The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. Juan Crespi was a Franciscan missionary who accompanied Gaspar de Portola on his 1769 overland expedition from San Diego to Monterey. The party included another friar named Franscisco Gomez, several Spanish soldiers, and a number…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. Continuing my research into the history of my hometown of Fullerton, I’ve begun flipping through Samuel Armor’s massive 1,600 hundred page book History of Orange County: With Biographical Sketches of the Leading Men and Women…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. In his book The Gabrielino, Bruce Miller includes a number of photographs of objects from the native American tribe who were the original inhabitants of Los Angeles and north Orange County, who are also called…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. A number of years ago, I had the privilege of meeting with the chief and other members of the Gabrieleno Band of Mission Indians, Kizh Nation, which is the tribe who first inhabited the areas…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. Just as Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of California, represents an important (and representative) transitional figure in California’s history, stretching from the Native American Era to the Spanish Era to the Mexican Era, to…

As part of my research of Fullerton history, I will often read books about California history more broadly, to help give context for local events. Such a book is Pio Pico: The Last Governor of Mexican California by Carlos Manuel Salomon. Pio Pico is often not given his just place in California history, and this…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. Any history of a human settlement must begin with “first families.” In the history of Fullerton, this “first family” is often considered to be the Ameriges, the brothers George and Edward, two commodities merchants from…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. In fourth grade I, like every other kid who attends public school in California, had to build a model of a mission. The state-sponsored curriculum taught me that these were sites where kindly Spanish padres…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. For thousands of years, the native Americans who inhabited the Los Angeles basin and North Orange County, including Fullerton, (called the Gabrieleno Band of Mission Indians Kizh Nation, or just Kizh) had no documented interactions…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. The area which the Kizh (Fullerton’s first inhabitants) inhabited was vast (encompassing the LA basin and North Orange County), and there is archaeological evidence of their habitation and presence in Fullerton. In Fullerton: a Pictorial…