Norberto Francisco González Rubio, O.F.M
 

Sixth plate Daguerreotype, Santa Barbara California Circa 1848-1849

This image is presumed to have been taken by an itinerant photographer on his way to the California gold fields. The typical early satin pad, preserver, and mat date this image to the late 1840's.
Gonzalez Rubio was transferred to Santa Barbara Mission in 1842. He was so loved by the people of Santa Barbara that they staged a benevolent kidnapping in 1856 to keep him from leaving. One of his better known accomplishments was the rescue of Juana Maria. She was a Chumash Indian woman who was unintentionally abandon on San Nicholas Island when all the other natives were rescued from sea otter hunters. The Chumash natives opposed the slaughter of the otters and fought the hunters without success reducing the native population from 300 to about 20.
Today Gonzales Rubio's remains are interned at Santa Barbara Mission Cemetery.

M.G. Vallejo half plate Ambrotype

"The Yankees are wonderful people, if they immigrated to hell they would somehow manage to change the climate"

Pasadena Antique Photos

Old Kernville Antique Photos
Located in the Southern Sierra, the tiny town of Old Kernville, once called Whiskey Flats, was a very isolated and early outpost of western mining migration. The hard life expressions can clearly be seen on the faces of Robert Christian of The Onyx Stage, Dave Mashier, Ben Price, Cain Bowen, Albert Hooper, and Charlie Bennett, in the Old Kernville street scene posted below.

Alexander Edouart
Archive of a San Francisco Daguerreian