This fascinating sign is tucked away in a corner by the old kitchen, easy to miss. It gives an idea of just how large and prosperous this Mission was before the secularization of the Missions happened, and they were stripped of their assets by the Mexican Government.
The sign reads as follows:
"SAN GABRIEL MISSION ASSETS AT TIME OF CONFISCATION
November 1834
1 weaving room with 4 looms for wool
1 room for making brandy with 4 stills
1 room for pressing grapes with 3 wine presses
1 structure for smithy
1 structure for making soap & tallow for candles
2 water mills, 1 half a league distant,
El Molino Viejo.
the other in front of mission, Chapman Mill
163,578 vines in 4 vineyards
2,333 fruit trees in 9 orchards
12,980 head of cattle, 6.548 sheep, 2938 horses,
cattle on loan, 4,443 head
227 volumes in Library of Franciscans
Indian population of Mission comprises 1,323 souls, within Mission District and Rancho San Bernardino
Assets of mission: 11,154.12 reales
Debt of mission: 8,271.75 reales
Artillery belonging to Mission:
2 canones de a 4 mortales en medias
1 canon de Fierro de a 2
3 pederos de Fierro de a 2
1 canon de a 4 (prestado al ayunamiento de Los Angeles)
For more on Gov. Figueroa and the secularization Act of 1833, see here: (
visit link)
"THE 25 YEARS OF MEXICAN RULE in California — from Mexico's secession from Spain in 1821 to the American takeover in 1846 — were consumed in a struggle between church and state for power and property.
In an extensive series of books published in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Franciscan Friar Zephyrin Engelhardt tells the story from the perspective of the official mission historian ... with an inherent bias in matters of church vs. state, but with important detail drawn from primary sources (both mission records and official government documents), and with an encyclopedic knowledge of secondary sources.
. . .
ALTA CALIFORNIA WAS RULED by a military governor at Monterey who was appointed by and answered to (at least in theory) the government in Mexico City. Under Mexican law, California Indians had natural rights to their ancestral lands; most of the lands that had become mission lands under Spanish authority were supposed to be returned to the Indians; and the mission buildings and grounds were to remain church property. But that's not what happened.
The mission period extended into the 1830s but it was precarious. The friars, who had served under the Spanish crown, were reluctant to switch allegiances to a new, secular government that contravened their beliefs and undercut their authority. Alta California went through a series of governors who were more or less tolerant of the friars — some more, some less.
Ultimately on Aug. 9, 1834, a new governor, Jose Figueroa, ordered the secularization of the missions — confiscating them, in Engelhardt's terminology, from the Franciscans, and diminishing their status to a parish church with a salaried priest; that salary, like those of newly installed government appointees, paid through the fruits of the labor of indentured Indians.
. . .
On Nov. 7, 1835, the government in Mexico City countermanded Figueroa's secularization order with a new law calling for the return of the missions to the friars. California's new governor, the young Juan B. Alvarado (1809-1882), simply ignored the new law."