Local artist Keith Wicks painted a striking image of General Vallejo.
submitted photo
General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo was born in Monterey, California on July 4, 1807. The unlikely coincidence of sharing a birthday with America serves as the key to the General’s greatness and explains his enduring legacy. For General Vallejo was a great American; the one man in Mexican California who early on recognized the United States of America as the country that should annex the lands from San Diego to Oregon. Beloved of American ideals, doing his best to ease the transfer of power, he was the bridge between a Mexican past and an American future.
The General once said that his biography was the story of California itself. He grew up seeing bears and mountain lions from the Presidio walls of the wilderness town of Monterey; experienced the great changes of the 19th century; and lasted to a ripe old age at Lachryma Montis on West Spain Street.
He appears to us as a man astride history itself, the Zelig of his time, who appeared at crucial moments and whose opinion mattered the most. Recognized from childhood as exceptional in thought and action, his meteoric rise seemed foreordained to his countrymen. He was tall and quick-witted, and possessed courtly manners and military bearing. This last trait was particularly unusual given the lax manners of the military in this frontier region, so far from Mexico City. He also possessed a great sense of humor; he was once sent to tighten military esprit de corps at the Presidio in Santa Barbara but finally gave up, saying: “Proper military discipline is difficult to achieve in an army comprised of unpaid relatives.”
This coming Wednesday Sonoma will be celebrate the General’s 200th Birthday with a 4th of July Celebration sponsored by the Sonoma Community Center. There will be music and events in the plaza, and at 10 a.m. a Home Town Parade led by local Vallejo descendent Vallejo Haraszthy. Pictures of the General will be seen on wine glasses and T-shirts, and at 12:30 p.m. in Grinstead Amphitheatre, commendation proclamations will be read by dignitaries enumerating the General’s many achievements.
Sonorous, old-fashioned language will praise the General with liberal use of the words: Whereas and Therefore. Proclamations have arrived from the cities of Sonoma, San Francisco, Vallejo; and from Solano County, the California Assembly and the United States Congress.
Born into a proud Spanish military family, Mariano Vallejo was the eighth of 13 children, and the third son. Recognized as exceptionally bright while still a boy, he was tutored by the English merchant William Hartnell, as well as the last governor of Spanish California, Pablo Vicente de Sola. Blessed with an inquisitive mind as well as an affinity for language he learned to read and write in Spanish, English, Latin, French, and Italian. It was at this time he read Voltaire, Jefferson, and the Declaration of Independence, and began his love and appreciation for the ideals of republican self-government. Throughout his long life these ideals were kept as a moral compass.
He enrolled as a cadet in the Mexican Army at 17, and rose quickly through the ranks, becoming an officer at the age of 20. Four years later, in 1831, he was installed as the Comandante of the San Francisco Presidio. In 1834 he was put in charge of secularizing the Sonoma Mission and he began the civilian town of Sonoma. Sonoma’s plaza, to this day the largest of any city in California, was laid out with the use of a compass and a very long string.
General Vallejo was both an idealist and a pragmatist, a rare and admirable combination in a politician. While serving as a member of the constitutional assembly in Monterey in 1849 he hoped to include in the new state’s constitution the right of women to hold property independently of their husbands, as existed under Spanish tradition and Mexican law. The General queried the assembly, asking how many of the men were bachelors. All but one raised their hands. The General then said: “If we allow women to hold property independently of their husbands, we might get more rich widows to move to California!” Everyone agreed this made perfect sense, and gave women that important right that has been part of the California constitution ever since.
The last in a series of four lectures presented by the Sonoma/Petaluma State Historic Park Association honoring General Vallejo will take place at the Sonoma Barracks tonight at 7 pm. Local actor and historian George Webber will perform: “General Vallejo in Person.” The Sonoma Barracks is at the corner of East Spain Street and First Street East. Requested $5 donation. For information call Elizabeth Kane at 935-6832.
