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Important California Missionary Dates Determined

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Maynard Geiger O.F.M.
Maynard Geiger O.F.M.*
Affiliation:
Old Mission, Santa Barbara, Calif.
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Extract

Lacking in the standard histories of the California missions as well as in several excellent biographical sketches, are long-sought, important vital statistics with regard to two among California’s greatest missionaries, Fray Francisco Palóu, O.F.M., and Fray Fermín Francisco Lasuén, O.F.M., respectively California’s first historian and the California missions’ second regularly appointed presidente. Why the chronological niche of the two missionaries in the facade of California history has stood unfinished is due to peculiar circumstances of recording and the hideout that certain necessary documents have maintained. Other missionaries, less prominent, are often much better outlined in Franciscan chronology.

With regard to Palóu, our interest centers on the exact day and year of his death. Even that of his birth was made known only in 1924 through the combined efforts of the Rev. LeRoy Callahan of the diocesan clergy of Los Angeles, and the Rev. Zephyrin Engelhardt, O.F.M., of Mission Santa Barbara. Father Callahan was in Mallorca doing research work on the early life of Junípero Serra while Father Engelhardt was composing his San Francisco Mission.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , January 1948 , pp. 287 - 293
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1948

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References

1 Correspondence in the Santa Barbara Mission Archives (SBMA) for the year 1923, Serra Section. Engelhardt used the data in his biography of Palóu in San Francisco Mission (1924), p. 373.

2 Engelhardt, op. cit., p. 378.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid., pp. 378–79.

5 “Libro de Decretos,” etc.

6 Ibid.

7 Death entry no. 1525 in “Libro de Difuntos” of Carmel Mission. The register is now in the Chancery Archives, Fresno, Calif. See Engelhardt, , Mission San Carlos (Santa Barbara, 1934), p. 236 Google Scholar for translation.

8 Chapman, op. cit., p. 365.

9 Ibid., p. 379.

10 Lasuén to Vélez, San Diego, Oct. 3, 1782. Copy in SBMA.

11 Lasuén was presidente from 1785 till 1804. He founded Missions Santa Barbara, Purísima, Santa Cruz, Soledad, San José, San Juan Bautsita, San Miguel, San Fernando, and San Luis Rey in the order enumerated.

12 These letters were found in the Biblioteca del Museo Nacional Mexico. Copies were obtained for the SBMA.

13 pp. 101–107.

14 p. 103, note 2.

15 Contratación 5546, segunda sección, AGI.

16 Palou’s New California (ed. Herbert E. Bolton), I, 263, 295, 298, 302.

17 Contratación, 5546, segunda sección, AGI.