Juana Briones de Miranda

Juana Briones de Miranda
Juana Briones de Miranda
	Villa de Branciforte (modern day Santa Cruz), California
Died	3 December 1889; Palo Alto, California
Resting place	Holy Cross Cemetery (Menlo Park, California)
Other names	Juana Briones y Tapia de Miranda
Occupation(s)	Ranchera, Curandera, pioneer
Spouse	Apolinario Miranda
Parent(s)	Marcos Briones ; María Ysiadora Tapia

Juana Briones de Miranda (c. 1802 – 1889) was a

Californio ranchera, medical practitioner, and merchant, often remembered as the "Founding Mother of San Francisco",^[1]^[2] for her noted involvement in the early development of the city of San Francisco (then known as Yerba Buena). Later in her life, she also played an important role in developing modern Palo Alto.^{[citation needed}

]

Early life

Juana Briones y Tapia was born in c.1802 at

better source needed

]

In 1820 Juana married a soldier, Apolinario Miranda, and she bore eleven children between 1821 and 1841, seven of whom lived to adulthood: Presentación, Tomás, Narcisa, Refugio, José de Jesús, Manuela and José Dolores Miranda.[6] They also adopted an orphaned Indian girl.^[7]

After establishing a farm at

Bolinas (California) — in medicinal arts, although she never received a formal education and could not read or write.^{[citation needed}

]

Rancho

In 1844 Juana, who already had more than one home, gained a clerical separation from her physically abusive alcoholic husband and dropped his surname. That same year, she bought from two Native Californians (José Gorgonio and his son José Ramon, from the

Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party

. Other sections she gave to some of her children.

A portion of her rancho home remained until 2011 in the foothills above

Presidio Trust.^[8]

Death and legacy

She died in 1889 nearby the city of Mayfield (now part of Palo Alto, California). She is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Menlo Park, California.^[9]

She left the remaining portions of her rancho to her children, who bore their father's name, Miranda. Her memory is preserved in the Palo Alto area around where her rancho stood in Juana Briones Elementary School, Juana Briones Park, and several street names incorporating either Miranda or first names of her children. Early maps of Yerba Buena, the first settlement outside the Presidio and Mission of San Francisco, include an area labeled Playa de Juana Briones (Juana Briones Beach).^[10] She is commemorated by an historical plaque in San Francisco's Washington Square.^[11]

Stanford University classes in "Public History and Public Service" in 2006 and 2009, taught by Carol McKibben, conducted research on Briones and her Palo Alto house which led to an exhibit in the Green Library in 2010 and a Juana Briones Archive within the library's Special Collections.^[12] Stanford University history professor Albert Camarillo has done additional research on Briones and served as guest curator of the 2014 exhibition at the California Historical Society.

Bibliography

Juana Briones, like many early Hispanic women of California, has been overlooked by traditional histories, but she was mentioned in the following sources: