*** This tour was published in March 2021, when the Covid-19 pandemic was active. Please wear a mask/face covering and maintain a social distance of 6 ft from people not in your household. Visit www.emergencyslo.org for the latest in public health advice. ***
A Self-guided Walking Tour of Mission Plaza in 1858 and the Committee of Vigilance
Site 5: Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa
This site places the visitor in the heart of Mission Plaza, facing the front of the building that has meant so much to the cultural, religious, and civic identify of San Luis Obispo. This Mission was founded in 1772 by Father Junipero Serra, with a cross first erected near the south end of present-day Dana Street, a few blocks away. The building that stands today dates from 1794 – with later additions. At the time, it was the largest of the five missions; it remains today the oldest large public building still standing in California.
This site places the visitor in the heart of Mission Plaza, facing the front of the building that has meant so much to the cultural, religious, and civic identify of San Luis Obispo. This Mission was founded in 1772 by Father Junipero Serra, with a cross first erected near the south end of present-day Dana Street, a few blocks away. The building that stands today dates from 1794 – with later additions. At the time, it was the largest of the five missions; it remains today the oldest large public building still standing in California.
All of the missions in California owe their existence to the Franciscan order of friars, dedicated to the precepts of Saint Francis, the patron saint of peace. Saint Francis surely would have objected to the vigilante violence that disturbed “his” mission in 1858 — but his Franciscan brethren had no power to do so: The San Luis Obispo Mission was still owned by Captain John Wilson and used by the “authorities” for a variety of secular and not-so-peaceful purposes.
By 1859, the Vigilantes had disbanded. And yet, this Mission was still owned by Captain John Wilson, and served as the site of one more murder trial and one more hanging. This time an “official” trial was held before an elected judge and Sheriff. This criminal proceeding was, in fact, the first and the last time that this grisly form of execution would be conducted legally in San Luis Obispo, following the Constitution. |
The prisoner was Luis Cariziza, a Californio convicted of murdering Francisco Alviso, another Californio. Sheriff Francisco Castro was paid $20 on top of his monthly $25 salary to apply the sentence to Cariziza. The hanging may have occurred within the Mission quadrangle, although some sources place it at Site 2, the same location as the gallows used by the Vigilantes.
A couple of years later, in 1861, Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa would be returned to the Catholic Church. Over the succeeding years, the County would build a separate jail and courthouse to house its prisoners and provide for a proper criminal trial in conformance with the Constitution. The Church would return to its function, and the well-maintained facility is today a very active ProCathedral of the Diocese of Monterey. |
A Flashback: Story of Ramona Carrillo de Pacheco y Wilson
Ramona Carrillo de Pacheco de Wilson* was introduced at Site 1, the home built in 1845 by her Scottish husband John (now site of the History Center/Carnegie Library). It was here at Site 5, in the priest’s room at this Mission, that Ramona Wilson played a central role in pacifying Alta California as it went through its last throes of the War with Mexico.
Ramona Carrillo de Pacheco de Wilson* was introduced at Site 1, the home built in 1845 by her Scottish husband John (now site of the History Center/Carnegie Library). It was here at Site 5, in the priest’s room at this Mission, that Ramona Wilson played a central role in pacifying Alta California as it went through its last throes of the War with Mexico.
On a stormy day in mid-December, 1846 Ramona Wilson went to work to PREVENT an execution—twelve years before the Committee of Vigilance was organized to suppress a perceived spate of violent crime by carrying out the hangings of the seven Californios at Site 2 nearby.
In the Fall of 1846, Lt. Col. John C. Fremont had been ordered to organize a well-armed force of 400+ American soldiers to march from Monterey, the occupied capital of Alta California, to Los Angeles to suppress a surprisingly successful revolt by the Californios against American forces in that city. As he proceeded south from Monterey and through the Salinas Valley, he sent a small foraging party to round up horses and mules for the campaign. On November 14, a force of Californios briefly skirmished with Fremont’s men in the Battle of Natividad. The Californios inflicted only a handful of casualties on the Americans, who were able to fend off the Californios and deliver their horses. Fremont’s 400 men and 2000 mounts then headed south, down the Salinas Valley, expecting to encounter resistance in San Luis Obispo. |
Fremont’s “California Battalion” swept down Cuesta Grade at nightfall into the sleeping town and occupied the Mission without firing a shot. At Fremont’s command, they forced a local Anglo, Henry Dally, to reveal that Californio commander Don Jose Pico had taken refuge at the John Wilson adobe in the Los Osos Valley—the same adobe that Victor Linares had established on his Mexican land grant decades earlier, sold out from under his heir Pio Linares only a year before.
With Henry Dally as a hostage, Fremont dispatched a guard to apprehend Pico that night despite a drenching rain that obscured all paths through the flooded Los Osos Valley. After a tortuous slog through the mud, the soldiers surprised Pico, and after sunrise they hauled him back to face a furious Colonel Fremont, who ordered Pico to be executed by firing squad the following day.
Pico’s offense? He had joined the Californios who had attacked Fremont’s California Battalion at the Battle of Natividad, breaking an earlier promise to abandon resistance to American occupation. That evening, Ramona Wilson gathered a procession of women and children that included her own six children, several other local wives and Pico’s wife and family. Don Jose de Jesus Pico, aka “Totoi,” was her cousin, and he and his wife Francisca Antonia Villavicencia de Pico were leading citizens among the Californios. Their mission: To obtain mercy for cousin “Totoi,” even as Fremont’s American soldiers were mustering and polishing their rifles in the shelter of the Mission, preparing to carry out his death sentence as ordered. |
This procession somehow worked magic. On that fateful December night, Dona Pacheco y Wilson, Dona Villavicencia de Pico, and their children succeeded in turning the flinty heart of Colonel Fremont. At the last moment he commuted Pico’s sentence of death. The result: Fremont gained a lifelong friend and ally in Don Jose. Within a few weeks, Don Jose helped negotiate the peaceful surrender of Alta California to Fremont by his cousin Andres Pico at Campo Cahuenga in present-day Universal City.