Don Juan Forster

ClassificationsPhotographs

Datec. 1874

Made AtNew York, New York, United States, North America

MediumEngraving on paper

Dimensions16 3/4 × 15 in. (42.5 × 38.1 cm)

Credit LineTerry E. Stephenson Collection

Object number6696

DescriptionThis 1874 steel engraving depicts John “Don Juan” Forster, an English ex-pat in Spanish California. Forster was born in Liverpool, England in 1814 and left home for Mexico at the age of 16. By the 1833 he had arrived in Los Angeles and while working in the shipping industry earned enough to become the only non-Hispanic rancho grantee in Orange County. It helped his cause that he married Maria Ysidora Pico who was the sister of Pio Pico, a man who would later become the last Mexican governor of Alta California. An Englishman who had become a Mexican citizen, John Forster’s name appears in many of the early documents of the era as "Don Juan” Forster. He purchased the lands on which the old Mission San Juan Capistrano sat in disrepair and made them his home.

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