Rancho San Geronimo (Cacho) facts for kids
Rancho San Geronimo was a 8,701-acre (35.21 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day Marin County, California given in 1844 by Governor Manuel Micheltorena to Rafael Cacho. The grant extended along San Geronimo Creek and encompassed present-day San Geronimo, Woodacre and Forest Knolls.
History
In 1844, Rafael Cacho, a military officer, was granted Rancho San Geronimo in the San Geronimo Valley, where he had been living since 1839. Cacho sold the rancho to Lieutenant Joseph Warren Revere (1812–1880). Revere came to Monterey on the USS Portsmouth and assumed command of the American forces at Sonoma. He was the one who took down the Bear Flag and raised the American Flag over Sonoma for the first time. In 1846, Revere acquired Rancho San Geronimo from Cacho.
With the cession of California to the United States following the Mexican-American War, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided that the land grants would be honored. As required by the Land Act of 1851, a claim for Rancho San Geronimo was filed with the Public Land Commission in 1852, and the grant was patented to Joseph Warren Revere in 1860.
In 1850, Revere left California for Mexico, and he sold a part of Rancho San Geronimo to Rodman M. Price. In 1851, Price returned to New Jersey, where he was elected to Congress and later elected Governor, and hired Lorenzo E. White to manage the rancho until 1855.
M. Hall McAllister, renowned San Francisco attorney and orator, bought the another part of Rancho San Geronimo in 1854. Samuel Cutler Ward and his two cousins M. Hall McAllister (1826–1888) and Ward McAllister (1827–1895) joined the gold rush in 1849. Six months after his arrival in San Francisco, he returned to New York City with a newly acquired fortune. There he met financial failure, and returned to California in 1851, where he remained for the next five years.
In 1846, Adolphe Mailliard (1819–1896) married Annie Eliza Ward (1824–1895), sister of Samuel Ward and of Julia Ward Howe. Mailliard came to California in 1868 and bought San Rancho Geronimo.
