Researchers shine light on Vallejo’s promiscuous personal life

Early-day California historian H.H. Bancroft once wrote, without elaboration, that Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo was not “strict in his relations with women.”

Today’s researchers have provided the details: Vallejo fathered five children with women other than his wife, with whom he had 16 children.

Vallejo’s sexual exploits as a young man weren’t held against him as he rose to a position of power and influence in Mexico’s northern frontier, now Northern California. In 19th Century Mexican society, he and other prominent Californio men had the benefit of a cultural double-standard that didn’t extend to women.

Old accounts of Vallejo tended to focus on his role as a well-educated, wise leader both before and after 1850 California statehood. But present-day research has gone much further, revealing a complex character who also could be egotistical, opportunistic, demanding, ruthless and reckless in his relationships.

Is it really necessary to focus on Vallejo’s flaws, including those involving his personal life? Current historians say they aren’t trying to diminish Vallejo’s many positive achievements -- but you have to take the bad with the good to get a better understanding of one of the founding fathers of California.

“It’s important to know him, warts and all. Vallejo is a three-dimensional person, not a cartoon character, not just some figure in a history book,” says Rose Marie Beebe, who with fellow historian and husband Robert Senkewicz just completed a translation of about 2,000 pages of Vallejo’s “Recuerdos” (recollections), which he wrote in Spanish.

Vallejo’s many relationships with women reflected the socially stratified, male-dominated machisimo culture of his time, says Senkewicz, adding, “To understand Mariano Vallejo you have to understand that culture.”

Historian Rosa Toruni Tanghetti, one of the contributing authors in the 2008 book “A Companion to California History,” writes that Vallejo, in marrying Francisca Benicia Carrillo in 1832 — following a two-year courtship — “established legitimate kinship ties that sustained elite family networks” in Mexican society.

Tanghetti added that historians researching old baptismal records determined that in the late 1820s and early 1830s Vallejo admitted to inquiring friars that he was the father of a boy born to Anamaria Avila, a girl born to her sister, Maria Rosalia Avila, and a baby born to Maria Antonia Zuniga. Six months after Vallejo’s 1832 marriage, Juana Lopez gave birth to another of Vallejo’s daughters.

The mothers were single Mexican women living in Monterey or, in Lopez’ case, San Diego. The babies were designated hijos naturales (natural children) when baptized. The designation meant they were not entitled to shares of their father’s wealth and, if males, were barred from holding public office as adults. Also, in about 1830, an unnamed Native American woman gave birth to a boy who was identified as another of Vallejo’s “natural” sons.

Except for Juana Lopez’ daughter, Prudenciana, and the Native American woman’s son, named Jose Altamira, Tanghetti states it is unclear what, if any, relationship Vallejo had with his “natural” children. Prudenciana and Vallejo wrote letters to one another; and Jose Altamira was adopted into Vallejo’s family.

The three other children born to women Vallejo didn’t plan to marry “left few traces in the historical record, a strong indication of their social marginality,” Tanghetti wrote. “Even though Vallejo recognized them as his biological issue, he disavowed them socially by not conferring on them his surname.”

Vallejo “lost nothing because of his sexual exploits” in terms of social prominence and military advancement, Tanghetti says. He was 25 when Prudenciana, his last known “natural” child, was born in 1932, and in the following year he was promoted to commandant of the San Francisco Presidio. In 1836, at age 29, he was named military commandant general of Mexico’s entire northern frontier and established a post in Sonoma. The title of “general” stuck, although his highest military rank was that of colonel in the Mexican Army.

However, the mothers of his hijos naturales “did not fare as well,” Tanghetti states. In the case of the Avila sisters, for example, they never married and lived with their widowed mother whose husband had left the family with no means of support.

Jose Altamira, adopted as a boy after alerting Vallejo to a planned Indian attack in Sonoma, was treated as an equal to the other children of Mariano and Francisca Benicia. While studying in Valparaiso, Chile, he learned of his father’s imprisonment during California’s Bear Flag Revolt and came home in 1846 filled with hate for Americans. That put him at odds with his father, a strong advocate of U.S. statehood for California.

After several confrontations with Vallejo, Jose finally left Sonoma, married and moved to Martinez where he became an interpreter at the Contra Costa County courthouse.

“Little remained between father and son except a pained silence,” historian Alan Rosenus wrote in his 1995 book, “General Vallejo and the Advent of the Americans.”

Rosenus also described Vallejo as a model of intelligence and enterprise despite playing a major role in subjugating Native Americans. In “Russian California, 1806-1860: A History in Documents,” published in 2014, authors James Gibson and Alexei Istomin cited an 1838 report by a visiting Russian Navy officer that Vallejo ordered 35 California Indians to be executed the day after 35 of his cows were killed by some of his Sonoma workers.

“Hardly a one-dimensional model of virtue, he was rather an alloy of the good and bad. He could be egotistical, vain, and at times autocratic,” Rosenus wrote. “The fact remains, however, that the American and Mexican frontiers boasted few men who were as articulate, far-seeing, and reasonable as Vallejo. “

For his efforts on behalf of the Mexican government and Mexican settlers in California, Vallejo received many land grants that totaled more 170,000 acres – about 266 square miles. With U.S. statehood, he remained a prominent figure, serving in the state Senate and working to give the new city of Vallejo its short-lived status as California’s capital city.

Vallejo eventually lost most his vast holdings and was reduced to his 228-acre Lachryma Montis homestead in Sonoma. He almost lost that to a lawyer who held a mortgage on the property, but his son-in-law, John Frisbie, bought out the attorney. Vallejo died at his Lachryma Montis home on Jan. 18, 1890, at age 82.

Brendan Riley, Vallejo native and retired Associated Press writer, writes a Solano Chronicles history column. This article is used with permission of the author. It was previously published in the Vallejo Times Herald.