Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton About this episode Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton is known as one of the earliest Mexican-American authors published in English, and her life story is tied closely to the Mexican-American war and the establishment of California as a state.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Holly Frey? This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argentix. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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1:39 Tracy V. Wilson? The Old Gays are back with Silver Linings, their lovable podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Robert, Mick, Bill, and Jessa strut back down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune in to Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
2:07 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:18 Tracy V. Wilson? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And I'm Holly Frey. On August 21st of 2025, the White House website published something called, "President Trump is Right About the Smithsonian." This was a bulleted list of supposedly objectionable content from Smithsonian museums. Parts of this list cite the conservative online magazine, The Federalist, or the conservative think tank, The American Enterprise Institute, and the American Conservative. So like, if you try to follow the links to see what they're talking about, you're going to these websites, not to the Smithsonian.
3:00 Tracy V. Wilson? The first thing on this list involves material from a portal called Talking About Race from the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which continues to be a very favorite go-to source of complaints about the Smithsonian, even though it was removed five years ago. It's like the thing that gets trotted out every time somebody wants to complain that the Smithsonian does not match their ideological Right. views. A lot of what is in this list is really pulled out of context or distorted, and it also includes stuff just like flying pride flags at the museum. How dare!
3:42 Tracy V. Wilson? Right. You can tune in on Friday for our behind the scenes for my thoughts on a number of things about this article, because I have them. It won't even be all of my thoughts, because there's too many.
3:57 Tracy V. Wilson? But what is relevant to today's episode was this. Quote, "The National Museum of the American Latino describes the post-Mexican-American war California describes a Californio family losing their lands to American squatters."
4:16 Tracy V. Wilson? In that quote, the words "Californio" and "squatters" are in scare quotes as though there's something fishy about those words. Also, if you're thinking, Tracy, did you read that right? Because that did not make any sense. I read it exactly as it is written. Something is garbled in it. It looks like maybe the middle part of it was cut out. I don't know. But a Californio family losing their land to American squatters is just a straightforward description of how, when what is now California became part of the United States, there were Spanish-speaking people who already lived there. They are known as Californios. They lost their lands to newly arrived, English-speaking Anglos who claimed that land through squatting.
4:59 Tracy V. Wilson? In other words, this is just a deeply normal thing for a museum about American Latinos to talk about. So when I followed the link to see what this mangled sentence was in reference to, it actually did go to the Smithsonian website, unlike a lot of the other ones. It went to a page about an 1880s printing press. It is referencing a caption about a novel that was printed in 1885. That novel was called "The Squatter and the Don", and it was published under the name C. Loyal, which is a pen name of Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, who we are talking about today.
5:40 Holly Frey? Maria Amparo Ruiz was born on July 3rd, 1831. According to most sources, she was born in Laredo, Mexico, but it's possible that she was born in La Paz. At the time, these were both small communities, and the capital of Baja California, Surr, or Southern Lower California, moved from Laredo to La Paz a few years before Maria was born. The uncertainty about her birthplace is because official records from both towns are incomplete. La Paz has been the site of a series of indigenous uprisings and had been abandoned at a couple of points, and the capital moved out of Laredo after that town was hit with heavy rains and flooding.
6:24 Holly Frey? The records held in La Paz were also damaged later on during the Mexican-American War. We know that Maria lived in La Paz when she was in her teens, but not exactly when she got there.
6:37 Tracy V. Wilson? Maria's mother was Isabel Ruiz-Maturana, and she had a brother named Federico. One of the sources that I used for this episode says that her father's last name must have been Arango, based on how Maria's name appeared on her marriage license. But another source said that her father was Jesús Maturana. Either way, there's almost no mention of her father in her surviving correspondence, and it really doesn't seem like he was really a part of her life.
7:04 Holly Frey? The surname Maria used until her marriage was that of her maternal grandfather, José Manuel Ruiz, and that name carried some prestige. The Ruizes were not wealthy, but they had land and respect. Prior to Mexico's independence from Spain, José Manuel Ruiz had served in the Spanish Army, and his service had earned him a land grant, which became Rancho Encenada de Toros Santos. After Mexico became independent, he was appointed governor of Baja California, sir, and served for three years. The Ruizes also had connections to the Carrillo family, who were prominent landowners, who helped found and lead a number of communities in what is now California. By the time Maria was born,
7:48 Holly Frey? her grandfather had retired, and he died when she was about four years old.
7:53 Tracy V. Wilson? Maria was 15 and living in La Paz on May 13, 1846, when the United States declared war on Mexico. For a quick recap, Texas had been part of Mexico, but had declared itself an independent republic in 1836. And then the United States had annexed Texas in 1845. But the southern border of Texas was in dispute. The United States claimed that border was at the Rio Grande, while Mexico claimed that it was farther north, at the Nueces River.
8:27 Holly Frey? President James K. Polk appointed John Slidell as minister to Mexico and sent him to negotiate, with the goal of establishing the border at the Rio Grande and purchasing Mexican territory in what is now the southwestern United States. When Mexican President José Joaquín Herrera refused to meet with Slidell, Polk ordered troops to the disputed region. When Polk received words that those troops had been attacked by Mexican forces, he characterized it as a Mexican invasion into US territory, even though, from the Mexican perspective, that is what the US had done. Not long after that, Congress declared war.
9:09 Tracy V. Wilson? A lot of the writing about the Mexican-American war is focused on places that are along what is now the border between the United States and Mexico. That's been the case on prior episodes of our show, too. But the US also wanted to capture the Baja California Peninsula, that long peninsula that's between the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of California, the western part of what's now Mexico. A volunteer regiment from New York was dispatched as part of this effort, traveling by sea around Cape Horn and arriving at Yerba Buena, which is now San Francisco, California in April and May of 1847.
9:50 Holly Frey? Two companies, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Henry S. Burton, arrived in La Paz on July 21st. While ranchers and the Mexican Army fought back on other parts of the peninsula and attacked the garrison at La Paz later on, at first, this was fairly peaceful. After taking control of La Paz, Burton handed things back over to the civil government and allowed people to retain control of their land under the condition that they side with the United States. Some of the more prominent families in La Paz threw balls and other festivities to entertain the soldiers. Maria Amparo Ruiz and Henry S. Burton met at one of these events.
10:31 Tracy V. Wilson? The United States and Mexico fought over parts of the peninsula into early 1848, and a lot of local people sided with one or the other. As the US Army and Navy took control of different regions and settlements on the peninsula, people living there were told that it was going to become part of the United States and that they would have all of the rights and privileges of US citizenship when that happened. President Polk and multiple high-ranking military leaders repeatedly said that the peninsula would be part of US territory once the war was over. Of course, there were people who remained loyal to Mexico who did not want that at all. There were also other people who did.
11:14 Holly Frey? But once the war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Baja California Peninsula wasn't part of the territory Mexico ceded to the United States. The US military arranged for refugees from the peninsula who wanted to become US citizens to be taken to what's now California aboard American naval ships, with about 480 people being transported. Of course, not everyone went. Some people had been opposed to the invasion and never wanted to be part of the US in the first place. And others were sympathetic to the US, but also wanted to stay where they were because they had land or family or just some other reason that they didn't want to go.
11:57 Holly Frey? One of the people who left the peninsula after the Mexican-American war was Maria Amparo Ruiz, and we will have more on that after a sponsor break.
12:10 Speaker 03 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
12:12 Holly Frey? Hey, everybody, it's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.
12:33 Speaker 03 It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
12:41 Holly Frey? That includes Field Services Manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.
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13:07 Tracy V. Wilson? Connecting changes everything. AT&T.
13:11 Tracy V. Wilson? So you're considering getting a home security system, but you want something that fits your space. Well, with ADT Blue, it's easy to customize a system that's right for you and set it up yourself. Just pick the kit and monitoring plan that makes sense for your home. Let's say you're worried about package theft. The ADT Plus app can walk you through setting up a new doorbell camera kit. Once it's installed, ADT Pros can help you keep tabs on it 24/7, or you can manage it yourself from the ADT Plus app. There are no long-term contracts, so you can change your monitoring plan whenever you want. The flexibility doesn't end there. You can add to your system as you need to with things like extra cameras or motion sensors. Some life decisions are hard, but thanks to ADT Blue,
13:53 Tracy V. Wilson? you can DIY trusted ADT home security in a snap. Head to ADT.com/BLU to build your system today. And to hear more about home protection and other grown-up topics, check out new episodes of Grown-Up Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
14:17 Holly Frey? We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.
14:59 Holly Frey? Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
15:20 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with Vive Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jesay have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy
16:05 Tracy V. Wilson? only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
16:25 Tracy V. Wilson? As we mentioned before the break, the war between the United States and Mexico ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. Under the terms of that treaty, Mexico ceded roughly 525,000 square miles of land to the United States, including what is now California, Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico, as well as parts of Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. This session was more than half of Mexico's territory. The treaty also established the border of Texas at the Rio Grande, which is what the United States wanted.
17:05 Tracy V. Wilson? So all of that seemed like an obvious win for the United States, but there was also some controversy.
17:14 Holly Frey? U.S. President James K. Polk had expected the treaty to be negotiated in Washington, D.C. But instead, Nicholas Trist, chief clerk of the State Department, decided to handle it on his own in the town of Guadalupe Hidalgo, where the Mexican government had retreated after the United States captured the capital of Mexico City. Among other things, Trist thought the government in Washington DC was out of touch with the realities of what was happening in Mexico.
17:43 Tracy V. Wilson? Honestly, it's wild to me, but he was just like, I'll just negotiate this international treaty myself.
17:49 Holly Frey? You don't get it. Anyway, let me go.
17:51 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
17:52 Holly Frey? Let me take a ride.
17:54 Tracy V. Wilson? There was probably some truth to the idea that Washington DC wasn't super connected to the realities of what was happening in Mexico. As an example, it took six weeks for a message recalling Trist to Washington to actually get to him there. But communications within Mexico could be kind of slow as well. US forces on the Baja California Peninsula took the town of Toto Santos more than a month after the treaty was signed, at which point the United States was officially no longer trying to claim that territory.
18:28 Holly Frey? Many of the US military figures involved thought leaving lower California out of the Mexican concession was an abandonment and an injustice. For example, on April 4th, 1828, Lieutenant Henry W. Halleck wrote a letter to Colonel Richard B. Mason, governor of Alta California, or Upper California, which said in part, quote, "In this conflict, some who thus sided with us lost their lives, many their property, and all have exposed themselves to the vengeance of the Mexican government. But these losses and dangers they have willingly encountered in the hope of obtaining the better government of the United States. They have regarded these promises as made in good faith and have been guided in their
19:11 Holly Frey? conduct by the assurances thus held out to them by the agents of the American government. And now for the United States to voluntarily surrender this country to the Republic of Mexico and leave these Californians exposed to the loss of life and confiscation of property for having sided with us, under the assurances thus held out to them, would not only be itself a breach of national faith, but would make us appear in the eye of the world guilty of the most deliberate and cruel deception."
19:43 Tracy V. Wilson? The US military effort on the Baja California Peninsula and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had multiple direct effects on Maria Amparo Ruiz and her family. As we've already said, they left their home. They were transported off the peninsula as refugees after the war was over. After arriving in what's now California, under Article 9 of the treaty, they later became US citizens. That article read, quote, "The Mexicans who in the territories aforesaid shall not preserve the character of citizens of the Mexican Republic, conformably with what is stipulated in the preceding article, shall be incorporated into the Union of the United States and be
20:26 Tracy V. Wilson? admitted at the proper time to be judged of by the Congress of the United States to the enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of the United States according to the principles of the Constitution. And in the meantime shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty and property and secured in the free exercise of their religion without restriction."
20:49 Holly Frey? The treaty, as negotiated by Nicolas Trist, also contained provisions regarding land grants that people had received from the Spanish or Mexican government prior to July 7, 1846. Quote, "All grants of land made by the Mexican government or by the competent authorities in territories previously appertaining to Mexico and remaining for the future within the limits of the United States shall be respected as valid to the same extent that the same grants would be valid if the said territories had remained within the limits of Mexico."
21:24 Tracy V. Wilson? That language is not in the final treaty, though. When presenting the treaty to the Senate for ratification, Polk said of this language, quote, "To the 10th article of the treaty, there are serious objections and no instructions given to Mr. Trist contemplated or authorized its insertion. The public lands within the limit of Texas belong to that state, and this government has no power to dispose of them or to change the conditions of grants already made. All valid titles to land within the other territories ceded to the United States will remain unaffected by the change in sovereignty, and I therefore submit that this article should not be ratified as part of the treaty."
22:09 Tracy V. Wilson? The US Senate struck that language out before ratifying the treaty on March 10, 1848 with a vote of 38 to 14.
22:18 Holly Frey? The question of what would happen to land grants from the Spanish or Mexican government in territory that became part of the US would later be a huge part of Maria Amparo Ruiz's life, and we'll be getting back to it. But the more immediate impact of all of this on her was that after she and her mother were taken to Monterey in what is now California, she enrolled in school to learn English, in addition to the French and Spanish that she already knew. And on July 7, 1849, she married Captain Henry S. Burton. This was a few days after her 17th birthday, and Henry Burton was 28.
22:57 Tracy V. Wilson? This marriage was also so controversial. It wasn't unheard of for girls in Maria's social class to get married in their late teens, and the difference between their ages doesn't seem to have been regarded as particularly unusual. But marriages between Anglo men and Mexican women really were not common in the aftermath of this war, at least in the immediate aftermath. This was also more than just an Anglo man and a Mexican woman. Maria was from a very prominent, respected, and well-connected Mexican family, and Henry was one of the leaders of the US invasion of Mexico. So some people saw Maria and her family as traitors.
23:39 Holly Frey? Another issue was religion. Henry was Protestant, while Maria and her family were devoutly Catholic. So some people just thought a marriage between the two of them was heresy. Also, during the Mexican-American War, at the request of Franciscan padre José González Rubio, military governor Richard B. Mason had issued an order that California officials not authorize marriages in which one of the parties was Catholic. The Catholic bishop of Alta and Baja California refused to sanction Maria and Henry's marriage. One of Maria's old suitors also went to church authorities to try to stop it.
24:20 Tracy V. Wilson? Contemporary accounts describe Maria as beautiful and Henry as in love with her, and they ultimately got married in spite of all of this. The Reverend Samuel H. Willie conducted a Protestant ceremony at the home of General E.R.S. Canby, who later had to explain his actions in this to his superior officers. The couple also had a private Catholic ceremony in Santa Barbara before two witnesses.
24:47 Holly Frey? In spite of all this controversy, the wedding at the Canby home was a huge social affair. One account described Canby's wife as being at the ceremony along with nearly every Protestant in Monterey. Among Anglos, Maria was regarded as Mexican aristocracy: attractive, charming, and well-educated. And there's even speculation that she was the inspiration for an 1848 ballad called "The Maid of Monterey," which describes the arrival of the maid of Monterey as silencing the gunfire of a battle during the Mexican-American War, and then giving comfort and aid to the injured soldiers. That ballad ends, quote, "Here's to that bright beauty who drove death's pang away,
25:32 Holly Frey? the meek-eyed señorita, the maid of Monterey."
25:35 Tracy V. Wilson? About a year into their marriage, Maria and Henry had a daughter, Nellie, and then a couple of years later, they had a son, also named Henry. The children grew up speaking both English and Spanish.
25:48 Holly Frey? California was admitted to the United States as the 31st state on September 9, 1850, at which point it was in the frenzy of the gold rush. The elder Henry remained in the U.S. Army, and in 1852, he was transferred to San Diego. He purchased land that had belonged to Pio Pico, the last governor of Alta California when it was Mexican territory. This land had been granted to Pio Pico by the Mexican government and then sold to four other men, whose rights to it Henry purchased. Henry started a ranch called Rancho Hamul, which totaled more than half a million acres.
26:27 Tracy V. Wilson? San Diego was a military town which Maria described as quote frightfully dull and dry and dusty. She became responsible for arranging entertainment and cultural activities for the soldiers and their families. This included writing and staging an adaptation of Don Quixote with the soldiers playing all of the parts. Apparently Maria had to work to convince the ones that were cast in women's roles to wear dresses for it.
26:55 Holly Frey? In 1859, Henry was transferred to the East Coast. Maria and the children went with him while her mother and brother stayed behind to run the ranch. Maria and the children stayed on the East Coast for the next decade, including when Henry returned to California on leave before the start of the Civil War and when he was briefly stationed at Alcatraz Island.
27:18 Tracy V. Wilson? As long as Henry was on the East Coast, Maria seems to have moved with him whenever he did. It's possible that during some of that time, the children were sent to a boarding school. Over the years, they lived in Rhode Island, New York, Delaware, Virginia, and Washington DC. Maria attended the first inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln in March of 1861, and she later became friends with First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. After the Civil War, Henry was stationed at Fort Monroe in Virginia, where Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his wife Verena were being held as prisoners of war, and Maria also became friends with Verena.
28:00 Holly Frey? Henry was promoted several times during his career with the US Army and was eventually brevetted as a brigadier general. Unfortunately, his military service also led to his death at the age of just 51. He was part of the Siege of Petersburg, Virginia in 1865, which is where he contracted malaria, and on April 4th, 1869, he died of a malaria-related stroke. He was buried at West Point with military honors.
28:29 Tracy V. Wilson? That left Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton as a widow with two children at the age of 37. Her only immediate source of income was her widow's pension of $30 a month. That was not enough to support the three of them. She decided to return to California to try to make a living for herself and the family at Rancho Amule.
28:50 Holly Frey? We will talk more about that after we pause for a sponsor break.
28:57 Holly Frey? We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.
29:39 Holly Frey? Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
30:00 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy
30:45 Tracy V. Wilson? only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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33:11 Tracy V. Wilson? When Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton returned to California in 1870, it had changed dramatically from when she left. It had been through the boom and the bust of the gold rush and the construction of the Transatlantic Railroad. There had also been massive demographic shifts. At the start of the war between the United States and Mexico, the overwhelming majority of the non-indigenous residents of what's now California were of Spanish or Mexican descent. By the time California was admitted as a state, its Anglo population had risen dramatically, and only about 15% of its non-indigenous population spoke Spanish.
33:54 Tracy V. Wilson? When the Burton family got back to Monterey after a decade on the East Coast, only about 4% of the population of California was Spanish-speaking. The state of California and its Anglo residents had also carried out a genocide against the indigenous population. In the span of about 20 years, about 80% of the indigenous population had been murdered or died of introduced diseases or of overwork after being enslaved and forced to work on ranches and in mines.
34:26 Holly Frey? This genocide was connected to the US effort to seize land in California for settlements, ranches, and mines. And that circles back to those land grants that we mentioned earlier. Although the treaty Nicholas Trist had negotiated to end the Mexican-American War had protected grants that had been made by the Spanish or Mexican government, the final treaty, as ratified by Congress, did not have that language. Some of these land grants were enormous, and the United States could not entice newcomers to move west if most of the land there was already claimed. In 1851, Congress passed an Act to ascertain and settle private land claims in the state of California, also called the California Land Act.
35:11 Holly Frey? And this was to assess those pre-existing claims. This process could take years, and about a quarter of the assessed grants were ultimately invalidated.
35:21 Tracy V. Wilson? Since the land where Henry Burton had established Rancho Humul had been granted to Pio Pico and then sold to other people, there were multiple layers to sort through. In 1858, the California Land Commission had rejected the validity of Pico's claim, which meant that those later purchases and Maria's claim as Henry's widow were also considered invalid. Henry had tried to get that decision overturned when it first happened, but this whole process had been put on hold during the Civil War. Then, Henry had died without a will while only partway through the process of giving
36:02 Tracy V. Wilson? a man named Ephraim W. Morse power of attorney so that he could act on Maria's behalf while she was still on the East Coast. This was part of Maria's decision to return to California, and she wound up in a legal battle over this land that would go on for the rest of her life. She also had an ongoing fight over land near Ensenada on the Baja California Peninsula that had belonged to her grandfather. The Mexican government recognized this grant, but there were multiple people trying to claim it in addition to Maria. Maria hired good lawyers and got familiar enough with the law to write her own briefs,
36:42 Tracy V. Wilson? and she traveled, including to Washington DC, to advocate for herself and her family. While enmeshed in these legal battles, Maria did still have access to that land, and she tried to support herself and her children on the ranch. As had been true of her family in Mexico, she was often in a position where she had land, at least in theory, but not really any money. She was usually trying to figure out how to manage and pay off various amounts of debt. With the help of some financial backers, she and her 18-year-old son, Henry, established Tammul Portland Cement Manufacturing Company to make lime from limestone that was on their land.
37:24 Tracy V. Wilson? This company lasted from 1869 to 1891. They also raised cattle and they grew wheat and barley and rented wildflower meadows to beekeepers.
37:35 Holly Frey? Ruiz de Burton also tried to earn money by writing. Her first novel, published in 1872 by J. P. Lippincott, was titled "Who Would Have Thought It?" It was published anonymously, but its record in the Library of Congress lists the author as Mrs. Henry S. Burton. This is the first book by a Mexican-American author known to have been published in English.
37:59 Tracy V. Wilson? This novel wasn't exactly autobiographical, but it was deeply influenced by Ruiz de Burton's feelings and experiences as a Mexican woman who had lived through the Mexican-American War, married an Anglo man, moved to the United States and spent years living on the East Coast among soldiers and politicians and wealthy New Englanders during the Civil War. The central character of the book is Maria Dolores Medina, also called Lola, who was captured by indigenous people as a child and then placed in the custody of the Norval family after being rescued.
38:38 Holly Frey? One plotline is a love story between Lola and Julian Norval. And there's also a lot of pointed satire and criticism of the people that Lola encounters. There are depictions of abolitionists as simultaneously self-righteous and racist and hypocritical, with some of them disparaging Lola for her dark skin, which was dyed black by her captors, until they find out she is rich. One character is a caricature of a minister who was probably based on the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher and accusations that he was having an affair with Elizabeth Tilton, who was a married member of his church. The novel also points out the irony that abolitionists were fighting to end slavery,
39:21 Holly Frey? which had been abolished in Mexico in 1821, decades before the U.S. Civil War, while treating Mexican-Americans as second-class citizens in spite of the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This book also framed railroad monopolies as treating the people of the Southwest as slaves.
39:41 Tracy V. Wilson? Ruiz de Burton's next publication was the text of Don Quijote de la Mancha, a comedy in five acts, taken from Cervantes' novel of that name. That's the play she had staged back in San Diego in the 1850s. It was published in 1876.
39:59 Holly Frey? Ruiz de Burton's second and only other known novel is the one that was referenced on that page on the 1880s printing press at the Smithsonian website, The Squatter and the Dawn, a novel descriptive of contemporary occurrences in California. And that was published in 1885. Ruiz de Burton published this under the name C. Loyal, or Loyal Citizen. In Spanish, that's C. de Dona Leal, which was also a common sign-off on official correspondence in Mexico.
40:30 Tracy V. Wilson? Ruiz de Burton had initially planned for this to be a short story, which her friend George Davidson suggested she write and then have published somewhere like a literary magazine. There was one called The Californian. When it turned out to be a way longer narrative than would fit in a short story, she started thinking that it might work as a serialized novel, printed in The Californian or in some other journal. When that didn't work out either, she worked out a deal with Samuel Carson and Company, which was a small publisher in San Francisco. Carson also published The Overland Monthly, which was a successor to The Californian, but he doesn't seem to have thought this book was a good fit for the journal. Otherwise, he might have decided to print it there.
41:15 Tracy V. Wilson? Also, he marketed it alongside travel books about the West, which, like, that is not the genre this book was.
41:23 Holly Frey? Like the book Who Would Have Thought It?, The Squatter and the Dawn drew from Ruiz de Burton's own experiences and observations. Like the name suggests, it was related to her efforts to keep control of the land her husband had purchased and the laws that made it progressively harder for Californios to retain control of their land, including after squatters settled on it.
41:46 Holly Frey? We already mentioned the passage of the California Land Act of 1851. The 1862 Homestead Act allowed homesteaders to receive 160 acres of government land if they lived on and improved it, which prompted millions of people to move west with the hopes of staking a claim. Since it could take years or even decades for a Californio landowner to get their claims recognized by the United States, if the US recognized them at all, it was possible to lose most or all of it to squatters while the legal process was being carried out. Squatters were also known to harass, intimidate, and in some cases even kill landowners.
42:28 Tracy V. Wilson? The novel also depicts how this influx of newcomers to the west sparked tensions between ranchers who raised cattle and farmers who grew crops. And who was responsible for building and maintaining the fences that were needed to separate the crops from the cattle? The Trespass Act of 1850 required the farmers to do it, but that was changed under the No Fence Law of 1874, which instead required it of ranchers. After the passage of the No Fence Law, a lot of people turned from ranching to farming rather than trying to fence in their cattle.
43:07 Holly Frey? The squatter in the dawn is set between 1872 and 1876, and it focuses on the Californio family of Don Mariano Alamar and their efforts to retain their land in the face of an influx of squatters and the demands of the incoming railroads. Alamar faces continual obstacles, both to remove or negotiate the squatters and to work with the railroad to try to benefit from its construction.
43:34 Tracy V. Wilson? In Ruiz de Burton's experience, Anglo's often perceived Californios as backward and unable to keep up with the changes to the law and the culture and to developments in things like agriculture and ranching. But she depicts Don Mariano Alamar as smart and savvy and as trying to work with newcomers and educate them on farming and ranching techniques that would work in the southwestern geography and climate, which of course were not at all the techniques that these folks were used to in the East. This shift in land use would eventually be part of things like the California Water Wars that we've talked about on the show before, including in our episode on Mary Hunter
44:17 Tracy V. Wilson? Austin that came out in March of this year.
44:20 Holly Frey? Like who would have thought it, The Squatter in the Dawn has a love story, which is between an Anglo man named Clarence Daryl and a Mexican-American woman named Mercedes Alamar. Their marriage has a tinge of idealism. It helps resolve some of the novel's racial and ethnic tensions by uniting these two sides.
44:40 Tracy V. Wilson? This novel ends with a really straightforward criticism of laws like the Homestead Act and the California Land Act and the impact that they were having on Californios. Quote, "Our representatives in Congress and in the state legislature, knowing full well the will of the people, ought to legislate accordingly. If they do not, then we shall, as Channing said, kiss the foot that tramples us and in anguish of spirit must wait and pray for a redeemer who will emancipate the white slaves of California."
45:14 Holly Frey? So, uh, white slaves. So much 19th century writing characterizes injustice in terms of slavery, which is what's happening here. But to be clear, Ruiz de Burton's focus was on Californios and their loss of land to Anglo squatters, not on the rest of the Mexican population of California. She also was not really focused on the Chinese laborers who were building the railroads or on the indigenous peoples who had been forced off their land and killed as Spanish colonists and conquistadors started arriving in what is now the United States and after California became a state.
45:53 Tracy V. Wilson? At the same time, Ruiz de Burton's writing and the way she lived her life are often seen as assimilationist. She saw the best way forward for Californios as acceptance into the more affluent, more influential class of Anglos in California while also retaining their land.
46:13 Tracy V. Wilson? While she's the only Mexican-American woman known to have published novels in English in the 19th century, what she was writing about was also at odds with a lot of middle and working-class Mexican-Americans who were way more focused on preserving their own culture while trying to attain the equal rights that they had been promised under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, rights that they were not being given at all. They were not so focused on the idea of a simulation with Anglos.
46:45 Holly Frey? Conversely, while moving within Anglo circles, Ruiz de Burton clearly saw herself as different from them. She had strong connections to her ancestry and culture and her home on the Baja California Peninsula. She made and maintained friendships with other Latinos wherever she lived, and she kept up with what was happening in Mexico. Everything from what was going on with friends and family members who were still there to major events like the reform war over the Mexican Constitution of 1857. While her published work was in English, much of her personal correspondence was in Spanish.
47:21 Tracy V. Wilson? Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton ultimately lost her fight for land in both Mexico and in the United States. After decades of legal battles, she was awarded the title to some of her grandfather's land in Mexico, but then her mother Isabel sued her over it. Isabel claimed that she had been given paperwork to sign that had been written in English, so she didn't understand it well, and she had thought that paperwork would give Maria power of attorney, not rights to the land. The Supreme Court of Mexico eventually overturned Maria's claim to her grandfather's rancho in Sonata. Maria's claim on Rancho Hamul
48:03 Tracy V. Wilson? also went through a series of reversals, and then reversals of those reversals, and more than 100 squatters made claims on it and challenged Maria's title. In 1891, she finally lost nearly all of Rancho Hamul, aside from Henry Burton's original homestead there.
48:23 Tracy V. Wilson? She did not give up, though. And when she died on August 12th of 1895, she was in Chicago on a trip that was connected to these ongoing legal disputes.
48:34 Holly Frey? In the years after her death, Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton's work was largely forgotten. It started getting more attention in the early 2000s, when new editions of her work were printed, along with collections of her letters and books about her. Today, she is known as one of the earliest Mexican-American authors, and a rare example of a first-person Mexican perspective on things like the Mexican-American War, the tumultuous and violent establishment of California as a state, written in English for an English-speaking audience.
49:07 Tracy V. Wilson? That is Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton.
49:10 Holly Frey? Do you have listener mail?
49:11 Tracy V. Wilson? I do. I have a quick listener mail. I meant to read this a while ago. It's correcting something from an episode that has been out for a bit at this point, but I mislaid this email. This is from Amy, and Amy wrote, "Ladies, I started listening to you less than a year ago when I had to unplug from the news. As an ally pediatrician and staunch vaccine proponent, when the world brings me down, you are my rainbow. Thanks. Thank you for all you do. The recent Beatrice Kenner and Mildred Smith episode made me smile, as my office manager is a Kenner Smith. When telling her about the podcast the next day to share the smile, she recalled hearing about a great Aunt Bee growing up. Her daughter is a history major and will be starting down that genealogic rabbit hole soon.
49:56 Tracy V. Wilson? I did a double take when you spoke about the Busch Gardens traffic, as I only live one exit away and know that traffic well. Beatrice likely lived in the King's Mill, not Hill, area, though, betting this was a transcription error from an interview based on some of the other discrepancies you found. For Pet Tax, I have attached two pictures of my Izzy. She is an Amstaff Hitty Pound Rescue. The first is shortly after joining our family several years ago. The other is a more recent shot of her preferred cinnamon bun sleeping pose. Loving light, Amy." Thank you so much, Amy. When I got this email, I have been to Busch Gardens. I've been to that part of Virginia, aside from going to Busch Gardens.
50:41 Tracy V. Wilson? As soon as I saw the word "King's Mill", I was like, "Obviously, it's King's Mill. Why would it have said Hill?" And I actually think that was just my typo that I didn't catch.
50:54 Tracy V. Wilson? And like, I don't know, I just, the second that I saw King's Mill, I was like, yes, obviously, that's what it's called. Why would I have said anything else? I don't know. So I apologize for that typo, however it came to be. And then we have such a cute little puppy dog. Oh, my goodness. One of the pictures doesn't want to load for me at the moment, but in the first one, this puppy dog has gotten into the shrubbery and she is peeking out from all the foliage with that smiling panting mouth that pitties do. Very cute. One ear is flopping over and the other ear is like, kind of almost inside
51:39 Tracy V. Wilson? outed flopping around. Anyway, so cute. Thank you for that email and for that correction that I meant to read like a month ago. If you would like to send us a note about this or any other podcast, we're at [email protected] . And you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get your podcasts.
52:06 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
52:20 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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