California Genealogy

William Walker, a Scotch-American, 29 years old, of strong personal characteristics and adventurous nature, after a varied career, conceived, about 1853, the idea of forming independent republics in certain districts of Mexico, the remoteness and sparse settlement of whose districts made the plan seem feasible. He was impelled, no doubt, largely by an emulative spirit of jealousy toward the dashing French Count, Raoul Raousset, whose operations in northwestern Mexico had a somewhat similar purpose. This Walker, of unbounded and misdirected ambition, balked in his first tentative efforts to further hid project by deception and cajolery of the Mexican government, renewed … Read more

The history of the missions from this time on reads like a romance. The natives at first were friendly, and rendered willing services in return for slight rations of grain and porridge. Later they became refractory, began to steal from the strangers, and then went on to personal attacks, often repeated, of murderous in-tent. Unexpected rains, in a country they had supposed rainless, damaged the stores. Their own weapons of defense recoiled upon them; for when they fired their pedrero (a swivel-gun) to repel a ferocious attack of the Indians, it burst and wounded several of the garrison. A great … Read more

The first Jesuit priest to tread Lower California soil was Father Roque de Vega, chaplain to Francisco de Ortega, on that worthy’s third survey. Ortega, on this voyage, on January 14, or 15, 1636, anchored his vessel of seventy tons’ burden in the bay called Playa Honda, eleven miles south of La Paz. A terrible storm, lasting eleven days, wrecked the ship and drove it ashore, the men escaping to the land on fragments of the vessel. There drifted also -miraculously, thought the forlorn, castaway explorers enough vessels of the church service to enable Father Vega to say mass regularly. … Read more

Welcome to La Baja California, I am Judy White and I along with Blanca Salvatierra will be your hosts for La Baja California WorldGenWeb. If you would like to adopt one of the Mexican states please visit their home page.  We are working to translating these pages into Spanish, which I don’t speak, but Blanca does, but she is new to web page building so I ask that you have have patients with us!! You can also view a Spanish translation of these pages at Genealogía y Historia de Baja California Very soon after the conquest of Mexico the attention … Read more

General Henry S. Burton, deceased, once a distinguished military man on this coast, was born at West Point, May 9, 1819, when his father, Major Oliver Burton, was stationed at that post. He received his appointment as a cadet before he was quite six-teen years old; would have entered the military academy in January, 1835, but he lacked three months of being sixteen years of age, so that he was obliged to wait until the July term. He graduated high in a class of very able cadets, and had the opportunity offered him of going into the engineer corps, but … Read more

The existence of gold in the northeastern part of La Baja has long been known. Old maps show the general location of gold-bearing districts in that territory lying in a direct line between San Diego and the mouth of the Colorado River, and due east of the Ensenada. In 1870 gold placers were discovered in the San Rafael valley, resulting in an excitement which attracted many immigrants to La Baja, and caused a regular stage-line to be run thither from San Diego. It brought corresponding disadvantages in the way of incentives to depredations by Indians and bandits. In “Peninsular California,” … Read more

After 1767 the Spanish Viceroy gave the administration of the government in La Baja to the commandant of the presidio troops, who acquired the title of governor. The capital was at Loreto, commonly called Presidio de Californias. In Jane, 1767, when the Jesuits were expelled from Mexico, the charge of the California missions was offered to the Franciscan College of San Fernando, in the Mexican capital; and, the proffer being accepted, seven friars from the establishment set forth for the peninsula, to be joined by five from the Sierra Gordo missions. Their progress was delayed, first, by contrary seas and … Read more

Very soon after the conquest of Mexico the attention of Cortez was attracted by certain stories told by some of the conquered tribes regarding a mysterious but wonderful country, lying far to the northwestward. This land they called Ciguatan, or The Realm of Women; and they declared that it abounded in gold, in pearls, rubies, garnets, turquoises, and many other products, rich and precious. Marvelous things were told also concerning the people, customs, and appearance of that far country. About the same time (1530) Nuño de Guzman, President in New Spain, was told by an Indian slave of The Seven … Read more

In the twenty years since then there have been organized several colonization enterprises, of which the principal were as follows: The Peninsula Plantation and Homestead Association, which obtained a large, fertile tract along the Muleje Bay, offering to actual settlers 30,-000 shares at $16, in 1870; the Gulf of California Commercial Company, a second Muleje colony association, formed at San Francisco in 1871; the Colorado Hemp Company, which in 1874 sent down a party to cultivate hemp with the aid of the Indians; the Guaymas and Muleje Trust Company, formed at San Francisco in 1880, to plant sugar-cane, for which … Read more

Many of the soldiers who shared in the invasion of 1847-’48, retained such agreeable impressions of the peninsula that they afterward returned thither to settle as farmers, miners, or traders. There was, moreover, a profound conviction that La Baja must speedily belong to the United States, and here, as ever, speculation was eager to share in the prize. Upon those parties seeking to obtain land grants, the government imposed the condition of founding colonies, realizing that upon foreign immigration mainly must depend the development of the country’s natural resources. On the other hand, the inhabitants looked not kindly upon foreigners, … Read more