Rancho San Juan Capistrano del Camote, translated as (Saint John Capistrano Of the sweet potato), Camote is probably an error in the documents, Camote would be Camate, which referred to the stream that ran through the grant and that in the 19th century was called the Camate according to Walter Murray [1858], or Comatti according to Annie L. Morrison [1917], now called Camatta Creek. The Rancho was a 44,284 acre Mexican land grant in the San Juan Valley, 13.7 miles southeast of Shandon, California in present-day San Luis Obispo County, California.
History
Rancho San Juan Capistrano del Camote
The "ten square leagues" of the rancho was granted July 11, 1846, by Governor Pio Pico to Tomás Herrera and Geronimo Quintana, both originally from Nuevo Mexico. Unlike most ranchos in Alta California Rancho San Juan Capistrano raised sheep, commonly raised in Nuevo Mexico. Alta California was dependent on the trade of woolen goods from Nuevo Mexico for horses and mules over the Old Spanish Trail until immigration from Nuevo Mexico brought herds of sheep beginning in the 1840s that began to change that. During the Mexican–American War, Tomás Herrera and José María Quintana raised a company of 30 New Mexican and Mexican cavalry that fought against the American forces at the November 16, 1846 Battle of Natividad. In 1847, the new owners had built two houses near the center of the tract, also planting wheat, barley and some fruit trees. At one time, they had 400 head of cattle on the rancho.
After Alta California was annexed to the United States and became the state of California, the grantees filed a claim with the Land Commission on August 14, 1852. That claim was rejected by the Commission December 26, 1854. Their title was declared invalid, because it was dated July 11, 1846, four days after the conquest of Monterey by the American Forces.
Rancho San Juan Capistrano Murders, May 12, 1858
In May 1858, two French Basques, Bartolomé Baratie and M. Jose Borel, had come from Oakland to raise sheep on the rancho. On May 12, shortly after they settled in the ranch house on San Juan Creek, it was the subject of an infamous attack by eight of the bandit gang of Jack Powers and Pio Linares that resulted in the robbery and murders of the two men and the kidnapping of Andrea Baratie, the English/Chilean wife of Bartolomé. The gangs plan was to pin the blame for the crimes on the two Californio servants of the Frenchmen. They were to have been murdered where their bodies could not be found, however Pio Linares did not remain to oversee the execution of his plan but returned to San Luis Obispo. The two bandits, who were to carry out this plot spared the servants' lives, without telling their comrades. The result was that one of these servants went to the Rancho Huerhuero and informed Captain David P. Mallagh, of the murder. Mallagh immediately rode with one servant to San Luis Obispo bringing word of the crimes.
Following this crime, as they returned to San Luis Obispo, the gang also murdered Jack Gilkey, an American hunter at his home six miles away from the Rancho, on the Camate, near where the gang had stayed overnight before their attack on the Rancho San Juan the next day. He had sold some meat to the gang when they camped there and was killed to prevent him from telling authorities of the gangs presence in the area at the time of the murders.
The news of this attack; that for once left several witnesses, allowed Captain Mallagh, Walter Murray and others in the town to capture a gang member recognized by the servant, while other members of the gang fled the town. Murray and others in the town and surrounding ranchos organized a Vigilance Committee in San Luis Obispo County. Additional testimony was given by Andrea Baratie, wife of the murdered Bartolomé Baratie. She was witness to the crime including that of the murder of her husband then kidnapped. She was later let go instead of being killed as ordered by Linares, by another gang member, El Mesteño. The Vigilance Committee was able to destroy this gang that had been conducting numerous robberies and murders for many years in the county.
Rancho Claim Dismissed
Within two years of the murders, the Southern District court dismissed the claim of the grantees on August 8, 1860. The reason given for the failure of the grant case, was a failure to prosecute the case, but Walter Murray in his letters to the newspaper San Francisco Bulletin in defense of the actions of the Vigilance Committee, says the Frenchmen were there intending to purchase the grant: