A Mexican-American Family of California: In the Service of Three Flags. John Schmal and Jennifer Vo. Paperback, (2003), 2007, 5½x8½, index, 252 pp.

The eleventh-generation Californian Jennifer Vo and the historian John P. Schmal have collaborated in the production of this multi-generational epic about a pioneer California family. In 1781, Luis Quintero, a poor, middle-aged African-Mexican tailor from Sonora, Mexico, and his family (plus ten other families) founded El Pueblo de Nuestra la Reina de Los Angeles del Rio Porcioncula. The founding of Los Angeles, California, was a well-planned strategic move made by Spain to secure the northwestern border regions of its extensive American empire in the last half of the eighteenth century. The forty-four people comprising the Expedition of 1781 made a dangerous 960-mile journey through hostile Indian territory from Alamos, Sonora, to San Gabriel, California, is search of a better life. Little did they know that their small pueblo would one day become a major metropolitan area boasting a population of almost ten million souls. The authors discuss in some detail the story of one family's place in California history through twelve generations from Luis Quintero to the present generation. 

Book #: S2448
ISBN: 9780788424489