Joseph Yves Limantour
Joseph Yves Limantour (1812 – 1885) was a French merchant who engaged in the California sea trade during the years preceding American occupation of that Mexican province in 1846. He was also known in California as José Limantour.
Life
Limantour was born in 1812, in Ploemeur, France.
Limantour was a ship captain and
Joseph Gale and his company from the Oregon Country wanted cattle to drive back up north, and Limantour wanted a schooner. In a three-way deal, Vallejo purchased the Gale's schooner Star of Oregon for 350 cows, and then transferred ownership to Limantour.
Limantour land claims
Limantour supplied the Mexican government of Governor Manuel Micheltorena with goods and loans, Limantour said often in exchange for land grants. Mexican government records were often incomplete and not well documented. Limantour offered as proof a grant signed by Micheltorena in Los Angeles on February 27, 1843. A clerk named Vicente P. Gomez said he went to the Recorder's office in the former state capital of Monterey at the request of José Castro to find papers relevant to a property owned by Castro. There he accidentally found the original Mexican espediente, or packet of documents with official seals and signatures, in the Recorder of Monterey's office in 1853. He said José Abrego advised him to take a copy, which he did.[3]
Vicente Gomez had previously claimed during 1853 four leagues of land in his name through his attorney, Pacificus Ord. When the board of land commissioners denied his claim, he appealed to the United States District Court in San Francisco. The US District Attorney, who happened to be Pacificus Ord, represented to the Appeals Court that Gomez claim was valid, and they sustained his appeal. The case made its way to the US Supreme Court in 1859, where evidence was introduced that Gomez had conveyed half of he land to Ord. The Supreme Court voided the claim. [4]
Claims approved
In 1853, Limantour filed claims at the
Documents proved fraudulent
Suspicions were soon aroused about the truthfulness of the claims. Two studies completed soon after California became a state, the first by Captain Henry W. Hallecka, and the second by William Carey Jones, a lawyer and linguist, had not found Limantour's grants. Limantour had never occupied the land, and never before presented a claim. A former business associate of Limantour's named Auguste Jouan publicly claimed Limantour was a fraud. Jouan wrote that François Jacomet told him Emile Letanneur had forged the papers. Jacomet corroborated the falsehood at first, but was later found to have gone into a court in Mexico where he swore he knew nothing about any fraud. Letanneur was summoned to appear, and initially confirmed the story of fraud, but then he too recanted. A grand jury indicted Limantour for criminal fraud and perjury. The U.S. government secured $70,000 (about $2,465,077 today) in funding to secure Letanneur's conviction.
Archivist R. C. Hopkins testified that all of the items and entries by Abrego in the records were witnessed with his signature, and sometimes the signature of the recipient. Monthly and yearly balance sheets were examined and audited by the Governor or another officer. He testified that all of the disbursements were numbered as were the accompanying receipts. There were no entries of credits and charges in opposite columns as Abrego had testified, no charge in the books against Micheltorena in the amount of $70,000 or $80,000, or of any other amount. Hopkins told the court that there was no charge to Limantour and credit to Micheltorena for a certificate for lands in Upper and Lower California for more than $6,000 nor any reference to any such item. He told the court that he found no transactions between Limantour and Micheltorena.[3]
Limantour arrested, flees to Mexico
United States Attorney Delia Torre presented additional evidence that the Limantour documents were fraudulent. He introduced a series of photographic enlargements that compared the Limantour documents side-by-side with land-grant documents of known authenticity. It was obvious that the lettering and the official seals on the Limantour papers were significantly different from the others.[6] On November 19, 1858, Limantour's claims were determined in Federal court to be fraudulent.[7] Limantour was arrested in December 1857, but posted bail and fled to Mexico.[8][9][10]
Later life
He was married to Adele Marquet, and their son, José Yves Limantour, was Secretary of Finance of Mexico from 1893-1911.[11] Joseph Y. Limatour died in Mexico City in 1885.[12][13]
References
- ^ "Limantour. The Maritime Heritage Project, San Francisco, California. Sea Captains, Ships, Merchants, Merchandise, Migrations". www.maritimeheritage.org.
- ^ California Place Names, University of California Press, 1960
- ^ a b c Hoffman, Ogden; Hubert, Numa (1862). Reports of Land Cases Determined in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California: June Term, 1853 to June Term, 1858, Inclusive June Term, 1853 to June Term, 1858, Inclusive. N. Hubert. pp. 425–426. Retrieved 8 January 2021.
- ISBN 9781458300546. Retrieved 9 January 2021.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Finding Aid to the Documents Pertaining to the Adjudication of Private Land Claims in California, circa 1852-1892". www.oac.cdlib.org.
- ^ a b c d e Reinhardt, Richard (December 1971). "A Nice Piece Of Real Estate | AMERICAN HERITAGE". www.americanheritage.com. 23 (1). Retrieved 8 January 2021.
- ^ Limantour v United States, 1958, Reports of Land Cases Determined in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, pp. 389-451, Numa Hubert, San Francisco
- ^ "A Nice Piece Of Real Estate | AMERICAN HERITAGE". www.americanheritage.com.
- ^ A Pamphlet Relating to the Claim of Senor Don Jose Y. Limantour to Four Leagues of Land in the County Adjoining and Near the City of San Francisco, California. Whitten, Towne and Company. 1853.
- ^ Fritz, Christian G. (1991). Federal Justice in California: The Court of Ogden Hoffman, 1851-1891. University of Nebraska Press.
- dissertation (1972), Texas Tech University"The Public Career of Don Jose Ives Limantour (1972)" (PDF). etd.lib.ttu.edu. Archived from the original(PDF) on August 15, 2011. Retrieved April 3, 2010.
- ^ Bancroft, Hubert Howe (1886). The History of California.
- ISBN 978-1-57958-337-8