Born July 4, 1808

Monterey, California, New Spain (Spanish territory)

Died January 18, 1890

Lachryma Montis, near Sonoma, California

Rancher, politician

"We are republicans—badly governed and badly situated as we are—still we are all, in sentiment, republicans.... Why then should we hesitate still to assert our independence?"

Vallejo in a speech to Californians, urging them to push for annexation by the United States, quoted in General Vallejo and the Advent of the Americans

In the middle of the nineteenth century, one of the biggest boosters of the U.S. annexation of California was not a miner, an army soldier, or a U.S. politician, but rather a longtime Mexican rancher and landowner named Mariano G. Vallejo. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Vallejo had become one of the biggest landowners and most powerful politicians in the Mexican territory of California. But Vallejo had grown...