Punta de los Reyes Sobrante (Punta de los Reyes) Rancho
Size: 48,189.34 acres
Original Grantee: Antonio Maria Osio
Governor: Manuel Micheltorena
Date of the grant: November 30, 1843
Reference: Hoffman 666
ANTONIO OSIO
b. c. 1800 in San Jose del Cabo, Mexico
d. November 5, 1878 in San Jose del Cabo, Mexico
Antonio Osio was born in and died in Mexico, but it was in Alta California that he gained prominence, first as a government official and later as the owner of nearly 50,000 acres of land in Marin. In 1825, Osio moved to Los Angeles, where he became a town councilman. After working in the customs house in San Francisco, he settled in Monterey in 1838, serving as a collector of customs and a judge in the Tribunal Superior, an early version of the California Supreme Court. In 1839, Governor Alvarado granted Osio, Angel Island, on the condition that Osio would set aside part of the island for a fort. However, Osio never took up residence there, instead living in Monterey and at Rancho Punta de los Reyes Sobrante, which Governor Micheltorena granted him in 1843.
After Osio was granted Rancho Punta de los Reyes Sobrante, he moved his family to San Rafael and served a time there as Juez de Paz (Justice of the Peace). Though Osio built a few structures on his new rancho in Point Reyes, he didn’t spend much time there. When, in 1843, Rafael Garcia moved his livestock onto Berry’s land (at neighboring Punta de los Reyes Rancho), Berry, in turn, moved west onto a portion of Osio’s Punta de los Reyes Sobrante, Rancho. Though Osio protested this incursion onto his land with the authorities in Monterey, nothing ever came of it. By the end of the decade, however, Osio had sold his Punta de los Reyes Sobrante Rancho to Andrew Randall, who also bought Rancho Punta de los Reyes.
When American troops landed on Angel Island during the Bear Flag Revolt in 1846, Osio fled to Honolulu, where he lived until 1849. After returning to Monterey in 1850, he settled in Mexico in 1852. With his second wife, Narcisa Florencia Soto, he had thirteen children. He died in San Jose del Cabo, Mexico, in 1878.
References:
1.) Mason, Jack. Early Marin. Petaluma: House of Printing, 1971.
2.) Mason, Jack. Point Reyes: The Solemn Land. Inverness: North Shore Books, 1972.
3.) Osio, Antonio Maria. The History of Alta California: A Memoir of Mexican California. Trans. and Eds. Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.
COPYRIGHT 2003, Anne T. Kent California Room, Marin County Free Library
