OCTOBER-DECEMBER 19 5 6
VOLUME 2
QUARTERLY BULLETIN OF THE SANTA BARBARA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
A CALIFORNIA PIONEER 1850-1925 PERIOD
EXHIBIT
Previeio for members and contributors TIME: Monday, January 14, 2:00-5:00 P.M. PLACE: Society Headquarters, Old Mission Exhibitors are invited to attend at 4:30, following the annual business meeting.
Report of the Director Your museum direclor regrets that our president, Mr. Elbert S. Conner, because of out-of-town business, will be unable to serve as president in the coming year. Our working staff and Mrs. Gledhill and I arc deeply appreciative of his fine work and the lime that he has given to the affairs of our Society. We also regret that Mr. Francis Price Sr. has re signed from the Board of the Historical Society, and we sincerely hope that when his heavy schedule of writing historical books and articles is completed he again will be able to take a more active part as an olTicer in our affairs. With Dr. William H. Ellison, Mr. Price has recently given the library a copy of their translation and edit ing of “Ocurrencias en California” by Angustias de la Guerra Ord. It is an important addition to Californiana. Our sincere thanks to them for their generous gift to the Society’s library. Julian F. Goux on Directorate It is with pleasure that we note that Mr. Julian F. Goux has consented to fill the un-expired term on the Board created by the resignation of Mr. Price. Mr. Goux. a distinguished lawyer, has an interesting Santa Bar bara background: His grandfather, Jules Emil Goux, was at one time associated with Judge Albert Packard in the first experiment of the silk industry in California, for which the second story of the old Packard winery adobe was used. Progress Report on Adobe Preservation Located at 412 West Montccito Street, the Captain Trussell-Winchester adobe, which was willed to the Santa Barbara Historical Society by Mrs. John Russell (Continued on Page 1)
By ZoETH S. Eldredge Collectors of California historical literature, particularly those interested in the Santa Barbara scene, will find information of great value in the following text, reproduced from the “California Register.” We have Owen O’Neill to thank for placing the ma terial in our hands for printing in Noticias. Mr. O’Neill, long time Santa Barbaran and County Surveyor until ills retirement to Cambria Pines, is a sixth generation descendant from Don Jose Francisco de Ortega, founder of the Santa Barbara Presidio on April 21, 1782, and central figure in the geneological record which makes up the bulk of Zocth Eldredge’s here-published material. Mr. O’Neill is well-known by historians, also, for “A History of Santa Barbara County” published in 1939 by Harold McLean Meier, carries the name of Owen H. O’Neill as Editor in Chief, and is an invaluable source book for students of this area. The text below was contained in a fragment of the “California Register,” wliich happily came into Mr. O’Neill’s possession. Mr. John Smith, head of the Santa Barbara City Public Library, assisted us in establishing the source of the text, as very little information was given on our borrowed copy. We take this opportunity to thank him for this bit of sleuthing in our inter ests. Mr. Smith is now interested, through this effort, in securing complete copies of the “Register” for his archives. Zoeth S. Eldredge, the author, was an historian of note (d. 1919), and our Society has his 5-volunie work, “History of Cali fornia,” published in 1915 by the Century History Company, in New York City. These volumes were a gift from the late Dr. Isabel McCracken of Stanford University, ihrougli Dr. Julia Bramlage. Tlie “California Register,” incidentally, was published by the San Francisco Geneological Society, between the years 1900-1902, in three issues. The Ortega material was an extract from one of these issues. Since it seemed important to publish this Ortega family record in toto, rather than breaking it up in serial form, we are omitting much mattery usually a part of Noticias. We will return to the regular format with our next issue.—Editor. It was two hundred and twenty-six years after Cabrillo, the navigator, sailed up the coast of Alta California that the first expedition for the settlement of the country was organized. It was sent in four divisions, two by sea and two by land, all under the command of Don Caspar de Portola, captain of dragoons and governor of the Californias. With the second land division, which marched from Velicata, in Lower California, May 15, 1769, under the personal command of the governor, was a young sergeant named Jose Francisco de Ortega, a gallant soldier who had already seen many years’ service on the (See Page 2)