastle 

Mr. Daniel E. Stone, San Francisco 

Mr. George David Sturges, Park City, UT 

Mr. & Mrs. Stephen L. Taber, San Francisco 

Tony & Beth Tanke, Davis 

Mr. Robert Telfer, San Mateo 

Ms. Carmen Terry, San Francisco 

Mr. Arnold Thackray, Menlo Park 

Mr. Max Thelen, Jr., San Rafael 

Mr. Richard L. Tower, San Francisco 

Mr. Thomas Tragardh, San Francisco 

Ms. Marilyn Tragoutsis, San Mateo 

Mr. Christopher VerPlanck, San Francisco 

Mr. Paul A. Violich, San Francisco 

Kathleen Whalen, Sacramento 

Mr. Thomas J. White, Oakland 

Mrs. J. Wiest, Riverside 

Mr. Walter J. Williams, San Francisco 

Mr. Steven R. Winkel, Berkeley 

Mr. Mark L. Woodbury, Oakland 

Mrs. Edwin Woods, Santa Maria 

Ms. Nancy C. Woodward, Carmichael 

Mr. Robert A. Young, Los Angeles 

CORPORATE, FOUNDATION 

& GOVERNMENT SUPPORT 

$200,000 and above 

Council on Library & Information Resources, 

Washington, DC / The Andrew Mellon 

Foundation, New York 

$50,000 to $199,000 

The San Francisco Foundation, San Francisco 

$10,000 to $49,999 

Barkley Fund, Corona Del Mar 

Grants for the Arts, San Francisco 

Institutional Venture Partners, Menlo Park 

Intel Community Grant Program, Hillsborough 

Union Bank of California, San Francisco 

$1,000 to $9,999 

California State Library (Library Services & 

Technology Act, Local History Digital 

Resources Program), Sacramento 

Chanel, Inc., New York 

Dodge & Cox, San Francisco 

George W. Davis Foundation, Belvedere 

Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, Palo Alto 

Institute of Museum &Library Services, 

Connecting to Collections Grant, 

Washington, DC 

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ 

John E. & Helen K. Cahill Fund, Novato 

Louise M. Davies Foundation, San Francisco 

Mayfield Fund, Menlo Park 

Moore Dry Dock Foundation, San Francisco 

National Endowment for the Humanities, 

Preservation Assistance Grant, 

Washington, DC 

Sacramento Trust for Hist. Preservation, 

Sacramento 

Sansome Street Advisors, San Francisco 

The S.D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation, San Francisco 

Silicon Valley Community Foundation, 

Mountain View 

Simcha Foundation of the Jewish Community 

Endowment Fund, San Francisco 

Trinet HR Corporation, San Leandro 

$250 to $999 

Bands of Angels, LLC, Menlo Park 

Colliers Parrish International, Inc., San Jose 

Cypress Lawn Memorial Park, Daly City 

The Desk Set, San Francisco 

JRP Historical Consulting Services, Davis 

Limoneira Company, Santa Paula 

Metropolitan Arts Partnership, Sacramento 

MOC Insurance Services, San Francisco 

Muex Home Museum, Fresno 

Raymond K. & Natha Ostby Foundation, Saratoga 

The San Francisco Club of Litho. & Print, 

San Francisco 

In Kind Donations 

Sandy Alderson, San Diego 

Kirk Amyx, San Francisco 

Amyx Photography, San Francisco 

Anchor Brewing Company, San Francisco 

Apertifs Bar Management, Santa Rosa 

Belfor Property Restoration, Hayward 

Mr. David Burkhart, San Bruno 

John Burton, Santa Rosa 

Candy Store, San Francisco 

H. Joseph Ehrmann, San Francisco 

Elixir Cocktail Catering, San Francisco 

Elixir Saloon, San Francisco 

Etherington Conservation Services, 

The HF Group, Walla Walla, WA 

Heller Ehrman, LLP, San Francisco 

Katzgraphics, San Francisco 

Korbel, Sonoma 

Mitchell Landy, Richmond 

Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles 

John & Sue Molinari, San Francisco 

Jean Moulin, Moulin Studios Archive 

Sentinel, San Francisco 

Square One Organic Spirits, San Francisco 

St. Regis San Francisco 

Union Bank of California, San Francisco 

United States Bartenders Guild 

CALIFORNIA LEGACY 

CIRCLE 

Estate Gifts Received 

North Baker, Tiburon 

Muriel T. French, San Francisco 

J. Lowell Groves, San Francisco 

Louis H. Heilbron, San Francisco 

Arthur Mejia, San Francisco 

Mary K. Ryan, San Francisco 

 


O F F I C E R S 

thomas R. owens, San Francisco, President 

Thomas Decker, San Francisco, Vice President 

Larry Gotlieb, Sherman Oaks, Secretary 

John Brown, Riverside, Treasurer 

B O A R D O F T R U S T E E s 

Sandy Alderson, Rancho Santa Fe 

jan berckefeldt, Lafayette 

melinda bittan, Los Angeles 

Robert Chattel, Sherman Oaks 

Fred Hamber, San Francisco 

Robert Hiatt, Mill Valley 

Gary Kurutz, Sacramento 

STEPHEN LeSIEUR, San Francisco 

john L. molinari, San Francisco 

Sue Molinari, San Francisco 

mark a. moore, Burlingame 

christina rose, Los Angeles 

BLANCA ZARAZúA, Salinas 

C A L I F O R N I A H I S T O R I C A L 

F O U N D A T I O N B O A R D 

DEWITT F. BOWMAN, Mill Valley, President 

Bill McCreery, Hillsborough 

robert a. McNeely, San Diego 

PETER MUSTO, San Francisco 

EDITH L. PINESS, Mill Valley 

DAVID BARRY WHITEHEAD, San Francisco 

p r e s i d e n t s e M E R I T I 

MARIBELLE LEAVITT, San Francisco 

ROBERT A. McNEELY, San Diego 

Edith L. Piness, Mill Valley 

Stephen L. Taber, San Francisco 

JOHN K. VAN DE KAMP, Los Angeles 

e x e c u t i v e d i r e c t o r e m e r i t u s 

MICHAEL McCONE, San Francisco 

s p e c i a l a d v i s o r 

HUELL HOWSER, Los Angeles 

on the back cover 

Over the course of his career, the widely traveled artist Harry Humphrey Moore 

painted a variety of landscapes and portraits influenced by his sojourns in Europe 

and Asia—among them paintings of Spanish beauties. The iconic images of 

romantic Spanish costume, culture, and architecture depicted in this painting have 

been accepted as representations of the state’s Spanish and Mexican heritage despite 

a growing historical record of economic, social, and political realities. 

Harry Humphrey Moore (American, 1844–1926) 

Woman Playing Guitar (Spanish Girl), n.d. 

Oil on canvas, 16 1 ⁄ 2 x 9 1 ⁄ 2 inches 

California Historical Society, gift of James J. Coyle, 69-224-1-2 

Digital file cah331513; The Bridgeman Art Library 

f e l l o w s 

William N. Davis Jr., Sacramento 

Richard H. Dillon, Mill Valley 

Charles A. Fracchia, San Francisco 

Robert V. Hine, Irvine 

Gloria Ricci Lothrop, Pasadena 

James R. Mills, Coronado 

James Jabus Rawls, Sonoma 

Andrew Rolle, San Marino 

Earl F. Schmidt Jr., Palo Alto 

Kevin Starr, San Francisco 

Francis J. Weber, Mission Hills 

Charles Wollenberg, Berkeley

s p o t l i g h t 

Photographer 

Eadweard Muybridge 

Location 

Alameda County 

Mills Seminary, Seminary Park, Alameda County, 

Cal., [1127], circa 1872 

Albumen print 


Gift of Dr. Albert Shumate, 

CHS2011.470.tif 

They look comfortable, these young 

friends, even in those clothes. It was 

some time in the 1870s that these 

young women relaxed on the expansive 

grounds of Oakland’s Mills Seminary, 

later known as Mills College, posing for 

the celebrated photographer, Eadweard 

Muybridge. 

How did they envision their future 

What were their dreams Privileged 

Yes, certainly. Determined to make the 

most of it Time would tell. 

It would not be until 1910, well into 

their maturity, that these California 

women would gain the right to vote. 

Their poise, calm, and good humor 

would be a great addition to the polity. 

We could use some of that now. 

Jonathan Spaulding

Volume 88, Number 4 - California Historical Society

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