Oakland Tribune from Oakland, California • 143

i i i i TT MM 4 4 f.vA.. A New Look at Fgag The Vallejo Family v- 4 ttnqwayjrQttrrTO wdzV I rJ- ri I-V (I I 'V -v iV f. V'- I 'KS 1 Vv I 'HE THANKSGIVING season seems a most proper and suitable time to be reading The Vallejos of California, a book authored by Madie Brown Emparan, designed and handsomely printed by Lawton and Alfred Kennedy, and published about this time last year by the Gleeson Library Associates at the University of San Francisco. Such a remark is not meant to infer that the book is less readable at any other season of the year. That is not so.

Its only because Thanksgiving is a season for most families to gather for annual reunion and the author, Madie Brown Emparan, succeeds with the monumental task of bringing together all the Vallejo clan so the reader can meet them one by one and theres quite a few to meet. It wasnt until three years after Madie Brown retired from her curator post of 15 years at the Vallejo Home State Historical Monument in Sonoma that she and Richard Raoul Emparan were wed. Her husband is a descendant of Gen. Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, son of Don Ignacio Vicente Ferrer and founder of the Vallejo family in California. Mrs.

Emparan had begun her labors long before her Christmas wedding of 1965. She tells us the book required 20 years in preparation, including four visits to Mexico City where government archives were researched for letters in order that the Vallejos, their friends and contemporaries, in and out of General Vallejo built this home amid oaks at Sonoma's edge in 1851 and called it Lachryma Montis jo, Uladislao Vallejo, Napoleon Primo Vallejo, and Maria Ignacia Vallejo. There is an excellent index. than any one of the Generals surviving relatives or descendants, commented the late Francisca Vallejo McGettigan, a Vallejo granddaughter, at a time when she was privileged to review the unpublished manuscript. The author admits the assistance of nine grandchildren of General official life, might teU the story Vallejo, whom it has been my priv-themselves and the vitality of the 'iiege to know especially the SURELY there are not many who havent heard the story of how Benicia in Solano County received its name even though the founders of the community had proposed the name Francisca.

Mrs. Emparan resorts to the published notice in The Californian of 1847 to authenticate the turn of events. On May 19, 1847, Vallejo and his wife Francisca Benicia granted to Thomas 0. Larkin and Robert Semple a tract of land embracing Nan area of five square miles which was a portion of their estate known as Soscol. Vallejo stipulated that a ferry should be operated by Semple was carried out the first public utility in California.

Larkin recognized the handicap the new town would be under if it had a name so like San Francisco, the new name of Yerba Buena. He decided to give their town another name of General Vallejos wife, namely Benicia, whereupon Dr. Semple published the following in The Californian: The name of the City of Francisca recently laid out at the Straits of Carquinez on the Bay of San Francisco has been changed to Benicia City. At the request of my partner and several other persons, I have consented to the change. The reason for the change is that this town of Yerba Buena is by the order of the Alcalde called San Francisco and it was thought that the names being so much alike might create confusion No one dreamed of changing the name Yerba Buena until I handed in my deeds to be recorded for the present site of the City of Benicia with the name of the City of Francisca.

The Alcalde next day issued an order that the town of Yerba Buena be hereafter called San Francisco. The first house in Benicia was commenced in August, 1847. PHOTOS of the adult Vallejo children accompany each chapter as the work unfolds the story of new generations. Val- i i vi on, Page 20, original telling not be lost in the re-telling. Other letters were dug out from Bancroft Library on the University of California campus in Berkeley, the California State Library at Sacramento, and the Henry E.

Huntington library at San Marino, as well as numerous documents from the California Historical Society, the Society of California Pioneers, and the University of San Francisco. General Vallejo and Dona Francisca Benicia Carrillo de Vallejo were the parents of 16 children, 10 of whom lived to adulthood. Those are some of the people you meet along with in-laws when you read The Vallejos of I wrote the book because I was terribly offended at attacks on General Vallejo by one or two earlier historians, Madie Brown Emparan says. It is Californias good fortune that she took offense. youngest, Richard Raoul Emparan, who bears a remarkable likeness to his grandfather.

There is just enough detail on General Vallejos antecedents at the beginning of the book to give the reader an overwhelming desire to meet up with and make the acquaintance of this very early and prominent native Californian whose ancestors followed Columbus to the Americas by only eight years. In spite of the fact that so much has been published about the. General, there is definite newness to what Madie Brown Emparan now reports The reader quickly gets the impression that this is not a book just for today, but a book that is destined for all time. All in all there are nearly 450 pages in which the author dwells not jonly on General Vallejo, but with equal earnestness acquaints the reader with his lovely wife, Dona Francisca Benicia Carrillo de Vallejo, and the 10 children who grew to adulthood: Andronico Antonio Vallejo, Epifania de Guadalupe Vallejo, Adelayda Vallejo, Natalia Veneranda Vallejo, Platon M. MADIE Brown Emparan knows her Gen.

Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo from.