Daily Alta California, Volume 1, Number 103, 29 April 1850
REPORT FROM THE SELECT COMMITTEE
On the Derivation and Definition
of the Names of the several Counties
of the State of California, &c.
SAN LUIS OBISPO.— This county takes its name from its principal town, which is the so called Mission, founded on the first of Sept. 1772, by the Rev. Fathers Junipero Serra and Jose Cavalier, in the fertile and beautiful hollow named “Bears’ Glen,” by the troops of Monterey on the same day and year, from having there killed a number of bears, which, being cut up and dried, supplied them with meat for months.
There is not in California a settlement that was more willingly and benignly received by the aborigines than the Mission of San Luis Obispo; indeed there was no reason for any other reception on the part of the Indians, since they were generously treated by the whites, and received from them the beneficial effects of their calling and the desirable extermination of dangerous wild beasts. The following circumstance, which happened during the first months of the foundation of San Luis Obispo, is insignificant in itself, but the writer cannot but dwell upon it for a moment with the most tender feelings of the heart.
As a matter of course at that period few families had as yet migrated to this country, and the female sex was as an oasis in the desert. The writer’s father was one of the many who emigrated here in bachelorship, and while sojourning in San Luis Obispo he unexpectedly met with a lady who was in travail, and about to bring a new being into the world; and as there was no one, save her husband, to assist her he acted as holder (tenedor.) The lady was safely delivered of a girl, whereupon the holder (then a young man) solicited of the parents the hand of their child, and a formal agreement ensued between the parties, conditioned that if at mature age the girl should willingly consent to the union, the ceremony would be duly performed. Time rolled by, and year after year transpired, until the “muchacha” had reached her fourteenth year, when the marriage took place, and the offspring of that union has now the honor to present his readers with this short biographical sketch.