50 HISTORY OF PASADENA. 



the custom then was, the old people attended to the business of match- 

 making, although the lady in the case had the reserved right to say " No " 

 if she wished to, and that would end it ; for the suitor must then try his luck 

 somewhere else. lyUgo introduced Chapman among his Barbareno friends, 

 and vouched for his good character, his skill in useful arts, and his worthi- 

 ness to mate with the best Spanish blood in the province ; so in a short 

 time he and old Captain Ortega arranged that Chapman might marry 

 Ortega's pretty daughter, Guadalupe.* The young lady at first rebelled, 

 but finally consented ; and in proper time the wedding was duly celebrated 

 — and thus she became the Spanish bride of the down-east Yankee, who 

 had only four years before, as a Buenos Ayrean buccaneer, frightened her 

 and the whole family in hasty alarm from their home ; and the first time 

 she ever saw him was that same day, in sailor's garb, a bound and pinioned 

 prisoner subject to death penalty. The men were going to tie Chapman's 

 feet to a wild horse's tail and then turn it loose to drag him to death ; but 

 Guadalupe plead passionately against it as a barbarism unworthy of Chris- 

 tians, or brave soldiers, or Spanish gentlemen, and so saved his life. 



After the wedding ceremony and feasting were done with, which lasted 

 some days, he took off his red silk sash, an essential part of the Spanish 

 horseman's costume which he now wore, and made a loop of it to hang 

 over the pommel of his saddle for a stirrup, for a lady to ride side wise ; and 

 on this he seated his bride, then sat himself on the crupper or pillion behind, 

 and thus the two made the journey from Santa Barbara to L^os Angeles, 

 stopping over night, however, at the old Mission San Buena Ventura, where 

 he had a few weeks before been baptized. His cognomen in Spanish was 

 Jose el Ingles (Joseph the Englishman). He was the first English-speaking 

 bojiafide settler in the State of California, as claimed by Col. J. J. Warner 

 and Hon. Stephen C. Foster. In his Historical Sketches, Foster says : 



" In 1822, when the first American adventurers, trappers and mariners 

 found their way to California, they found Jose Chapman at the Mission San 

 Gabriel (with fair-haired children playing around him), carpenter, mill- 

 wright, and general factotum of good old Father Sanchez." 



Foster must be a little " too previous " with his " fair-haired children," 

 for Chapman was not married until after June, 1822. I have gathered the 

 following date points in his romantic career : Captured in 1818 ; got out 

 timbers for church at plaza in Eos Angeles, 1818-19 [this was in the Mount 

 Lowe "Grand Canyon "] ; 1820-21, built mill at Santa Ynez ; in December, 

 1820, was pardoned by Gov. Sola, under the king's decree of amnesty ; in 



*Don Jose Maria Ortega was one of tlie wealthiest raucheros on the coast. He had 48,000 acres 

 of land along the coast above Santa Barbara [Rancho Neustra Senora del Refugio] granted to him 

 by the viceroy of Mexico in 1797. His second son, Jose Vicente Ortega, who developed and occupied the 

 Refugio ranch, was father of the girl, Guadalupe. Mr. Elwood Cooper informs me that their old 

 ranch house is still standing, near the beach about six miles east of Gaviota landing. There were five 

 sous and two daughters of the original Ortega family who all married and rai.sed families of their own, 

 so that the name has become very numerous. The Bandiuis of Pasadena have a family connection witji 

 the Ortegas. Santiago and Luis Arguello. two brothers of Arturo Bandini's mother, both married 

 Ortega women who were cousins to the one that married Joseph Chapman. 



