Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (7 July1808 - 12 January1890) was born at Monterey, California, entered the Monterey Presidial Academy in 1823. Appointed Secretary to the Governor of California in 1825, he later served as Commander of the Presidio of San Francisco, and in 1836 was appointed Commandante General and Director of Colonization of the Northern Frontier, the highest military command in northern California. That appointment ended during the Bear Flag Revolt, when Vallejo supported the Bear Flagers. General Vallejo, in spite of substantial losses suffered as a result of that revolution, and his imprisonment during the revolt by the leaders of the California Republic, chose to remain in his home State and support separation from Mexico and annexation by the United States. An influential member of the State's Constitutional Convention, he was elected a member of the first State Senate (1850).
In 1844, he was deeded title to Rancho Soscol, which included what are now the towns of Vallejo and Petaluma. In 1850, he offered to donate a large portion of that land to the new state on which to build a capitol city and also offered to pay for a considerable amount of construction. The offer was accepted by the new legislature and they convened there for the first time in 1851. However, construction had lagged, and they were confronted with inadequate, leaky buildings and a soggy location, and within a year had moved the capitol to Sacramento. Vallejo's large adobe home is now part of the Petaluma Adobe State Historic Park and a National Historic Landmark.
He continued to devote his energies to the development of California for the remainder of his life. General Vallejo died at Sonoma, California.
MarianoVallejo was born at Monterey, California, the eighth of thirteen children and third son of Ignacio Vallejo, a sergeant at the Presidio of Monterey and former Alcalde of San José, and his wife María Antonia Lugo de Vallejo.
Vallejo became the Commander of the Presidio of San Francisco in 1833, oversaw the secularization of Mission San Francisco Solano, founded the town of Sonoma, and was granted Rancho Petaluma by Governor José Figueroa in 1834.
Vallejo came to Monterey as a hero, and on November 29, the diputación promoted Vallejo from alférez to colonel and named him Commandante General of the "Free State of Alta California", while Alvarado was named Governor.
In 1835 Vallejo was instructed to lay out a pueblo at the Solano mission, was made director of colonization at the north and was authorized to issue grants of land to settlers; the scheme being to prevent, by Spanish colonization, further extension of the Russian establishment of Ross.
On December 22, 1846, Vallejo deeded to Robert Semple an undivided half of a tract of five square miles of the Soscol rancho, on the straits of Carquines, for a new city to be built which was to be the great seaport and commercial city of the bay of San Francisco.
Vallejo was a member of the constitutional convention and he applied himself to the work of creating a state with energy and diligence.
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