Here is the story of a Mexican-American pioneer, healer, trailblazer, businesswoman and landowner. Her name is Doña Juana Briones de Miranda and she is the woman remembered as the "Founding Mother of San Francisco”, for she was one of the first three settlers in Yerba Buena before it became San Francisco. Juana left an important legacy in California. She was an active and caring person who impacted the lives of many people — Hispanic, indigenous and Anglo-American.

In 1769, Marcos Briones and his father Vicente arrived in Alta California from San Luis Potosí, New Spain - today’s Mexico. Marcos and Vicente were soldiers in the Portola expedition. In Alta California, Marcos met and married Isidora Tapia. Isidora and her family arrived later, her father Felipe, a soldier on the de Anza expedition in 1776. Star crossed lovers, whose families traveled over 1600 miles on a mission to colonize and explore the region and establish the Mission San Francisco de Asi.

Marcos was a founding settler of Villa de Branciforte, in present-day Santa Cruz. Branciforte was the last of only three secular pueblos founded by the Spanish colonial government of Alta California. On the eastern bluff of the San Lorenzo River, facing Mission Santa Cruz, their daughter Juana Briones was born in March of 1802. Juana spent the first decade of her life in a wattle-and-daub house doing chores alongside her brothers and sisters, having fun and gaining an extensive knowledge of herbal medicines through her interactions with Native Americans. The majority of the population there was indigenous. When she was ten, her mother Ysidora passed away.

Marcos moved the family to an area called Tennessee Hollow. Marcos began to help build what would become the Presidio of San Francisco. Starting as a fortified military village used for farming and livestock grazing. Juana was shaped by the native people of the region and the language, religion, and institutions of colonial New Spain. She’d learned more about herbs and their medicinal values from the new region from her grandmother, who learned them from native Ohlone women.

Herbs like Yerba Buena (which translates to Good Herb), which provided the first name of the city of San Francisco. It was said the community of Yerba Buena was named for her healing mint tea. She was schooled informally by the Catholic priests at the Mission Dolores. With other military children and the Native Americans who had been rounded up and brought to the mission for “conversion” to Catholicism, she attended regular daily mass but she did not learn to read or write.

Juana met a handsome soldier stationed at the Presidio named Apolinario Miranda. His parents were of Yaqui descent. The Yaqui were indigenous to the Mexican state of Sonora and the Southwestern United States. Juana and Apolinario were married in 1820 and established a farm at the Presidio near the site of El Polin Spring. It is one of the few remaining springs in the city and runs under the site of her long-vanished home. The spring waters of the were believed to bestow fertility. With that in mind, Juana gave birth to 11 children between 1821 and 1841.

In 1828, Juana had a tragic month when three of her children died and a fourth child passed just one year later in the rugged frontier environment. Juana was a strong woman. Apolinario was abusive and Juana’s time with him was not happy. So abusive that his military superiors reprimanded him for it numerous times. He had a serious drinking problem and wasn’t much of a rancher or businessman.

In the area now known as North Beach, near what is now Washington Square, the Briones bought land. Juana was a natural entrepreneur and started a dairy ranch at their new home. They were one of the first three non-indigenous settlers in Yerba Buena who lived somewhere other than on the Presidio or at Mission Dolores. After Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821, commerce increased in the San Francisco Bay. Briones excelled in farming and sold milk and produce to the crews of Russian, American and Spanish ships that docked in the bay for the hide and tallow trade.

Juana also treated many illnesses such as smallpox and scurvy patients, delivered babies and set broken jaws. You could not count how many children had their broken bones set by this kind woman. Her reputation as a healer was widely recognized. She trained her nephew, Pablo Briones—who was later known as the Doctor of Bolinas or California in medicinal arts. Her aid to the people of Bolinas during a smallpox outbreak was well-known, and she was loved among Hispanic settlers, native people and the Anglo-Americans alike.

She taught her own children the value of hard work. As soon as they could walk, they learned to pull weeds and how to load the wagon. Her daughters Presentacion and Manuela were fine seamstresses and they did the sailors’ laundry and mended their clothes. Her son Jesus went to the boats to see what the men needed, and delivered goods and messages to Juana. She also harbored four runaway sailors who jumped ship because they wanted to remain in California. Two Americans, a Filipino man and a Native American from Connecticut. The men lived with her and Apolinario until 1832.

In 1833, Briones' husband was granted land bordering the Presidio near today's Green and Lyon Streets. Their new home was on another spring called El Ojo de Agua Figueroa. In 1834, Juana adopted Cecilia, a young Native girl whose parents had died. In 1835, the Presidio was temporarily abandoned when Commandante Vallejo transferred his military headquarters north to Sonoma. It was then that her husband’s abuse became intolerable. Marriage was considered indissoluble by society at the time. She turned to the Catholic bishop. “My husband did not earn our money. I did,” she told the bishop, “My husband does not support the family. I do.” As her husband, he had access to any property she acquired. The bishop was moved by her plea, knowing full well her husband was a good-for-nothing, and with the mayor’s help, the bishop helped her move to the western foot of Loma Alta in the area now known as Telegraph Hill.

Her husband tried to force her to return home and legal officials ordered him to stay away, which he didn’t. Briones appealed to courts repeatedly with suit against her husband for physical abuse after repeated episodes of violence and in return a justice of the peace seized some of his property. Juana navigated the male-leaning legal system, hiring people to write on her behalf. This was no small step in the patriarchal, hierarchical world of 19th century colonial California. Juana was free and Apolinario Miranda later died.

She found the booming city too frantic, and bought a 4,000-acre ranch in Santa Clara Valley from her friends José Gorgonio and his son José Ramon in 1844. She named it Rancho La Purisima Concepción and successfully expanded her cattle and farming interests. The Briones family ranch was a home, social hall, and hospital all rolled into one. Briones’ status as a female landowner was unusual in an era where women generally could only possess land they inherited from a deceased husband. Yet she was an independent woman who was prospering on her own. Her children also prospered.

In 1848, Mexico ceded this land to the U.S. under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill. Almost overnight, the sleepy little mission became a busy city, filled with all manner of men who came to get rich overnight and ‘ladies of the night’ who hoped to liberate the men from their gold dust. Juana wasn’t bothered by the U.S. coup at all, in fact, when her Anglo friends suggested she become an American citizen, she did.

Across the nation, Boston traders sought out her “California banknotes,” as they called her cowhides. She entertained lavishly, with European and American guests attending her fiestas. “Anglo, Hispanics, and Native Americans came for bear fights, calf roping, and pig roasts. Sick people also came to recuperate under Juana’s watchful gaze.”

When the U.S. made California a state in 1850, all Mexican landholders were put through many hurdles with proving they had title to their property. The original landowners were required to certify their land ownership before the U.S. Land Commission. The legal process was too difficult or expensive for many people, especially the women and racial minorities who had owned land under Mexican law. Many were cheated out of their land. In 1852, the U.S. Government informed Juana it intended to seize her land that had originally been granted in her husband’s name. Apolinario Miranda was dead by then, and the government said she had no legal right to the property.

She fought for 12 years to retain the title to her lands in both San Francisco and Santa Clara counties and many of the Anglos she’d helped over the years came to assist her in the fight for her rights. The battle went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. She won ownership of her ranch and the property in Yerba Buena. Juana left portions of her rancho La Purisima Concepción to her children, who bore their father's name, Miranda and sold the rest to members of the Murphy family, who came to California with the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party.

Briones purchased other tracts of land and eventually settled the town of Mayfield. Briones’ was one of the founding members of today’s Palo Alto. She built a home there in 1884 and remained in Mayfield for the remainder of her lifetime. Juana Briones died in a cow stampede in 1889 at the age of 87.

In 2010, her house at 4155 Old Adobe Road in Palo Alto was listed as one of the 11 most endangered historic places in the country by The National Trust for Historic Preservation. Despite a big fight between the owners and educators, historians, architects, neighbors, and business and community leaders, a demolition crew arrived a year later to dismantle her modest home. The property was sold the following summer for $2.9 million.

Doña Juana Briones de Miranda is remembered as the "Founding Mother of San Francisco” and is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Menlo Park, California. She lived here under three flags and helped found the eighth-largest city in the United States. During her lifetime, Juana was known and loved by many people because of her energy, her business sense and her concern for others. Even so, today she is still relatively unknown, but more people deserve to know about her. In San Francisco, she is commemorated at the northeast corner of Washington Square near her once her dairy farm. A historical plaque is on a bench at the bottom of The Lyon Street steps. In Palo Alto, her memory is preserved by the Juana Briones Elementary School, Juana Briones Park, and several street names incorporating either Miranda or first names of her children.

Queens of the Mines is brought to you by Youreka Productions. Andrea Anderson researched, wrote and produced this series.

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