In 1775 Captain Juan Bautista de Anza, in order to colonize the territory of California, recruited two hundred men, women and children, who were given a set of clothes, including shoes, food rations and a small pay. In the expedition, very famous in the annals of the history of the border, which left the town of Sinaloa on October 23, 1775, there were a boy and a young woman: Nicolás Antonio Berrelleza, barely fourteen years old, because he had born in 1761, and his sister Elizabeth, 22 years old.
They had left their father’s house when their father had married, after their mother died. The unhappiness they suffered with the arrival of their stepmother forced them to join De Anza’s expedition. The young people made the trip in the wagon belonging to Gabriel Peralta’s family. After much hardship, on March 28, 1776, the expedition reached the San Francisco Bay area.
Both married two members of the Peralta family (Isabel with Juan José and Nicolás Antonio with María Gertrudis) and the surname spread throughout California. With the arrival of bandits due to the discovery of gold, they lost everything. However, peaks, lakes, parks, neighborhoods, avenues, subdivisions, hills, streams, and bookstores perpetuate the Berryessa name. It is said that a Berrelleza militated in the ranks of Joaquín Murrieta.
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