“In 1840 what we know as the San Gabriel Valley was still a part México. Life in Alta California was separate, slightly different form of la cultura Mexicana. Some of the migrants of that time were Atlantic Yanquis who became a part of the “Californio” culture. Landowners Benito Wilson, Abel Stearns, Jaun Bandini, and Eulalia Pérez de Guillen de Mariné all spoke and did business in Spanish.
|Eulalia Pérez de Guillén Mariné|
People with the last names Ávila, Coronél, Sepulveda, Garfias, Bandini, Eaton, owned, managed or lived on Rancho El Rincón de Pascual and its neighbor ranchos. Doña Eulalia and her daughters are a part of our regional story, as are Victoria Reid, Arcadia Bandini, Encarnacion Sepulveda – women too often left out of our shared history. Cultivating land and family were the work of countless husbands and wives who lived here. Educating in reason, responsibility and religion filled hours and hours of lives: aristocrat and worker alike.
|Plat of San Pascual Rancho, U.S. Surveyors Office, September 18th, 1858|
As a result of the U.S./Mexican War (1846-1848), the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was law. Coupled with the Gold Rush and Manifest Destiny el Estado de Alta California became one of the United States of America. By 1850 a historical rupture took that place forever changed language, laws, and identity of our valley. Conflicts that we usually think of as being distant like El Cinco de mayo (Battle of Puebla) and the battles of the Civil War affected those who lived on Rancho San Pascual. In 1858 Benito Wilson acquired the last of Rancho San Pascual from Manuel Garfias and the transition from Rancho San Pascual to San Pasqual Rancho signaled the end of one era and the beginning of another.