The Berreyesa were a substantial clan of Basque-heritage Spanish-speaking settlers in early Northern California who held extensive land in the greater San Francisco Bay Area.
[1] Antonio Berreyesa once said that his Californio family was the "one which most justly complained of the bad faith of the adventurers and squatters and of the treachery of American lawyers.
The Berryessa family was said to have numerous slave labor gangs which they had violently acquired from the nearby Stony Creek Mountain and Valley.
[4] In 1775, the Spanish government indicated its desire to settle Alta California against further encroachment by Russian fur trappers, so in October, the Lieutenant Colonel Juan Bautista de Anza formed a party of 200 colonists including soldiers for protection.
Three of their four sons went on to hold large Mexican land grants: José de los Reyes held land in San José including the rich New Almaden quicksilver mine, Nazario Antonio raised great herds of livestock on Rancho Las Putas for himself and his sons, and Nicolás Antonio II was granted Rancho Milpitas.
[4] The eldest daughter, María Gabriela, married into the Castro family; she and her husband settled Rancho San Pablo in what is now called Contra Costa County.
José de los Reyes Berrelleza (also spelled Berreyesa) was born at Mission Santa Clara on January 6, 1785, the third child and first son in the family.
In 1842, José de los Reyes Berreyesa received from Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado a grant giving him one square league, or 4,438 acres (18 km2), of the land he had been cultivating, called Rancho San Vicente, near the Santa Teresa Hills and at the south end of Almaden Valley.
The grant included a large section of the rocky hills upon which a rich source of mercury-carrying cinnabar ore was found in 1844–1845, and the discovery was made public.
The neighboring grant, Rancho Cañada de los Capitancillos, was now held by Andrés Castillero, who claimed the mercury mine was part of his land.
Their mother, the widow María Zacarías Bernal de Berreyesa, fought for the land by filing suit in court against the New Almaden Mining Company.
In July 1854, her ninth son, José de la Encarnación Ramón Antonio Berreyesa, was grabbed by a posse, tied with rope around the neck and questioned, but was set free.
Several days later, her fifth son, Joseph Zenobia Nemesio Berreyesa, was guarding the New Almaden mine at night when he was seized by masked men and hanged.
[6] After leaving for the relative safety of Ventura, José de la Encarnación Ramón Antonio Berreyesa was caught on February 5, 1857, by a band of vigilantes that had been told he consorted with the bandit Juan Flores.
The vigilantes, a group called the El Monte Rangers who were frustrated at the recent escape of Flores, saw the rope scars around Berreyesa's neck and assumed he had somehow foiled a prior attempt at execution, so they hanged him until dead.
[11] Nazario Antonio Berrelleza (also spelled Nasario Berreyesa, nicknamed José) was born at Mission Santa Clara on July 28, 1787, the fourth child and second son in the family.
As payment for his government service, he accepted a 35,516-acre (143.73 km2) grant of land contained in a river valley east of Napa, California, called Rancho Las Putas, named for Putah Creek which ran through it.
The livestock holdings extended northward over some rocky hills to a neighboring valley, Rancho Cañada de Capay, ranched by Berreyesa cousins.