Volume 88, Number 4 - California Historical Society

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—