San Diego Historical Society

Biography / Administrative History

In the course of the California Border Region Digitization Project, Historical Society staff selected, described, and digitized 3,500 photographs from more than fifteen collections. Scanning services were provided by Luna Imaging, Inc. Funding for the project was provided by the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). The duration of the project was September 2003 through August 2004.

From the guide to the California Border Region digitization project, ca. 1850-1940, 1870-1939, (San Diego Historical Society)

Biographical / Historical Notes

Presidio Park is the historical landmark of the birth of the mission system and first European settlement on the west coast of the United States. On July 16, 1769, Father Junipero Serra erected a cross and held the first mass on Presidio Hill establishing the site of Mission San Diego de Alcala. By the late 1830s, the site was abandoned and left in ruin. In 1907, George W. Marston, a pioneer San Diego civic leader and philanthropist, and a group of friends recognized the need to preserve Presidio Hill and purchased the site. Marston oversaw construction at Presidio Hill, creating Presidio Park and the Serra Museum. On July 16, 1929, Marston presented Presidio Park as a gift to the City of San Diego and the Serra Museum as a gift to the San Diego Historical Society.

In 1965, the San Diego Historical Society initiated the Presidio Park Excavation Project. This project was designed for the purpose of developing a comprehensive profile of San Diego’s earliest settlement. Test excavations at the southwest edge of Presidio Hill unearthed ruins that belonged to the presidio’s chapel. The excavations of the chapel complex were under the direction of Paul Ezell of San Diego State University and Diane Barbolla of San Diego Mesa College. After excavations of the chapel complex were completed in June 1976, excavations on the western portion of Presidio Hill began in order to identify the original entranceway of the presidio. Ezell has estimated that it would take about fifty years to examine the entire excavatable area of the Presidio.

From the guide to the Presidio Park Collection, 1781-1982, (San Diego History Center Document Collection)

Biographical / Historical Notes

Leading up to the nineteenth century, the area that was to make up Rancho de la Nacion was used by the Spanish as cattle grazing lands. The Spanish had called it Rancho del Rey. In 1821, when the Mexican government secured independence from Spain, the name of the area was changed to Rancho de la Nacion.

Rancho de la Nacion was eventually comprised of “6 square leagues” (26,631 acres) bordered on the south by San Diego Bay, on the north by Sierra de San Miguel, on the east by Canada de las Chagus, and on the west by Rancho de la Punta. This area makes up present-day National City, Chula Vista and Bonita.

John (Juan) Forster (1814-1882) was an English-born traveler who arrived in Mexico in 1831. He drifted north to California in 1833, where in 1837 he met Pio Pico (1801-1894). Pico took Forster in and later that year after converting to Catholicism, Forster married Pico’s sister, Isidora Ygnacia Pico.

In 1843, Juan Forster petitioned the Mexican governor for a grant of land. The land was granted to him on July 26, 1843, with the provision that the Mexican government could continue to graze cattle and horses on it. In December of 1845, Forster’s brother-in-law, Governor Pio Pico, made the grant permanent. Juan Forster started a cattle farm and built a home there in 1846. It should be noted that Jose Antonio Estudillo had once gained concession for the land, but it was revoked when he failed to make the required improvements. Around the same time, Forster acquired several other tracts of land including Rancho San Felipe, Rancho Trabuco, Rancho Mission Viejo and Rancho Margarita y Las Flores.

After the Mexican-American war, the U.S. government required land holders of formerly Mexican-owned lands to petition for the right to continue to own these lands. In 1866 Forster’s petition for rights to Rancho de la Nacion was successful after a long fight with the Land Commission. However, by that time, Forster had suffered some financial setbacks and was forced to sell the rancho to San Francisco bankers Pioche, Bayerque & Co. in 1856. The land exchanged hands multiple times over the next twelve years between the owners of the San Francisco company, remaining under the bankers’ control until Francois A. L. Pioche sold it to Frank and Warren Kimball in 1868. The Kimball brothers began to subdivide the Rancho land as part of their organization of National City, which they envisioned as a “railroad boom town,” although the transcontinental railroad never came to fruition. By the mid-1880s, the San Diego Land & Town Co. took over the administration and sale of the subdivided Rancho lands.

From the guide to the Rancho de la Nacion Collection, 1843-1906, (San Diego History Center Document Collection)

Biographical / Historical Notes

In the 1830s, following Mexico’s independence from Spain, Alta California became a department of the Mexican republic. Under the legacy of Spanish colonial law which Mexico continued to enforce, a pueblo could be formed by the election of certain municipal officials, including a mayor (alcalde), two councilmen (regidores), and a legal advisor/advocate (sindico). These municipal authorities then organized a civil government, or ayuntamiento, and were then entitled to a land grant from the Mexican public domain.

In accordance with this law, San Diego held its first election on December 21, 1834, electing the officials legally required to establish a pueblo. Those elected included: Jose Osuna, mayor; Juan B. Alvarado, councilman; Jose Maria Marron, councilman; and Henry Fitch, legal adviser. Following the election, the officials applied to the departmental government of Alta California for a grant of land from the public domain. Their petition was received favorably and granted by the governor, who ordered a land grant for the pueblo of San Diego. The exact location and quantity of land granted was unknown until 1845 when Fitch completed the first known survey and map of San Diego, charting a territory of nearly 50,000 acres. The pueblo of Santa Barbara also became an “ayuntamiento” and its officials applied for a land claim during the same period, the forms for San Diego and Santa Barbara being filed together.

Jose Antonio Estudillo, although not an initial municipal authority, was an active participant in San Diego’s first elections and a prominent landowner in San Diego during that time. Son of Jose Maria Estudillo, former comandante of Monterey and San Diego, Jose Antonio married Victoria Dominguez in 1826, becoming the brother-in-law of Juan Bandini. Marrying into another influential family helped him gain political clout and he served as San Diego revenue collector and treasurer from 1828 to 1830. Estudillo secured multiple land holdings during the 1830s and 1840s, including three lands grants in the San Jacinto area. Jose Antonio served as administrator and mayordomo at Mission San Luis Rey from 1840-1843, and was granted ownership to part of the Mission’s lands, known as Rancho San Jacinto Viejo, during his period of service.

Following Mexico’s surrender of Alta California to the United States in 1848 as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe, Congress created a Board of Land Commissioners for California to determine the validity of all land claims founded on Mexican land grants. The creation of this Board was directly related to article one of the treaty with Mexico requiring the U.S. to recognize all valid grants within the ceded territory that had been made prior to the beginning of the war. As required, the city petitioned their land claim in 1852 in case number 589: “President and Trustees of the City of San Diego vs. U.S. government for Pueblo Lands.” Locally known as the “Pueblo Lands case,” this claim was confirmed by the board in 1854 but the government appealed the ruling. However, the appeal was never followed up on, so it was dismissed and the board’s decision was confirmed and deemed final in 1857. The Fitch map was used to determine the boundaries of the city in this case. As with all other longtime landowners in the area, the Estudillo family also had to petition for their land to the Board of Land Commissioners. Jose Antonio Estudillo died in 1852, but his heirs, including his wife, Victoria Dominguez Estudillo, filed the claim and it was granted on November 21, 1854. The Estudillo family’s land disputes did not end there however, and they were back in court in 1879 regarding a dispute with their neighbor, John Flanagan over the boundaries of their land. Despite this minor dispute, the Estudillo family continued to own most of the Valley until the early 1880s, when parts of it were sold off.

From the guide to the San Diego Pueblo Lands Collection, 1834-1880, (San Diego History Center Document Collection)

Biographical / Historical Notes

Throughout San Diego’s development there have been songs written in tribute to its history and beauty. This collection features many songs written about San Diego that date back to the early twentieth century, as well as some as far back as the late nineteenth century.

Composer and San Diego resident, Cassius M. Loomis, wrote a song for San Diego, “San Diego’s Welcome,” that became the national song and march of the 1915 Panama-California Exposition.

Residents of San Diego provided a wealth of music to the rest of the world as well. The 1914 song “Mammy’s Li'l' Baby” was written specifically for world renowned opera singer and San Diego resident, Madame Ernestine Schumann-Heink. Throughout her lifetime, Madame Schumann-Heink held many concerts in San Diego’s Horton Plaza, and her single performance for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition attracted 28,000 people. Madame Schumann-Heink, along with fellow San Diego resident musicians Carrie Jacobs Bond and Charles Wakefield Cadman, each had a day of the 1915 Panama-California Exposition dedicated to them, and also have sheet music represented in this collection.

From the guide to the San Diego Sheet Music Collection, 1889-1984, (San Diego History Center Document Collection)