Los Angeles Pobladores

The Pobladores ("townspeople") of Los Angeles refers to the 44 original settlers and 4 soldiers who founded the city of Los Angeles, California in 1781.

When the Governor of Las Californias, Felipe de Neve, was assigned to establish secular settlements in what is now the state of California (after more than a decade of missionary work among the natives), he commissioned a complete set of maps and plans (the Reglamento para el gobierno de la Provincia de Californias and the Instrucción) to be drawn up for the design and colonization of the new pueblo. Finding the individuals to actually do the work of building and living in the city proved to be a more daunting task. Neve finally located the new and willing dwellers in Sonora and Sinaloa, Mexico. But gathering the pobladores was a little more difficult. The original party of the new townsfolk consisted of eleven families, that is 11 men, 11 women, and 22 children of various Spanish castas (castes).

The castas of the 22 adult pobladores, according to the 1781 census, were:

William M. Mason, historian of Los Angeles and early California, uncovered the ethnic richness of the Pueblo de la Reina de los Angeles through extensive research. Mason, one of three founders of the Los Angeles Historical Society, authored six books and several articles regarding the early history and cultures around Southern California and he is credited with helping to uncover the ethnic facts about the original families of Los Angeles.

The official foundation date of Los Angeles is September 4, 1781, when tradition has it the forty-four pobladores gathered at San Gabriel Mission along with two priests from the Mission and set out with an escort of four soldiers for the site that Father Juan Crespí had chosen over a decade earlier. El Pueblo de La Reina de los Ángeles, (Spanish for The Town of the Queen of the Angels) is the original, official long version of the name of the town founded by the Pobladores.

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