San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo: (Find on
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Father Junipero Serra, president of the mission chain at the time, was a man true to his vow of poverty.
When Father Junipero Serra died on August 28, 1784, his only possessions were a
board cot, a blanket, one table, one chair, a chest, a candlestick, and a
gourd, and nothing else. He is buried in the Mission sanctuary along with
Fathers Juan Crespi and Fermin Lasuen. In 1985, Pope John Paul II declared
Junipero Serra venerable and in 1988 he was beatified in recognition of his
heroic virtues. He is one of the most important figures in the history of California
and the United States of America. The mission had to take responsibility for sustaining itself through the long winters and dry summers. During the summer of 1773 came without bringing the supply ship.
Neither Carmel nor Monterey was anything like self-supporting. The presidio had
some cattle and the stock belonging to the projected northern missions. No
doubt there had been some planting but certainly no more than was
necessary for its own personnel. In December '72 Father Crespí had sown about
five bushels of wheat and a bit of barley in the field called San Jose. Early
in '73 he planted a few pecks of beans and corn in the field called San Carlos.
The land in both cases was but poorly spaded as they were not able to plow.
July 5, there fell a frost which ruined the beans and half the corn. The rest
yielded about fifteen bushels. The soldiers in the area didn't help too much in persuading the neophytes, most of which being Native Americans, to keep the faith. Father Junipero Serra realized that Monterey was not
a very good location for his mission. There were too few Indians and it was too
close to the presidio and the soldiers (some of whom were
"leather-jacket" soldiers, who were often recruited from jails). Serra
did not want his Indian neophytes exposed to their influence. Also, there was
no good agricultural land around Monterey, and the mission would have to grow
much of its own food. When the ship San Antonio left on July 9, 1770, just five
weeks after the founding of Monterey, it carried a message asking permission to
move the mission to Carmel. As at the presidio, the first buildings at the new mission
site there were logs stuck into the ground, with additional logs forming a
framework for a thatched roof. The first buildings included one room for a
chapel, a four-room dwelling, a granary, and a dwelling for the servants and
its kitchen. These were surrounded by a stockade about 130 by 200 feet in size,
which included a guardhouse for the soldiers. After the new mission had been
settled, life was divided between short intervals of sufficiency followed by
long waits for additional supplies from Mexico. The early years were hard, with
few provisions. The padres depended mostly on the Indians for supplies. Later
local crops became sufficient, and the temporary buildings were replaced with
adobe structures.
San Juan Bautista:
The
mission was founded in summer of 1797. The founders name was Fr. Fermin de
Lasuen, and he was the President of the California Missions. This mission was
the fifteenth mission to be founded. At the time of Mission san Juan Bautista’s
founding the California Missions president was Father Fermin Lasuen. This
area lands right on the San Andreas Fault line. An interesting this about the
part of the fault they were on was that is was not very dangerous at all and
the magnitude of its shakes and quakes never caused to extensive of damage.
While the damage and magnitude of these quakes was never extensive to frequency
was. An account of one past visitor of the old mission was “In October 1798 the
shaking was so bad that the missionaries slept outside for the whole month. The
earth shook as many as 6 times on one day, leaving many huge cracks in both the
buildings and the ground.” While
researching the San Juan Batista mission I learned the supposed story of its
founding. According to the Athanasius privately owned California missions
records site, it all “began with a group of leather-jacketed soldiers and a few
Native Americans watching a tonsured Franciscan priest raise his eyes and hands
toward the sky.” With religious inspiration Father Fermin Lasuen founded the
mission site. The site was founded in honor of Saint John the Baptist. The
founding happened Saturday June 24th 1797 and was the 15th
of the 21 missions in the California mission chain. The mission fortunately for the people of that time was furnished by a skilled American carpenter. Half-way through his job the carpenter, Thomas Doak decided to marry the daughter of one Jose Castro. Doing such according to Spanish law at the time gave him the choice to be American or Spanish and seeing as her family was his only family he became Spanish. I see this as slightly ironic because while today people in Mexico try to find employment in America, usually being work in the same category as carpentry and usually seeking citizenship, this American in his own time period came to a Spanish territory to do carpentry work and ended up a Mexican citizen. The San Juan Buatista Mission actually has its own legend. This legend was the legend of the Mission del Rio de los Santos Reyes. As the story goes this mission wasn’t a mission at all but rather was just the result of the mission fever that these Spanish missionaries had. “In 1831, a Boston stonemason, Caleb Merrill, arrived at Mission San Diego. His services were appreciated at once by the Franciscans, and it was not long before he was working at Carmel. A short time later, a missionary expedition arrived at San Juan Bautista leaving behind them a pile of adobe masonry which was still evident in the 1860's.” So that’s the story the all famous Mission del Rio de los Santos Reyes was nothing more than a pile of rubble that the stonemason’s decided not to lug across the kings river. Lastly and most interesting to me is the musical instrument that the mission acquired which was a big deal seeing as the missionaries were big on being dirt poor in order to grow closer to God. “An
English barrel organ was acquired in 1826 and this crank-operated music maker
produced wonder and enjoyment for the neophytes.” This was a new idea for the
mission because of the type of music organs would be used to play. “The organ
is an odd thing to have in a church, though. Its tunes are reported to include
"Go to the Devil, Spanish Waltz, College Hornpipe, and Lady Campbell's
Reel.", tunes better known by rowdy sailors than pious fathers.” Also the
mission was used in a horror movie no less. “The mission is seen in Alfred
Hitchcock's film Vertigo. Fans of the movie may notice that the bell tower,
featured in two dramatic scenes in the movie, does not exist.”
Soledad:
While
studying the Soledad mission I learned a little about the background some of
its most prestigious friars had. The two friars of whom I speak are Fr. Marino
Rubi and Fr. Bartolome Gili. They had known each other forever it seemed before
they were working side by side at the mission. Their story began back in
college when they were both attending the College of San Fernando. In their
records it’s said that “they were a constant source of alarm and discomfort to
their fellows and the charges against them range from robbing the storeroom of
the community chocolate to rolling balls through the college dormitory after
midnight.” (According to athanasius.com) The mission Soledad actually didn’t have a name when it came to where it was now it was just an idea of one of the missionary monks that the mission could be used well in this area. The name of the mission was actually taken from the native people. When the Spanish missionaries came to the area the mission is now they were led by a native American man who answered every question the missionaries gave them with one solitary word that seemed similar the Spanish word for solitude. Soledad was that Spanish word for solitude and even though this wasn’t the word the native used being that the mission was a Spanish mission its name soon evolved into a Spanish word. The land under the mission was beautiful rolling hills and valleys. While these valleys may have been inviting in the spring the winter invited only floods. For this reason I saw I learned about the native relationship to the mission; the natives and the mission monks had to struggle to survive together many winters. I wouldn't know off hand what it’s like to truly depend on someone for survival during floods but I could imagine it’s a mighty emotional process. The mission monks, the natives, and frankly everybody else in the area depended on the river for life. That river was not only used for drinking and fishing but for irrigation throughout the land. The name solitude really describes this mission area well because the mission other than that one river was a desolate hill covered valley. Besides the minter flooding and summer turning the area into a desolate desert another natural disaster that frequented the area was earthquakes. I also learned that the mission wasn’t only owned by the Catholic Church. I learned
that when Spain lost its power over Mexico and Mexico gained its independence
the Spanish sold the mission to a private owner. The reason for the sale was
without Spain occupying Mexico any longer keeping control of the missions would
be too much of an economic hassle. In 1841 the Catholic Church decided that
they should just sell off the property from all 21 missions this way they would
just cut their losses and save themselves a lot of money. The mission was sold
for a heaping 800 dollars which at the time was a lot of money. Fortunately for
both history and the Catholic Church Abraham Lincoln in 1863 signed an act
declaring that property from all 21 original Spanish missions should be
returned to the Catholic Church. While
the length of this mission’s survival in comparison to the other missions is
not in any way better the damages it recovered from were extensive. The Soledad
mission functioned and with stood drought flooding and even earthquakes for a
good 60 years. The mission had a give and take relationship with the resident
natives in the area. The natives either were related to or were themselves neophytes
in the Catholic Church the fact that the church was used as a hospital for the
gravely ill diseased natives the local Nootka natives was why the natives felt
responsible for the survival of the mission so during the natural disasters
that often struck this mission the monks weren’t alone in fighting the elements.
