Juana Briones de Miranda

[Juana Briones of Nineteenth-Century California] Infobox Person
name = Juana Briones de Miranda


image_size =
caption =
birth_date = 1804
birth_place = Villa de Branciforte, now
Santa Cruz, California
death_date = 1889
death_place = Mayfield, in modern
Palo Alto, California
occupation = Businesswoman, Curandera, Landowner
spouse = Apolinario Miranda (1820–)
parents = Marcos Briones
María Ysiadora Tapia [ [http://www.stanford.edu/group/presidio/juana.html Chapter 9, “The Presidio Landscape,” in "The Archaeology of El Presidio de San Francisco: Culture Contact, Gender, and Ethnicity in a Spanish-colonial Military Community," Barbara Voss, 2002, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley] , at Stanford University Presidio Web, accessed 2007-02-24]
children = 7+

Juana Briones de Miranda (1804-1889) was born near the Santa Cruz Mission, in California. Her parents arrived with the earliest explorations of this then remote fringe of the Spanish empire, and her family members had accompanied both the Gaspar de Portolà and the Juan Bautista de Anza Expeditions. She was the daughter of a Marcos Briones, a soldier posted near Monterey, who later moved to the San Francisco Presidio. She married a soldier, Apolinario Miranda, in 1820 [ [http://www.nps.gov/archive/prsf/history/bios/juana_briones.htm National Park Service, Presidio of San Francisco, Juana Briones Biography] , accessed 2007-02-24] and raised seven children plus an orphaned Indian girl. She later gained a clerical separation from her husband. After establishing a farm near the Presidio of San Francisco, Juana became a pioneer settler at "Yerba Buena", the area of San Francisco which is today known as North Beach. On early maps this area was designated as "Playa de Juana Briones" (Juana Briones Beach). The area of North Beach presently known as Washington Square, San Francisco was at that time under her cultivation. A natural entrepreneur, she marketed her milk and produce to the sailors from whaling ships or those who arrived in port for the hide and tallow trade. Her pioneer status is commemorated by an historical plaque on the square.

Land purchase

In 1844, she used her revenues to purchase from two Indians the 4,400 acre Rancho la Purisima Concepción in Santa Clara County, south of San Francisco. Juana Briones managed to retain the title to her land in San Francisco and Santa Clara counties throughout the tumultuous American period that followed the Gold Rush. Briones excelled not only in business and farming: her reputation for hospitality and skills in medicine were widely recognized. She trained her nephew, Pablo--who was later known as the "Doctor of Bolinas" (California)--in medicinal arts, although she never received a formal education and could not read or write.

Early residence

A remnant of her early rancho home was in the foothills above Palo Alto, California with the address of 4155 Old Adobe Road. Although it contained a structure that dated from the early twentieth century, two walls that were in the oldest corner of the home exhibited the original rancho home's construction. These walls were historically significant, as they preserved a rare construction method: infilling a crib of horizontal redwood boards with adobe. This technique provided her dwelling with the excellent insulating characteristics of adobe, while protecting that building material from erosion problems during the rainy season, and destruction by earthquake, two problems with traditional adobe construction. Other than the unusual method of using materials, the original home exhibited the familiar layout of the traditional adobe: a strip of connected rooms with an external corridor. Current owners of the house, Jaim Nulman and Avelyn Welczer, seek to demolish the house and build a new one in its place. The Friends of Juana Briones oppose the demolition. As of 8 June 2007, the Santa Clara County Superior Court hadn't decided the issue. [S.L. Wykes, [http://www.mercurynews.com/ "Demolition of Briones House halted"] , "San Jose Mercury News", 8 June 2007, p. B1.]

Juana Briones sold about half of her rancho to members of the Murphy family, settlers who preceded the California Gold Rush. She died in 1889 in nearby Mayfield (now part of Palo Alto, California). She gave the remaining portions of her rancho to her children, who bore their father’s name, Miranda. Her footprints on the local landscape include the house, Juana Briones Elementary School, Juana Briones Park, and several street names incorporating either Miranda or first names of her children. Juana Briones, like many early Hispanic women of California, has been overlooked by traditional histories, but she was mentioned in the following sources:

*Jeanne Farr McDonnell, Juana Briones of Nineteenth-Century California
*Hubert Howe Bancroft, "History of California"
*J.N. Bowman, “Juana Briones de Miranda”, Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly, September, 1957.
*Florence M. Fava, Los Altos Hills, 1976.
*More recently, she was profiled in a Radcliff Institute exhibition and related article titled “Enterprising Women” Harvard Magazine, January-February 2003
*1860 CA Census has her in SC County page 436 Fremont Twp as age 56 she is listed as Juana Miranda dwellin 1747

External links

* [http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/BOOKS/bid1986.htm Juana Briones of Nineteenth-Century California]

Notes