This is the Glory Hole at Lake Berryessa, named after the Berryessa family, the largest lake in Napa County, California. This reservoir in the Vaca Mountains was formed following the construction of the Monticello Dam on Putah Creek in the 1950s. Courtesy photo

DIXON, CA (MPG) - Mariano Vallejo and members of the Berryessa family, including a relative named Sixto Berrellezza (original version of Berryessa,) were jailed in Sonoma at the start of the Bear Flag Revolution of 1846.  During this time, the Californio travelers could make their way by boat from Point Richmond to the San Rafael harbor and beach.  In one such occurrence, some of Langan´s ancestors, the De Haro Twins accompanied by their uncle Juan José Berrellezza, were shot dead as they rowed ashore the beaches of San Rafael by Kit Carson and his men at the direction of John Fremont. Their destination that fateful day was to go to Sonoma to celebrate the birthday of Sixto, the son of Juan José.  As they rowed ashore the beaches of San Rafael, Carson and his men shot and killed the twins and their uncle Juan José Berrellezza.

Carson and Fremont took the bear-skin coat worn by Juan José Berrellezza back to Sonoma where they raised it on a flagpole.  Sixto saw his father’s bear skin with blood on it and said, “my father is dead and that´s his coat and I want it!”  After much negotiation, Sixto paid 25 pesos for his dead father´s coat.  Carson and Fremont then replaced the bear skin with a white rag flag with a crude drawing of a bear, and in Langan´s words, that is how the flag of California came to be.  The last California grizzly was seen near Yosemite in 1924, going extinct after decades of persecution and hunting bounties.  Some have estimated that California was home to as many as 10,000 bears prior to the Gold Rush in 1848.

Langan solicited the help of both Cricket Kanouff President of the Peña Adobe Historical Society, and Doug Rogers President of the Vacaville Heritage Council to read and roleplay portions of Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo´s Recuerdos (Remembrances) and his first-hand experience of the transition of California from a Mexican territory to a U.S. state.  These retold portions belong to a series of translated personal remembrances relating to Alta California 1769-1849 by Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, and were edited and translated by Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz, and published by the University of Oklahoma Press, March 2, 2023.

Langan, toward the end of his presentation, shared a quote by Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, “The establishment of the missions was not as romanticized as what was once thought, but the present could not be adequately understood without the nuanced appreciation of all who have come before.”

The Dixon Historical Society thanks Kendall Langan for sharing a part of the history of his Berryessa family.