Ávila family of California
Numerous members of the family held important rancho grants and political positions, including two Alcaldes of Los Angeles.
When Antonio Cornelio Ávila was born about 1745, his father, Wilibardo Avila, was 55 and his mother, Olga Lidia Ruíz Maldonado, was 20.
[1][2][3][4] Cornelio Ávila died while visiting Santa Barbara in 1800, and was buried at the Presidio Cemetery.
In 1823, the Mexican government granted him 4,439 acres (17.96 km2) of land Rancho Las Ciénegas, near the La Brea Pits, approximately seven miles west of the pueblo.
[5][6] The Avila Adobe built in 1818 by Francisco Ávila, still stands today in the heart of historic Olvera Street.
In November 1826, Ávila was one of the local notables invited to La Misión del Santo Príncipe El Arcángel, San Gabriel de Los Temblores by Father José Bernardo Sánchez to meet American explorer Jedediah Smith, the first to travel overland to California from the United States.
[9] Rafaela Ávila (born 1818) married in 1843 Emigdio Véjar (1810–1863), grantee of Rancho Boca de la Playa.
Bruno Ávila regained for his family Rancho Aguaje de la Centinela from Ygnacio Machado in 1845 through an exchange of property.
Bruno Ávila, owned a modest adobe town house near present-day 7th and Alameda Streets in the pueblo of Los Angeles.
Machado traded his entire rancho, including the adobe hacienda, for Bruno Ávila's pueblo property.
Bruno Ávila moved into the Centinela adobe and went into the business of raising cattle on the land, which was adjacent to his brother's Rancho Sausal Redondo.
He was first married at Misión San Diego de Alcalá to María Andrea Ygnacia Yorba, daughter of José Antonio Yorba and María Josefa Grijalva who was the daughter of Juan Pablo Grijalva, a Spanish soldier who traveled to Alta California with the expedition led by Juan Bautista de Anza and was the original petitioner for the lands that became known as the Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana.
He and fifty other Los Angeles leaders were imprisoned by Alcalde Vicente Sánchez for plotting against Victoria.
An army of 150 men raised at El Presidio Real de San Diego by José Antonio Carrillo and Pío Pico marched into the pueblo and released all prisoners.
