Vallejo Family.

The Vallejo family has deep roots in the New World, and in California particularly. General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo's ancestors came to the New World with the first conquistadors in the late fifteenth century. Several held prominent positions: Don PedroVallejo, for example, was viceroy of New Spain.

General Vallejo's father, Don Ignacio Vallejo, was a member of Father Junipero Serra's military guard and was with him when he came to California in 1769 to begin missionizing among the California Indians. General Vallejo's wife, Francisca Carrillo, also came from a prominent California family. Her great-grandmother came to California from Sinaloa as a young widow with the second Anza Expedition of 1775-1776. General Vallejo was born in Monterey in 1808, the eighth of thirteen children. He was groomed for leadership from a young age by several Alta Californian governors. After training as a cadet in the Mexican Army, the Governor of Mexico appointed him the head of the San Francisco garrison (1833), and then the military commander of the northern part of the state. In 1836, he supported a short-lived revolt that sought independence for California from Mexico. Vallejo was critical of Mexican government, and consistently identified with those Mexican liberals who argued for the separation of civil and religious authority in government. For this reason, he supported both the 1836 revolt and the US takeover of California in 1848.

Despite his support of the takeover, Vallejo's treatment at the hands of US forces was not always kind. He was imprisoned for a short while during the Bear Flag Rebellion (1846). During his imprisonment, much of his estate was looted. He sued the US government for damages caused to his personal property and land during the war with Mexico. He recovered only a fraction of what his claims were worth. He also lost land and property to squatters, lawsuits, drought and financial mismanagement by his son-in-law and power-of-attorney John Frisbie. In his later years, his landholdings were reduced to a two hundred acre ranch called Lachryma Montis. In short, Vallejo's financial status was never stable after the US takeover. Despite these difficulties, Vallejo was elected to the state senate in 1849, and in 1850 donated the land for a state capitol at Vallejo. He had a deep interest in the history of his state, and accumulated a great amount of official documentation as a result of his holding various positions within California government during the Spanish, Mexican and American periods. He wrote a five-volume manuscript entitled History of California which was unfortunately lost when one of his homes burned down. Eventually, he donated all of his records to Hubert Bancroft, who employed them in his own historical writings. Several of Vallejo's children became prominent in their own right. His son Platon Vallejo became a well-respected doctor. Epifania Vallejo became California's first woman daguerrotypist.

Many of his children married into locally prominent Anglo families. General Vallejo died on January 18, 1890. Francisca Vallejo died soon after, on January 30, 1891.