- Don Bernardo Yorba Ranchhouse
The Don Bernardo Yorba Ranchhouse was a large adobe home located in the territory of
Alta California , near theSanta Ana River in the city now calledYorba Linda , that consisted of several rooms, and became the center of operations of the originalRancho Cañón de Santa Ana .History
Don
José Antonio Yorba I,1746 -1825 , was a settler in SpanishCalifornia , then known as the California territory ofNew Spain . Born inSan Sadurni de Noya inCatalonia ,Spain , Yorba came to the California territory as aSpanish Army officer with theGaspar de Portolà Expedition of1769 .Yorba's original rancho, which he named “Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana”, included the lands where the cities of Olive, Orange, Villa Park, Santa Ana, Tustin, Costa Mesa, Irvine and Santiago stand today.
Among José Antonio's children,
Bernardo Yorba I (1801 -1858 ) accumulated additional territories for the family's massive cattle herd business, which produced cowhides for leather goods and tallow for soap and candles, that were traded withNew England merchants who sailed around the horn fromBoston to California's sea ports.Don Bernardo introduced irrigation agriculture, utilizing the Santa Ana River near his ranchhouse, which was amongst the largest in Alta California.
Juan Pablo Grijalva, a Spanish soldier who came to California with the De Anza expedition, was the original petitioner for the lands that became known as the "Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana". He died before the grant was approved and the lands went to his son-in-law, Jose Antonio Yorba and his grandson, Juan Pablo Peralta.
Throughout the early 1800s, the integrated peoples of Alta California, known as "
Californios ", lived a pastoral life, and enjoyed the benefits of a thriving economy.Mexican American War
During the outset of the
Mexican-American war , several defensive battles in1846 and '47 were fought and Alta California was ultimately ceded to the United States in 1847 by signing theTreaty of Cahuenga . Of the land grants established by Spain, and confirmed by the Mexican government after 1823, the Yorba rancho lands were amongst the few to be preserved intact, due, in part, by marriages to Americanimmigrants .American Integration
One of Don Bernardo’s daughters, Ramona, married
Benjamin Davis Wilson , an Americantrapper fromTennessee , who came to the territory to hunt grizzly bear in the area now called "Big Bear Lake " in the San Bernardino Forrest. Wilson, who is the grandfather ofGeneral George S. Patton Jr, began working as avaquero , and received as a wedding dowry, theRancho Jurupa from Don Bernardo, which would become the communities of today’s Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Wilson was prominent in the development of the new US State of California, eventually helped in the settling of the towns ofPasadena , San Gabriel and San Marino inLos Angeles County .Throughout this American and
Mormon migration period, descendents of the Yorba's continued to marry into other Spanish families including; the Grijalva's, Perralta's, Sepulveda's, Carrillo's and Dominquez's, who also married and granted lands to Americans to attempt preservation of their possessions. Many of today's recognizable American names in California, including the Kraemers, Glassels, Chapmans and Irvine's, married into these Spanish Californian families. In the early twentieth century,Samuel Kraemer , who had married Angelina, a direct Yorba descendent, tore down the historic Don Bernardo Yorba Ranchhouse of the original Rancho San Antonio, after the new American town ofYorba Linda refused to accept it or preserve it.References
*Beers, Henry Putney, (1979). "Spanish & Mexican records of the American Southwest : a bibliographical guide to archive and manuscript sources", Tucson : University of Arizona Press
*Pleasants, Adelene (1931). "History of Orange County, California. Vol. 1", Los Angeles, CA : J. R. Finnell & Sons Publishing Company
* California History, Bancroft - http://www.1st-hand-history.org/Hhb/HHBindex.htm
* "Two Years before the Mast" 1840 - Richard Henry Dana Jr.
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