CEHILA-USA Conference at Miami, Florida
June 30, 2008
In 1943, my family came to Los Angeles from Taos and Albuquerque, NM. Dad landed a wartime job as an accountant for Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank. The journey and our settlement was part of a long tradition of the New Mexican colonization of southern California whose culmination had taken place almost a century before. Antecedents of a pattern of migration to California—through Baja California– go back before the founding of the United States.[1][i] Between 1830 and 1842, over 150 families from New Mexico came and settled in southern California, making up the largest population center between Santa Fe and Los Angeles. Although the territory historically had a variety of names, the area was best known as Agua Mansa or San Salvador, clustering around today’s town of Colton on the border between San Bernardino and Riverside Counties. The inhabitants of these various small villages came to California from New Mexico through Abiquiu northwest of Santa Fe and southwest of Taos, and the majority settled in the area’s neighborhoods within a four-year span from 1838 to 1842. Of course, some of the New Mexican immigrants settled in the much larger town of Los Angeles, and others traveled into northern California and other environs.
The leader or trail master of this trek from New Mexico to California in the fall of 1841 was Lorenzo Trujillo. His partners leading the group were fellow Abiqueños and mule-wrangler Hipolitano Espinosa, and Comandante José Antonio Martinez de La Rosa (de La Puente) was guide. Comandante Martinez was a single man, and would not become a settler as Trujillo and Espinosa were doing. It was the Comandante, however, who about four days after their arrival in California, would on November 9, 1842 make the contact with Mexican immigration authorities in Los Angeles to advise them the group from New Mexico had arrived.
Five early settlers from Abiquiú in Southern California had various degrees of kinship
with Padre Antonio José Martínez who was also in Abiquiú. Although popularly
known as the Cura de Taos, Padre Martínez shared the same place of birth and most likely some personal interaction with these five who enjoyed a strong New Mexico-California Connection: Julian Chavez, Santiago Martínez, Comandante José Antonio Martínez, Lorenzo Trujillo, and Encarnación Martínez de Rowland.
Julian Chavez had come to Los Angeles in 1830 at the tender age of twenty, and was Vice Mayor of Los Angeles by the time he was thirty. Since 1958, his name has been linked with the L.A. Dodgers who at that time made “Chavez Ravine”[2][ii] their home. The other Aquiqueños were transplanted in and around various small communities surrounding what is today the town of Colton along the border of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties. It is liminal space—a miniature borderland–along the Santa Ana River at the crossroads of the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe Railroads as well as the
intersection of Interstate Highways 10 and 215. Santiago Martinez, although he had made other trips to the area probably since 1830, was the first of the group to settle nearby. Before reaching their destination, his wife gave birth to their son in 1838, and took up residence by the Santa Ana River that at one time may have been an Indian inhabitation.[3][iii] This northern New Mexico nuclear family thus became the first non-Indian inhabitants of what was to become known as the Inland Empire.
Both Comandante José Antonio Martínez and Lorenzo Trujillo were key pioneers of the Agua Mansa-San Salvador developments. The parents of Encarnación Martinez de Rowland were Felipe Martin(ez) and (Ana) María Trujillo of Ranchos de Taos,[iv] and Santiago Martinez was “believed to be related to Encarnación. ”[4][v] At least since1834, John Rowland or his wife Encarnación or his in-laws was doing business in California in the trade of New Mexican blankets for California horses and mules.[5][vi]
Padre Martínez wrote a very significant Letter of Transit for John Rowland and family in 1842 when they emigrated from New Mexico to settle in California. John Rowland and William Workman—both having New Mexican wives and having become Catholics and naturalized citizens of the Mexican Republic—were eligible to own property and were among the first Anglos to become landowners in California. Although Padre Antonio José Martinez was never an inhabitant of California, with his Letter of Transit on behalf of John Rowland and his wife Encarnación Rowland de Martínez—likely a relative of the Padre–he nevertheless helped to fuel the development and even population explosion of the territory.
Abiquiú today is a small village or group of villages along NM Hwy 84, southwest of Taos and northwest of Santa Fe-Santa Cruz (Española)/Chimayó and San Juan Pueblo. Throughout the nineteenth century, Abiquiú–a beehive activity–served as a major conduit, if not launching pad for travel between Santa Fe and Los Angeles. It was also the birthplace of a remarkable group of people who greatly influenced the life and growth of California in the two decades between1830 and 1850. It remains a spiritual vortex, a mystic space of great beauty that served as the jumping off point for many trekkers from New Mexico to California.
In Jurassic times, Abiquiú was near Panama—slowly separated by the shift of tectonic plates at the rate of one thumb nail’s width a year. Remnants of prehistoric dinosaurs, common to both Panama and Abiquiú, were discovered in 1947 near Ghost Ranch, a Presbyterian Retreat Center located on Las Animas land grant. Over the centuries, Abiquiú has been a welcoming place for different kinds of people. Indians of every stripe and mixture made it their home. After internecine warfare and intermarriage, many had migrated from the four corners areas before the thirteenth century. Indian children captured in warfare among different tribes or with Spanish settlers sometimes grew up in Spanish homes as servants or slaves—a practice not considered controversial at the time–were baptized and brought up as Christian and known as Genízaros. Buffalo soldiers—black men fighting for the North in the Civil War—also have their honored place as residents in Abqiuiú’s history. New Mexico in general, but especially Abiquiú, is famous for its brujas/brujos whose transcendent and spiritual nature is conveyed by folk tales. They cohabit the stark yet supremely beautiful landscape with its hills and high cliffs shaded in textures of yellow, brown, orange, ochre, white and rust that nourish spiritual seekers such as Penitentes, monks (Catholic and Shiite), artists as well as reclusive movie stars. Its high desert lands are peppered with skeletal remains of cattle, often appearing in Georgia O’Keefe paintings.
JULIAN CHAVEZ came from Abiquiu to Los Angeles in 1830 when he was twenty years old—within a year after the first trade caravans left Santa Fe for Los Angeles. The Chavez family lived across the parish church of Santo Tomás where Antonio José Martínez was baptized and where he had married a distant cousin, María de La Luz Martín. Julian’s elder brother was in the military, and young Julian was a teenager when Padre Martinez returned to Abiquiú as widower and young curate to serve as priest-in-charge of Santo Tomá parish.[vii] Julian Chavez was among the sixty men that Antonio Armijo led in 1830 from Abiquiú into California through northern Arizona (the Gila River route) and southern Utah. After almost three months en route, Armijo’s party arrived at San Gabriel Mission where they traded New Mexican blankets for California horses and mules that were already commodities of major exchange. Chavez eventually settled among the gentle hills along the Río de Nuestra Señora Reina de Los
Angeles de Porciúncula, twelve miles west of the Mission and a short distance northeast of what is now central city Los Angeles. His residence was at a good location along El Río Porciúncula (the L.A. River), not far from today’s North Broadway bridge. A bronze memorial plaque at the entrance to Elysian Park, also a portal to Chavez Ravine, commemorates the Portolá expedition traveling in 1769 from newly founded Mission San Diego de Alcalá to Monterrey, the capital of Alta California. The Gaspár Portolá expedition on August 2 stopped at a cool resting place on a nearby hill overlooking the river. Fray Juan Crespín, Franciscan chaplain to the expedition noted in his diary the Franciscan feast day of Nuestra Señora Reina de Los Angeles, and named the river in her honor. The small chapel in Assissi and where St. Francis often prayed, met with his religious brothers, and had his “transitus,” i.e., where he died in 1226 was also dedicated to her. Three centuries later, the followers of St. Francis dwarfed the chapel by building a large basilica around it. The little chapel remained within the basilica, and became known as the “small portion” or “La Porciúcula.” Franciscans dedicated the chapel and basilica to Our Lady of the Angels, and celebrate its dedication on August 2.
Mission San Gabriel, established in 1771, is one of the twenty-one Missions founded by Blessed Junípero Serra. Colonists from Sonora, a decade later in 1781, established a settlement twelve miles west of San Gabriel Mission, and named it for the river and called the new village El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora Reina de Los Angeles de Porciúcula, today more commonly known simply as L.A. On August 2 in the bicentennial year of 1976, Archbishop Cardinal Manning of Los Angeles placed a mosaic of the Annunciation—in honor of Queen of the Angels– over the portal of the Plaza Church that is mother church of Los Angeles.
Americans claiming their Lone Star independence from both Mexico and the United States lost the battle of the Alamo to Mexican troops, but won the more important battle at San Jacinto in 1836. In an effort to recuperate revenues from military expenditures in Texas, General Santa Ana decided to levy taxes in New Mexico, and sent Albino Perez to do the job. José María Chavez of Abiquiu, Lieutenant in the Mexican Army and
older brother of Julian Chavez, supported Perez in the failed attempt to impose taxes. Julian Chavez while in his twenties, traveled a few times between California and New Mexico. In 1837, he joined his older brother in the tax-collecting effort, and by 1838 definitively moved to California.
THE CHAVEZ BROTHERS
Indians and New Mexican settlers of the north—around Chimayó, NM—rose up against the government of the Republic of Mexico in1837. The rebels beheaded Governor Perez, installed a Pueblo Indian in the Governors’ Palace at Santa Fe, and then singled out the Chavez brothers for execution for collaborating with Albino Perez. Consequently, together with several relatives, the Chavez brothers left their family home in Abiquiu–an adobe building diagonally across the road from Santo Tomás Church that later became residence of Georgia O’Keefe—and made their way out of New Mexico by way of Utah to California. For Julian, it was a return trip, but this time he stayed tending to his property and political career.[6][viii]
In 1838, when he was thirty years old and only after eight years in California, Julian Chavez (1810-1879) became the Interim Mayor of Los Angeles. Chavez served three terms as a member of the County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors in 1852, 1858, and 1861. His tract of land in Elysian Park (“Chavez Ravine”) was used as an isolation hospital to treat smallpox principally among Chinese and Mexicans. Besides becoming Vice Mayor of Los Angeles, Julian Chavez also served as Councilman specializing in water rights in 1846 and 1847. The year he became a member of the first group of LA County Board of Supervisors in June 1852, he hosted a July 4th party at downtown Bella Union Hotel. Afterwards, he invited everyone to walk with him in mile-long patriotic parade for a picnic at his vineyard off Riverside Dr. in the northeast part of the city (near today’s Stadium Way on the 5 Freeway).
In1865, Julian was elected to the City Council, and soon afterwards, at the age of 55, got married to Maria Luisa Machado who was less than half his age. Bishop Mora presided at the wedding that took place at the Plaza Church of Our Lady Queen of Angels. Chavez served other terms as councilman in 1870-71, and again in 1873. He also served on the Plaza-Improvement Committee, and worked closely with William Henry Workman, the son of William Workman who had come with John Rowland from Taos to California in the early 1840s.
On July 25, 1879– feast of Santiago (St. James), the patron of Hispanic America so revered in New Mexico, and almost twelve years to the day after the death of his fellow Abiqueño Padre Martínez– Julian Chavez died at the age of 70 in his Chavez Ravine home.[ix]
SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ
The first trade caravan had left from Taos to Los Angeles in 1829,[1][x] and Julian Chavez came the following year. Santiago Martinez may also have come into California as early as 1830. Santiago was related to Encarnación Martinez who married John Rowland in 1823. She also had roots in Abiquiú, and was related to Padre Martinez. In mid-August 1832, Santiago Martinez went “to California from New Mexico with fifteen men. Hippolito Espinosa (later a settler of Agua Mansa) is with the party.”[xi] Six years later, at the very beginning of fall in1838 and a month after the usual caravan headed for California,
Santiago Martinez and his pregnant wife Manuelita Renaga were in a caravan of seven people that Lorenzo Trujillo had led from Abiquiu. Manuelita “gave birth to a son (Apolinario) in late November at Resting Springs,[7][xii] an oasis in the high desert near the southern end of Death Valley”[8][xiii] and just over the California boarder from Nevada. Trjuillo’s small caravan arrived in the San Bernardino Valley on December 12, 1838– the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
The couple decided to settle on property near the present-day town of Colton. California rancher Antonio Lugo exchanged land for the promise of protection against Indians, and Santiago knew that through Lorenzo Trujillo, he could help recruit Indian fighters from Abiquiú to protect the Lugo San Bernardino Ranch. The young Santiago Martínez family lived on a “bluff overlooking the Santa Ana River near today’s San Bernardino Valley College campus.”[9][xiv] Santiago, his wife and child stayed there, but Lorenzo and the others returned to Abiquiú with the spring caravan. They came back to Rancho San Bernardino in the fall caravan of 1840—this time to settle where Santiago had settled. Hipolitano Espinosa and his family were among the first to settle there, and the settlement came to be called “Politana”[10][xv] in his honor.
The California rendezvous location at Politana (an early settlement of New Mexicans, named for Hipólito Espinosa, at a draw near today’s San Bernardino Valley College) was an important place in the trading scheme of things. Hipólito Espinosa returned with his family to Rancho San Bernardino in the fall of 1840 and settled near Martínez’ place, thus beginning the New Mexican colonization in earnest.
He worked as the chief horse wrangler for the Rancho San Bernardino, the location of his home at the settlement of Politana, and was active in the annual rendezvous near Colton where New Mexican blankets and goods were exchanged for California horses and mules. The business had become so brisk that it exceeded 4,000 animals for the 1842 spring caravan from Los Angeles over the Spanish Trail to the junction of the Santa Fe and Chihuahua Trails in the Abiquiu-Taos-Santa Fe caravan complex.[xvi]
After a relatively brief time living in Politana, there was a territorial dispute between
California landowners Lugo and Bandini. As a result, New Mexican settlers moved nine miles south to the Bandini Donation where a large settlement of their fellow Abiqueños were living by now.[11][xvii]
John Rowland, having come from Taos to La Puente, had returned to Taos to retrieve his wife and family in order to definitively move with him to their new California home. “In the fall of 1842, the Rowlands [John, now with wife and family] returned from Taos to California along with Lorenzo Trujillo and Hipolito Espinosa in a trading caravan under the command of Santiago Martinez likely related to Encarnación.”[12][xviii] It seems that Santiago was a business agent in California trading for Encarnación, and when she joined her husband John Rowland in moving to California, Santiago Martinez helped them move to California. Encarnación later hired Santiago to work as foreman on their ranch where they settled in east La Puente, today’s Walnut-Rowland Heights—near Vejar School. Santiago moved from Politana, near the juncture of present day San Bernardino-Colton, and moved about sixty miles westward from Agua Mansa to east La Puente, near the location of the first Walnut (Spada) City Hall and Vejar School, Valley Blvd. and Lemon. Their “Martinez Adobe” in La Puente-Walnut, not far from the Roland Heights residence of Encarnación and John Rowland, was shown on older maps until 1970s. Santiago Martinez and family lived in the adobe for about eight years, and moved away when Encarnación died in 1850.[1][xix] Santiago Martinez was the first New Mexican to settle in the area, his name is the first among “Twelve Heads of families” listed in the “List of settlers drawn from the Los Angeles Census of 1844 (located at Politanta).”[13][xx]
COMANDANTE JOSE ANTONIO MARTINEZ
The rather mysterious figure of military man Comandante Antonio José Martínez, considered one of the founders of Agua Mansa, was “from the town of La Rosa,” i.e., Santa Rosa Plaza, the first Spanish settlement of Abiquiú named for St. Rose of Lima, Peru and the first saint of the American continent. The ruins of the Santa Rosa Chapel on the outskirts of Abiquiú along NM Highway 84 are still extant. The Comandante and Padre Martínez were both from the Abiquiu Plaza of “La Rosa” founded in 1739 a few miles east of Abiquiú along the Chama River. Either flooding of the Chama River or
Indian depredations from the Indian village upon the nearby hill
(Potsiunge) occasioned the Santa Rosa community to move about four miles
upriver to Santo Tomás that became the main church of Abiquiú.
Comandante Martínez escorted the expedition from the triangular areas of
Taos-Abiquiu-Santa Fe to the rectangular regions of La Puente-Walnut. Comandante José Antonio Martínez made trips back and forth from New Mexico to California, and eventually began “to organize a colony from his friends. Don Lorenzo Trujillo was
the first and the one who most helped him.”[14][xxiii]
At the beginning of the year 1843, the following persons with all their families
left New Mexico: José Antonio Martínez de la Rosa, Hipólito Espinosa… arrived
in the same year in California at the Lugo ranch, but they quickly saw that the
Lugos would not let go of the land promised to [Santiago] Martínez…The were
prepared to return to New Mexico when Don Juan Bandini offered to donate to
them a strip of land…Immediately they moved down to the land which Bandini had
donated to them.[xxiv]
The name of the “Comandante” is a military title, but at this time, there was
not much of an army in New Mexico that already had been part of the Republic of
Mexico for twenty-two years. Southwest historian David Weber refers
to an adventurer called “Don Antonio José Martinez of Taos—perhaps a relative
of Don Severino’s”[15][xxv]
who reconnoitered the San Luis and Arkansas valleys of today’s southern Colorado and was also active in northern New Mexico in 1818 and 1819. Could this be
the same José Antonio Martinez who, after more than twenty years still vigorous but much more experienced, helped colonize southern California with New Mexicans?[16][xxvi] “Jose Martinez, the comandante, was a leader on the regular caravan to Los Angeles, so he habitually traveled without a family…[and] was killed by Indians…”[17][xxvii]
LORENZO TRUJILLO
Lorenzo was a significant figure in the settlement of almost 150 families from Abiquiu who settled in the Agua Mansa-San Salvador area during the decade of 1840-1850. He married María Dolores Archuleta Martin, and they had seven children. His own family, as well as the Rowland-Workman party, was in the fall caravan of 1841 that Lorenzo Trujillo led from Abiquiú to Rancho San Bernardino. Traveler from Tennessee Benjamin Davis Wilson contracted Lorenzo’s four sons (Tedoro, Esquipulas, Doroteo, and Julian ) to herd a flock of sheep over the 1200-mile route.[xxviii] This was the principal food source for the party and for another group that joined up with them on the way to California. Trujillo’s daughter Matilde married a Sepulveda who owned land in the area of Pasadena and Altadena[18][xxix] where B.D. Wilson later resided and took up the timber industry. Mt Wilson is named for him, and he later became a governor of California. For all of Trujillo’s contributions to the area, including helping to organize regular Catholic Church services in the area, Lorenzo Trujillo is one of the Founder of Agua Mansa AKA San Salvador on the west side of Santa Ana River tributary. His homestead, Plaza Trujillo, is on the eastside of that same tributary where the Agua Mansa Cemetery is located, and a replica of the San Salvador church stands on the hillcrest.
Lorenzo Trujillo was a Genízaro (Hispanicized Indian) orphan, probably of Comanche
origin–a likely victim of children raids between nomadic peoples and Spanish
settlers. Estevan Trujillo and his wife Juliana Martin-Serrano adopted him, and presented him for baptism at the church of Santo Tomás on August 12, 1794– the same church where his fellow Abiqueño Antonio José Martinez was baptized a year and a half earlier. Lorenzo’s adopting parents were also his godparents—not something usual. His stepmother adopting him was one of the large and well-connected Martin-Serrano clan of Abiquiú. Lorenzo took his surname Trujillo from Juliana’s husband, his stepfather
Estevan. Lorenzo Trujillo gained fame as a caravan leader between New Mexico and California. The so-called Rowland-Workman treks of 1841 and 1842 are better known than his earlier treks to Los Angeles in 1838 when he brought Santiago Martinez as well as his wife and son to California. These latter treks introduced such an interesting array of folks from New Mexico to California. The 1841 list included an Episcopal bishop, an engineer, a Taos trapper originally from Tennessee who would become Mayor of Los Angeles and have a mountain named after him.[1][xxx]
For our purposes, however, John Rowland—for whom Roland Heights is named—was the most interesting of the 1841 trek, and his wife Encarnación Martinez de Rowland was the most interesting of the1842 trek.
ENCARNACION MARTINEZ
Of all these New Mexican transplants to southern California, Encarnación Martínez of Taos was the most significant person connected to Padre Martinez. Besides a likely kinship, the connection was two-fold: the marriage he helped to arrange between her and John Rowland, and the Letter of Transit that the Padre wrote in 1842, eighteen years after
their marriage. It is not only possible that the priest and Rowland’s wife were related—both Martinez people from Taos. However, “it is not known [for sure]
how the priest of Taos was related to Doña María de la Encarnación Martínez de
Rowland.”[xxxi] Her parents were living in Ranchos de Taos where San Francisco Church is located,[19][xxxii] about seven miles south of the Taos Plaza where are located the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the residence of Padre Martinez.
After his ordination and before being assigned to his first parish in Tomé, south of
Albuquerque, Padre Martinez lived with his parents in Taos while recuperating
form ill health. Ordained less than three years, Padre Martinez aided the aged and infirm Franciscan priest of San Geronimo with Masses and other sacramental functions at the asistencia of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in the Taos Plaza, not yet a separate parish.
John Rowland had moved to Taos from Franklin, Missouri in 1823. Padre Martinez helped to arrange the marriage between Encarnación and John Rowland in 1825. Through the marriage, John Rowland chose to become a Catholic and become a naturalized Mexican citizen. Both were necessary in order for John Rowland to have the right to own property[20][xxxiii] in either New Mexico or later in California. Encarnación was already a property owner. Roland was a business partner of
William Workman,[xxxiv] and their endeavors included fur trapping, general merchandise, timber and whiskey.
When Texas tried to take over New Mexico in the mid-1830s, Rowland and Workman
declared their sympathy with the Texas cause in spite of their Mexican
citizenship. New Mexico Governor Armijo denounced them, and they decided to flee to California. In preparation for his 1841 trip to California, Rowland had asked U.S. Consul Manuel Alvarez living in Santa Fe for a letter of transit for his journey. Alvarez complied, and Rowland made the trip to California in 1841 with William Workman, but without his wife and family. Lorenzo Trujillo led the caravan with a variety of twenty-three Americans, but not family members of William Workman. The expedition left New Mexico in September 1841, and arrived at La Puente Rancho in California on November 5 of the same year.
For the year 1840-1841, Padre Martinez was on a sabbatical in Durango, and not available to write a letter of transit for John Rowland’s first trip to California. It may not have even occurred to Rowland to ask for a letter from his parish priest Padre Martínez, Rowland, a naturalized Mexican citizen through his marriage to Encarnación Martínez, knew he would need a Document of Transfer, and asked for one from Manuel Alvarez living in Santa Fe, American Consul and an employee of the U.S. Government. Alvarez wrote the letter of transit for safe passage on August 11, 1841, and addressed it to the Governor Juan B. Alvarado living in Monterey, then the capital of Upper California still part of the Mexican Republic.[21][xxxv]
Upon arrival to California, Rowland and Workman traveled to the local political official in Los Angeles, and an official informed him that lands were to be obtained through the Governor of California with a recommendation of the Padre in whose area the lands were sought.
Excerpt of letter from Consul Manuel Alvarez
I take the liberty of recommending to you Mr. John Rowland, native of the United States of America, naturalized citizen and resident of this jurisdiction [of New Mexico], since the year 1823. I have associated with him since the early years of his settling here, and I have known him very well as an industrious and peaceful man, respected in this country.
The object of his journey to your district is, besides that of spreading the use of the goods of his country, that of seeking goods in yours; it presents–as is rumored–greater advantages so that he may transport himself and his numerous family to your district.
I shall thank you for whatever favor you may deem worthy to extend to Mr. Rowland. If ever you will require my services in this country [New Mexico – a Deputación of the Republic of Mexico], you may be sure that I shall have the greatest pleasure in affording all that may make it pleasant for you.
The letter of Avarez was useful, but had its limits. More was needed than political permissions and persuasions. John Rowland in the late fall of 1841 likely presented his own letter to Governor Alvarado requesting a tract of land in “a vacant place at La Puente.”[1][xxxvi], an area that was formerly a part of Mission of San Gabriel. After his long journey of two months, Roland finally got around to presenting his credential to Padre Tomás Estenaga of San Gabriel Mission. Padre Tomás Elenerio de Estenaga received Rowland courteously, but made no lands available to him or William Workman. The Mission owned large swaths of land in southern California, and had much to say about who might inhabit and come to own property in the area. The Catholic Church was still a very powerful institution in this northern frontier of the former Spanish Kingdom that was now the independent Republic of Mexico. Although Rowland’s letter was not addressed to him, the priest was opposed to what it proposed.
Nevertheless, Governor Juan Batista Alvarado in Monterrey expressed his approval for the La Puente Land Grant to Rowland, Father Narcisio Durán, Franciscan President
of the Missions and holding the “line”, countered in a letter to John Rowland dated January 14, 1842. Padre Durán appealed to an 1835 law of the Mexican Supreme Congress, and formalized his objection in a letter to the Minister of the Interior and Public Instruction.
I solemnly protest in the name of the neophytes of the Mission of San Gabriel, once, twice, and three times as may be customary by law, against the sale or alienation of said Rancho of La Puente, as well as against the transfers of many other pieces of land which this territorial government has effected with flagrant wrong and prejudice to the poor neophytes…I declare all such sales or transfers null…particularly not to said Juan Roldan [sic]…[22][xxxvii]
Political advocates for Rowland included Prefect Santiago Arguello in Los Angeles and
José L. Sepúlveda, Second Justice of the Peace of Los Angeles who wrote on
February 26, 1842 that the applicant has the necessary requisites to be
favored. On the same date, Fr. Estenaga again formalized his objection:
The land of La Puente belongs to this Community of San Gabriel that occupies it with more than five hundred head of large cattle. In no manner does this community consent that the land should be alienated since it is the on place that the Mission has for sowing and to support its cattle.[23][xxxviii]
Some jockeying among church and state officials continued, each trying to nullify the actions of the other. On March 9, 1842, Governor Alvarado issued another communication that the La Puente Land Grant be held “firm and valid [and] be registered in the proper book”[24][xxxix] so long as Rowland build a house on it and inhabit it within a year. By late-summer 1842, John Rowland returned to Taos to retrieve his wife Encarnación Martínez and their family in order to settle in east La Puente (present day-Walnut-Rowland Heights). Rowland may have been apprehensive of further potential complications and objections from church people regarding his land grant. Now realizing the potential importance of a document from a priest to a priest, and wanting to
fortify his secular documentations, he requested a letter of transit from Padre Antonio
José Martinez with the intention of presenting it to the pastor of San Gabriel
Mission and his superiors.
In spite of Padre Martinez’ Mexican nationalism and Governor Amijos’s denunciation of John Rowland and William Workman for their Texas sympathies against New Mexico, Padre Martinez not only complied with the request for a letter, but penned a glowing recommendation. The Padre had known Rowland the businessman since his arrival in Taos in 1823, and in 1825 helped the Anglo bridegroom prepare to marry his own relative Encarnación Martinez. The letter from Padre Martínez of Taos dated September 3, 1842 graciously and effusively, yet precisely, bore witness that over the past eighteen years that John Rowland was a faithful parishioner of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, besides being spouse of his relative.[25][xl]
Padre Martínez Letter of Transit for John Rowland
The Presbyter, Don Antonio José Martínez, pastor of Taos, Department of New Mexico, hereby certifies, in the most ample form fixed by law, that Don Juan Rowland, a foreigner from the United States of North America, married to Doña María de la Encarnación Martinez, a Mexican, and naturalized in this Republic, and hence a Mexican Citizen like his wife, is a Catholic as is all his family.
All of this is shown in the parish books of this parish of which I am in charge: that he is accustomed to partake of the Holy Sacrament, that he contributes to the support of the church, that he faithfully and religiously obeys the laws and enforces them when holding a position of authority. Yet with a degree of charity that day by day has been a greater credit to him, it is also known to me that in his social life he is held in the highest esteem as an honored citizen faithful to the state and to the Government, and respects the laws. He is quiet and pacific in all his acts, meeting the duties and responsibilities that are his. He complies with his promises and agreements in his attitude toward the church, and likewise strictly when dealing with others. He is well received by the inhabitants of this vicinity, and highly esteemed by the authorities. He has never been accused or even suspected of violating the laws for the reason that he never gave cause. In short, therefore, he has always been a man of fine deportment, his qualities being as set forth.
This letter of transit from Padre Martinez helped John Rowland and his family not only settle into their new homeland of California, but also to prosper. The compatriots of Encarnación Martínez de Rowland who were living in Politana-Agua Mansa-San Salvador also continued to prosper. In 1843, in exchange for protection from marauders, Californian-Mexican Ranchero Don Antonio María Lugo gave 2,200 acres of his land to the New Mexican settlers who had a reputation of being experienced Indian fighters.
The 1843 settlers occupied the location just south of Colton on the northwest side of the Santa Ana River.
By 1844, there were seventy-three New Mexican families living at Politana. However, within a year, Politanta was abandoned when Juan Bandini gave the New Mexican colonizers more land at Agua Mansa. Between 1844-45, the two settlements merged into one. The New Mexican colonists completed a move from Politana on the Lugo rancho to La Placita de los Trujillos on the Bandini Donation portion of Rancho Jurupa located on the southeast side of the Santa Ana River. Homes were built around
a small plaza with an enramada (brush-covered altar) in the center.
In the fall of 1845, another contingent of colonists arrived from New
Mexico and settled along the northwest bank of the river (south of the Lugo
rancho) at a community called Agua Mansa.
Both communities continued to meet their duty of opposing Indian raiders
and renegade white marauders. The two settlements were commonly referred to as one pueblo of San Salvador, the name of the church at Trujillo Plaza. [26][xli]
The California-New Mexico connection vigorously continued until the middle of the
nineteenth century. The arrival of Juan Ignacio Martínez–Encarnación’s brother and John Rowland’s brother-in-law–at Los Angeles in December 1847 was a token of the continued development of that connection.
Francisco Estevan Vigil led the New Mexican caravan of two hundred and
twelve travelers including sixty boys on an already well-established trade
route that departed from New Mexico and arrived in California. The caravan of 150 mules, arriving with New Mexican blankets and other goods, was ready by April 1848 to depart California with horses and mules for the trip back to New Mexico.[27][xlii]
However, by then, the 1848 California Gold Rush began to deplete the southern
California New Mexican colony since several young men left to try out their luck at
striking it rich in northern California–but to no avail.
John Rowland eventually gained clear title to his land, the first land grant given
to an American in California.[28][xliii] William Workman was to share title, dividing the land grant into east and west La Puente.[xliv]
Padre Martinez with his letter of transit on behalf of Rowland was definitely instrumental in the land development of southern California. Both John Rowland and William Workman took possession of the land, and built their homes not far from each other. William Workman built his family home in what is now the City of Industry on Julian Road (Hispanicized William) off Hacienda Blvd. John Rowland in set up his ranch near what became Rowland Heights.[29][xlv] The La Puente Rancho that Roland and Workman divided between themselves has been further sub-divided into a myriad of independent southern California communities from Monrovia to Whittier.
The New Mexico colonization had peaked. Enlisted as an instrument of manifest destiny during the U.S.-Mexican War, the Mormon Battalion was born. Brigham Young wanted to colonize the Pacific Coast, and favored purchase of the Chino Rancho. Emigrants left Salt Lake for California on March 14, 1851, and arrived at Cajon pass on June 11.In 1851, almost on cue at the very middle of the nineteenth century, Mormons came into San Bernardino as a new wave of immigrants, an brought their own style and heritage.
Within a short time, almost a thousand Mormons arrived, and by the fall,
they had purchased the Rancho San Bernardino from the Lugo family on credit for
$77,550.[30][xlvi] The purchase included 75 head of cattle for food and eight leagues of land where they would grow wheat on land where formerly sheep and cattle grazed. In their common attempt to avoid a spurt of Indian depredations, Mormons and Agua Mansa settlers lived together for a brief time during 1852 in the High Lands of San Bernardino. By 1853, the Mormons themselves had scattered, and a new immigration era had begun.
Encarnación Martinez de Rowland, after twenty-six years of marriage to John Rowland and the birth of ten children, died towards on November 21, 1851. Soon after her death,
Santiago Martinez moved back to Taos where his son Daniel was born. Four of the Rowland children, ranged in age from 8 to 19, remained in John’s care. Charlotte Grey, a young widow, was among the first American settlers that came from back east to the San Gabriel Valley in that year. She lived in a squatters’ village in the area of El Monte, and one day traveled to John Rowland’s portion of Rancho de La Puente to buy fruits and vegetables.[31][xlvii] In the summer of 1852, romance bloomed
and John and Charlotte got married in the fall of 1852, a year after the death
of his New Mexican wife. Encarnación was buried in the private cemetery at the Workman hacienda off Hacienda Blvd. near Hacienda Heights in the City of Industry that is adjacent to La Puente. The small cemetery chapel is a mausoleum that is the finally resting place for so many women from Taos, New Mexico. An era had come to a close, and—with the second marriage of John Rowland to Charlotte Gray–a new era began.
APPENDIX:
EARLIER EXPLORATIONS AND NM-CA EXPEDITIONS
Antonio Rivera – Colorado
Antecedents of that pattern of migration from Baja California or New Mexico to California go back before the founding of the United States. In 1765, a Ute Indian sold an ingot of silver to a blacksmith in Abiquiú, the small village northeast of Santa Fe that was to play such an important part in the New Mexico-California connection. This led Juan Maria Antonio Rivera to take some Spaniards to explore western Colorado that at the time was part of New Mexico, but they soon returned to Santa Fe without discovery of the precious metal. Governor Tomás Velez de Cacpuchín instructed Rivera to return and explore the region once again—this time not for precious metal, but to reconnoiter the area for the possible presence of other Europeans. He found none, and again returned home after leaving a large inscribed cross near what became Moab, Utah.
Gaspár de Portolá
In 1769, the year San Diego Mission was founded, Gaspar de Portolá with an expedition that included Franciscan clergy, made his way from Baja California north to
Monterey. One of the stops was near today’s entrance into Elysian Park along North Broadway in Los Angeles where a river flowed from the area of San Fernando to the San Pedro Harbor. The date was August 2, the Franciscan feast of the “Porciúncula,”
named for the small chapel in Assisi where St. Francis used to like to
pray. His transitus (death) in the thirteenth century took place in that
former Benedictine oratory, and his followers in the sixteenth century built a
large Basilica around that oratorio, dedicating it to Nuestra Señora
Reina de Los Angeles de Porciúcula, Our Lady Queen of
Angels. Fray Juan Crespi of the Portolá expedition made an entry into his diary on August 2, 1769, and called the river Río Porciúncula in honor of that Franciscan feast.
The “L.A. River,” twelve miles west of San Gabriel, received its name
twelve years before the City of Los Angeles was founded in 1781 as an asistencia of the San Gabriel Mission. This mother mission of Los Angeles, founded in 1771 two years after San Diego Mission, was the fourth in the chain of twenty-one missions of Alta California, most of them by the sainted Junípero Serra.
Juan Bautista de Anza and Friar Francisco Garces
In 1774, Captain Juan Bautista De Anza led his first military expedition from Tubac, Mexico to Mission San Gabriel de Arcangel. It was the first overland route to safely supply the mission outposts in Alta California. Friar Francisco Garces accompanied the expedition that traversed the desert to the base of the San Jacinto Mountains and emerged on the other side. The expedition turned north, and forded the Santa Ana River at Riverside where Father Garces celebrated the first Mass in the region on the
first day of spring—March 21, 1774. [Cf. John DeGano, Archivist for the Diocese of San Bernardino, “History of the People of the Diocese of San Bernardino,” in 2003 Diocesan Directory, p. 5.]
Exactly two years later, in early 1776, Father Garces again came into the area—this time from a northern route– and recorded his sighting of the San Bernardino Valley then called the San Jose Valley. Fray Garces successfully traveled from Mission San Gabriel through the California Gulf to Hopi villages in Arizona. His journey opened the road from west to east, enabling Friars Anastacio Domiguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante to travel. Mexican Friar Anastacio Dominguez was appointed in 1775 as canonical visitor to the missions of New Mexico. His task was to evaluate the clergy and inspect the condition of the archives in Santa Fe, mostly destroyed in the 1680 Indian uprising. [Thomas G. Alexander in Web <Utah History to Go>.] Spanish-born Fray Silvestre Velez de Escalante who had worked at Zuni Pueblo was already in Santa Fe. NM Governor Fermin de Mendinueta encouraged both of them to explore territories to the west
to find out if any other Europeans were there. They began a journey toward the Pacific on July 4, 1776, but a Comanche attack gave them second thoughts. Just as Friars Dominguez and Escalante were about to scuttle their plan to transverse an overland route to Monterey in Alta California, they learned of Fray Garces’ successful trek. This spurred them on, and–with the full support of Governor Mendinuet– they recruited help from El Paso, southern Colrado and Utah. With further help of Genízaro guides from Abiquiú and the Indian boy Joaquin from Laguna, they again took up their expedition from New Mexico to California.
Bernardo Miera y Pacheco, a retired military officer living in Santa Fe, served as map-maker marking the latitudes of their travels and suggesting future presidio
locations. However, because of a snowstorm in the Grand Canyon, the explorers were forced to cross the Colorado River by Lake Powell’s Padre Bay. After traveling over 1700 miles, they returned to Santa Fe on January 2, 1777. Nevertheless, they did
become the first white men to explore the magnificent Arizona canyon.
Capitan José Romero
After Mexican independence from Spain in 1821, trade between the United States and
New Mexico–now no longer part of the Kingdom of Spain, but belonging to the
Republic of Mexico–freely flowed between St. Louis and Santa Fe. Trails are customarily initiated by prehistoric animals and then traversed by ancient hunters and gatherers. They are later tamed by people interested in trade routes for missionary and/or military use as well as for commercial purposes.
EL CAMINO REAL
This was the roadway through Mexico-Durango-Chihuahua-Santa Fe (including
Abiquiú-Taos) that was used to transport church, military, and household goods
to and from its various points. When this camino extended into California, it morphed into what John C. Fremont called the “Spanish Trail.” Capitan José Romero, born near San Francisco, was a cavalry captain in command of the Presidio of Tucson. He followed his own route making three journeys from Arisze in the Sonora Desert and Tucson to San Gabriel Alta California from 1823 to 1826, and is considered one of the first white men to explore the desert area of the Agua Caliente tribe, present day Palm Springs. Not too much is known about his personal life or background, but his travels are well chronicled in his dairies. [Cf. Romero, Expeditions-Dairies and Accounts: 1823-1826, edited by Lowell John Bean and Wiliam Marvin Mason, Palm Springs Desert Museum, c. 1962, pp. 117.]
When emperor Iurbide assumed political control in Mexico, he sent Rev. Agustín
Fernandez de San Vicente, a canon of Durango, to inspect California in order to
ascertain the extent of foreign activities in California as well as the loyalty
of the Californians. By 1822,
Russians had a presence in Fort Ross, and Mexico had great interest to open up
an inland route from California to Sonora. San Bernardino was recognized as a point of departure for
such a route to Tucson, and it was also on the route from San Gabriel to the
Colorado River. Besides opening up commerce, the route would also open up the possibilities for evangelization. Emperor Iturbide’s Minister of Relations through Governor Sola requested Captain Jose Romero to invent a mail route between the points, and to take a party of sixty to map it by way of the lower Colorado River.
Romero began the tasks in September 1822, and continued until 1826. Jedediah Smith, a tall mountain man over six feet, trekker and author of Commerce of the Prairies, traversed the southwest. In his travels, he connected many regions including Taos and Mission San Gabriel where, by his own testimony, the Padres twice receive him well, in 1826 and again in 1827. He died young at the age of 32 after an altercation, it is said, with Comanche Indians.
[i] Cf., John De Gano, Diocesn Archivist, “History of the People of the Diocese of San Bernardino,” 2003 Diocesan Directory, 25th Anniversary Edition, p. 5. Captain Juan Bautista De Anza led a military expedition from Tubac, Mexico to Mission San Gabriel de Arcangel in 1774. The purpose was to open up an overland route to supply missionary outposts in Alta California. (Franciscans from New Mexico had been trying to do the same thing, but got only as far as Arizona.) At Riverside, De Anza forded the Santa
Ana River, and Father Garces celebrated the first Mass on the first day of spring. Exactly two years after his first encounter with the region. De Anza again came through San Bernardino—this time coming from the north. In 1842, Governor José Figueroa secularized the missions, and in that same year, a contingent from Abiquiu, New Mexico settled along the Santa Ana River near present day Colton.
[ii] Although the place in Elysian Park is much better known as Chavez Ravine, named for Julian Chavez of Abiquiú, some residents of the hilly area have preferred to
call it Palo Verde for the name given it in a 1912 map of residential tract
#12. Tom Marmolejo, a native of Palo Verde, has written his memories of his boyhood neighborhood, and objects to the identification of his home territory with the name of Chavez Ravine that he does not consider part of his territory of “Tract 12.”
[iii] Soon after Hipolito Espinosa and his family joined them, their place became known as “Politana”—located on “Bunker Hill” across from the present day location of San
Bernardino College near the City of Colton and the intersection of Interstates 10 and 210.
[iv] Rowland, Donald E., John Rowland and William Workman: Southern California Pioneers of 1841, Historical Society of Southern California, 200 E. Ave. 43, L. A. 90031. [(323) 222-0546; Don (& Jean) Rowland – Camarillo, CA 93010 (805) 482-8129, p. 20.
Don Rowland mentions that Encarnación’s father Felipe Martinez had a
business relationship with John Rowland, and may have been the one who
introduced the couple to each other.
[v] Ibid. p. 74.
[vi] Ibid., p. 27. José Sepuveda sold six horses to Encarnación and her mother Ana María
(Trujillo), and the bill of sale was sent from La Puente, CA to Ranchos de Taos.
[vii ] Juan Chavez may have been of altar server age, and so Miguel Gallegos also living in Abiquiu at the time, and who later went to the Padre’s elementary school in Taos, then to his minor seminary, studied in Durango and was ordained a priest. After an altercation with the American occupation, Gallegos served as New Mexico’s first congressman.
[viii] His brother Lt. José María Chavez went continued with trips between New Mexico and California. Lt. José María Chavez went to jail the following year for his part in the Battle of San Buenaventura, California. After serving a short prison sentence, José returned to New Mexico to continue trading within the Ute territory into the 1850s.
[ix] Online Document: “County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors: Julian Chavez – 1852, 1858, 1861.”
[x] Bruce Harley, Ph. D., “CHRONOLOGY: The Founding of Agua Mansa – First Settlement East of Mission San Gabriel,” Nuestras Raíces – Winter 2002, Vol. 14, No. 4,
Genealogical Society of Hispanic America, pp. 144, 147.
[xi] Spanish Trail Website: “Expedition Chronology between NM and CA. The site features names and dates and events that consist of several persons making many
exchanges of California horses and mules (some allegedly by theft) for New
Mexico blankets and “serapes.”
[xii] Lorenzo Trujillo had originally named this place Archuleta Springs in honor of his own wife Dolores Archuleta.
[xiii] Harley, Archivist, Diocese of San Bernardino, The Story of Agua Mansa: Its
Settlement, Churches and People—First Community in San Bernardino Valley,
1842-1893, Diocese of San Bernardino Archives, 1998, pp. 111, p. 12.
[xiv] Harley, From New Mexico to California: San Bernardino Valley’s First Settlers at Agua Mansa, San Bernardino County Museum Association Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 3,4 – 2000; 2024 Orange Tree Lane, Redlands, CA 92374-4560, p.5. This place was located on
Bunker Hill by the Santa Ana River at the juncture of Interstates 215 and 15. The property included what is today the Greek Orthodox of St. Elias the Prophet.
[xv] Harley, compiler and Archivist, Diocese of San Bernardino, Mission San Gabriel Expands Eastward: 1819-1834, Readings in Diocesan Heritage – Vol. II, August
1989, p. 7. This was the supposed location of a prior Indian settlement that Padre Dumetz had visited. He was one of the very last friars who walked with Padre Junípero Serra. Spanish priest Father Juan Cabarellía claimed that Padre Dumetz celebrated Mass there on the feast of St. Bernardine on May 20, 1810, and for that reason this area was
called San Bernardino. Historian George W. Beattie finds that plausible, but Bruce Harley–historian and former archivist for the Diocese of San Bernardino–vigorously disputed it.
[xvi] Cf. Harley, opera omnia, passim.
[xvii] So many northern New Mexicans settled in historic area of Agua Mansa-San Salvador in the middle of the nineteenth century. It is south of the town of Colton, along the 10 Interstate Freeway between Rancho Ave. exit and the 215 Freeway that follows
the Santa Ana River. It is just behind (to the south of) a very visible landmark: the lone cement hill called Stover Mountain, named for Isaac Stover, a Taos trapper who came to Los Angeles in 1837 and later settled in the Agua Mansa area. Since Word War I until recent years, Stover Mountain has been capped with an easily seen American flag. A bear killed Stover at an advanced age in the mountains of San Bernardino.
[xviii] Rowland, op. cit., p. 74. Underscore – my emphasis.
[xix] Interview with June Wentworth member of City of Walnut Planning Commission, in August 2002 [Phone: (909) 595-4706]. She informed me that 1) Santiago was the name of resident of the (now razed) Martinez Adobe in Walnut; 2) that he was a relative of Encarnación Martinez; and 3) that Encarnación employed and invited him to live
nearby. She also confirmed that the site of the (Santiago) Martinez Adobe used to be on property of Vejar School located in that part of La Puente that later became the city of
Walnut. It is near the original Walnut City Hall at the intersection of Lemon Ave. and Valley Blvd., twenty-six miles east of central city Los Angeles. In the early 1960s, it was razed to make room for Vejar Elementary School at 20222 W. Vejar Rd. in Walnut, CA 91789 [(909) 595-1261]. Ray Mc Mullen of Human Resources of Walnut School District, [(909) 595-1261], informed me that farmer Randy Bennet had painted an amateur picture of that [Santiago Martinez] adobe upon a hill. School secretary Yadira
[(909) 594-1434] was well disposed to find out if the painting of the Martinez Adobe was still around.
[xx] Joyce Carter Vickery, Defending Eden, Department of History, University of
California, Riverside, and the Riverside Museum Press; Riverside, California,
1977, p. 120, total pp. 130.
From Beattie and Beattie, Heritage of the Valley, p. 60. Other names include Feliciana Valdez “(widow of Apolnio (sic) Espinosa),” Lorenzo Trujillo, and Luis Stover
(Isaac Stover) for whom the lone cement mountain off Hwy 10 and Rancho Rd. just
south of Colton is named. The Agua Mansa-San Salvador settlement is just behind that landmark.
[xxi] Carter Vickery, op. cit., Re: “La Rosa”- pp.116 (Spanish) and118 (English).
[xxii] The original Spanish settlement of Abiquiú was established1739-1740.
[32]. [xxiii] Ibid., p. 118 where author records an oral tradition of “La Placita Story from the Patterson file as told to Miguel Alvarado by an original pioneer, probably a Martínez….As can be seen there are several discrepancies in this version that can be attribute to confused memories as well as family loyalty.”– Joyce Carter Vickery
[xxiv] Ibid.
[xxv] David Weber, On the Edge of the Empire: The Taos Hacienda of los Martínez, Museum of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe, c. 1996, pp. 120, p. 44. Weber cites as his source A. B. Tomas, “Documents…Northern Frontier, 1818-1819,” in New Mexico Historical Review for April 1929: pp. 152, 158 and 159.
[xxvi] José Antonio Martínez, the name as the Comandante of Agua Mansa, was also the name of the maternal grandfather of my maternal grandfather Ricardo Garcia whom we called Tito. I have no proof that the namesakes were the same person or even related. My grandfather Tito was born in 1881 at Arroyo Hondo, twelve miles north of Taos, and that makes it possible the two were contemporaries. Uncles of Padre Martinez settled Arroyo Hondo in 1804 by about the same time that Severino Martínez, the Padre’s father, was establishing his homestead in Taos. The timing works out so that he could have been either one or the other José Antonio Martínez, or both–the Colorado adventurer of 1819, or the experienced comandante who helped settle Agua Mansa, but never resided there. ¡Sabrá Dios!
Ricardo’s wife, my maternal grandmother whom we called Tita, was Gaudalupe Gonzales, and her mother was also a Martínez. By family lore, we have a Padre
Martinez connection through my mother’s side of the family.
[xxvii] Harley, compiler, “The Agua Mansa Story: A collection of papers compiled on the occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the settlement of Agua Mansa,”
San Bernardino County Museum Association QUARTERLY, Vol. 31 (1), Winter 1991, p. 19.
[xxviii] Harley, CHRONOLOGY, op. cit., p. 145.
[xxix] However, upon the untimely death of her elderly husband, his lands had already been distributed to other members of the family, and Matilde received no
inheritance. However, she later married again to a landed person, and inherited
his land.
[xxx] Carter Vickery, op. cit., pp. 119-120. Lorenzo Trujillo was wagon master for
the trek, and its real leader. Episcopal Bishop James D. Mead was listed as a physician in the manifest of twenty-six persons and things that John Rowland presented to Justice of the Peace Jose Dominguez in Los Angeles upon the groups arrival on November 5,
1841. Only William Workman and another brought their families on this trip. John Rowland would return to NM the following year to bring back his family.
Benjamin Davis Wilson of Tennessee was a fur trapper in NM who in 1841 settled in Agua Mansa and married into the Californio Yorba family. Wilson purchased half of his land from Bandini, and then moved to Pasadena, and later became Mayor of Los Angeles in 1851. Mt. Wilson was named after him. Isaac Givens was an engineer who kept a journal of the trek (at UC Berkeley), and made a map of the La Puente land that was a cattle station for the San Gabriel Mission. It later became the Roland-Workman land grant, stretching east to west from the City of Industry and Hacienda Heights to Roland Heights-Walnut.
[xxxi] Rowland, op.cit., p. 74.
[xxxii] Rowland, op. cit., p. 27 refers to a bill of sale dated April 25, 1834 for six white horses that took place at La Puente, California—a championship horse-cattle ranch and grounds for San Gabriel Mission. Ignacio Martinez bought the horses from José Sepulveda for Encanación Martinez and for Rafael Martinez, and addressed the bill of sale in care of Encarnación’s mother Ana María Trujillo at Ranchos.
[33][xxxiii] In an effort to populate the territory, the Mexican Congress passed a law on
August 18, 1824 that eleven square leagues of land were to be given to any good
[Mexican] citizen or any foreigner who accepted Mexican citizenship and the
Catholic faith (religion). One league is equivalent to 4,438 acres.
[xxxiv] John Rowland and William Workman became successful merchants in Taos. He a general merchandise store specializing in furs and pelts. They personally trapped them or more often bought from the Indians or French Canadian trappers or Yankee mountain men. However, already by 1826, the beaver fur trade was already beginning to fade as beaver hats were becoming less fashionable in Europe. Rowland began to look at other interests in California, such as otter fur, and also began to diversify his business operations in Taos. He operated a flourmill, cut lumber, and made a local brew of whiskey. The distillery or Viñatera was about three miles up the little Rio
Grande Canyon, and was in the care of Pedro Antonio Gallegos. Northern neighbor and fellow entrepreneur Simon Turley also operated a multipurpose timber mill. He would later perfect the brew as “Taos Lightning” and sell it to thirsty trappers, mountain men,
Pueblo Indians, and descendants of the Spanish settlers of the area.
[xxxv] Letter of Credential for John Rowland from Consul Manuel Alvarez of Santa Fe, addressed to the Governor of Upper California, and dated August 11, 1841, quoted in
Donald E. Rowland, op cit., pp. 61-62.
[xxxvi] Ibid., p. 63.
[xxxvii] Ibid., p. 69.
[xxxviii] Ibid., p. 65.
[xxxix] Ibid., p. 66.
[xl] Ibid., p. 73.
Quoted from Mrs. Lillian Dibble, granddaughter of John Rowland who owned
the original letter written in Spanish that was first privately printed in Romance
of La Puente, pp. 13-14. James M. Sheridan, Attorney and Counselor at law made first translation into English.
[xli] Cf. Harley, opera citata, passim.
[xlii] Spanish Trail Assocition, op. cit.
[xliii] When Pio Pico succeeded as the last Mexican Governor of California, John Rowland and William Workman on June 22, 1845 confirmed their land grants that they had possessed for three years. After the American occupation of California in 1846, a question about legitimate ownership was raised. The American government wanted to lay claim to ownership of the land, but on October 3, 1852, Rowland and Workman filed a petition to the U.S. Land Commission. Two years later, on April 14, 1854, the
Land Commission allowed the claim to stand. The U.S. Supreme Court ratified that decision, giving patent rights to the Rancho La Puente on April 19, 1857.
[xliv] The John Rowland homestead was in Rowland Heights, and the William Workman homestead was in today’s city of Industry. A non-exclusive list of the communities that today make up this area of the La Puente land grant includes what are now the areas of Monrovia, Covina, West Covina, Temple City, Walnut,
Rowland Heights, La Puente, Valinda, La Puente, City of Industry Hacienda
Heights, and Whittier.
[xlv] Address of original John Rowland homestead: 18800 E. Railroad – Roland Heights, CA 91748.
[xlvi] Cf. <californiageneaology.org/sanbernardino/mormons>
[xlvii] Rowland,
op. cit., p. 130.