Merced Manor is a neighborhood in southwestern San Francisco, between Stern Grove and Lake Merced. It is bordered by 19th Avenue to the east, Sloat Boulevard to the north, 26th Avenue to the west and Eucalyptus Drive to the south.
Location
Lowell High School and Lakeshore Alternative Elementary School are located on Eucalyptus Drive, and the Merced Manor reservoir is on Sloat between 22nd and 23rd Avenues. The Stonestown Galleria shopping mall and San Francisco State University are both on 19th Avenue to the south. The Lakeshore Plaza shopping area lies westwards between Everglade Drive and Clearfield Drive. Eastwards down Ocean Avenue are various small stores, including a Walgreens which was once Manor Market. The San Francisco Scottish Rite Masonic Center and West Portal Lutheran Church and School lie diagonal from the northeast corner near the Stern Grove entrance.
History
Prehistory to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Today's San Francisco has been inhabited since about 3000 BC. The area around Merced Manor was once sand dunes (caused by the nearby ocean and wind trajectory) occupied by the Yelamu tribelet of the Ohlone people with a village Ompuromo located just southwest of Lake Merced. An overland Spanish exploration party, led by Don Gaspar de Portolá, arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay. Seven years later, on March 28, 1776, the Spanish established the Presidio of San Francisco, followed by explorer Juan Bautista de Anza's Mission San Francisco de Asís.
Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the area became part of Mexico's Alta California. Under Mexican rule, the mission system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. The land of Merced Manor was incorporated into the Rancho Laguna de la Merced, a one-half-square-league territory which, in 1835, was granted to José Antonio Galindo, corporal in El Presidio Real de San Francisco militia in Alta California. Galindo did little to develop the land and sold it in 1837 to Francisco de Haro (1792-1849). Ironically, in 1838, De Haro (as Alcalde) arrested Galindo for the murder of José Doroteo Peralta (1810-1838), son of Pedro Peralta.
With the cession of California to the United States following the Mexican-American War, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided that the land grants would be honored. However, at this time settlers were welcomed and squatted throughout the area. In 1850, the Justice of the Peace for Mission Delores issued a decree allowing certain settlers of San Francisco (generally of the 11th ward south of Lawton Street) to legally parcel the land up among themselves (naming Alfred A Green, E. Goula Buffins, Thomas Green, Alfred Martin, Daniel Green, Robert Green, Charles McGran, Anthony Brown, William Humphreys, Jonah Albert-July, Thomas McCambridge, William Kunez, Clement Humphreys, John H Tillertson, Clement B Ellis, and Joseph Sutter). Contrarily, as required by the Land Act of 1851, a claim for the Rancho by De Haro's family was filed with the Public Land Commission in 1852, though by this time the entirety of today's Merced Manor was primarily owned by the Greene brothers (which led to later legal battles) .
The Greene Family
Coming from New Brunswick, Canada (sometimes claiming Maine or other states/dates), the Greene family supposedly consisted of 7 brothers. The most prominent early settler was Alfred Augustus Greene (c. 1827-1899), a miner and farmer who's named in the 1850 document (paying $84) and listed as the head of household in the 1852 census. In the census, in addition to his wife and son, two younger brothers are named: Robert Greene and William Henry Greene (c. 1830-1905). An 1863 map of the area by the Pacific Mining Journal illustrates that, at that point, Merced Manor from 24th Avenue westwards was seemingly owned by Alfred (called Rancho Laguna Puerca) and the rest from 24th Avenue eastwards by William. The map also shows scattered properties of brother Daniel L Green and a distant property near the ocean to the west owned by brother George M Green.