Diego de Gardoqui
Member of an illustrious family of Basque councilors, among them Martin Gardoqui and John Gardoquí, also common ancestors of the governor Luis de Unzaga, whose grandfather was the Bilbao councilor Thomas de Unzaga Gardoqui; This family saga was dedicated for many generations to business, especially to commerce and the incipient metallurgical industry related to the Navy shipyards.
[1] Diego de Gardoqui, the fourth of eight children, was the financial intermediary between the Spanish Court and the Colonies during the American Revolutionary War, meeting with John Jay on various occasions.
In honor of the inauguration, Gardoqui decorated the front of his house on Broadway in New York City, near Bowling Green, "with two magnificent transparent gardens, adorned with statues, natural size, imitating marble....
In the early years after the Revolutionary War when Congress and Washington resided in New York City, Gardoqui's house was also the meeting place of the first Catholic dignitaries representing their countries.
There Mass was said for the congregation composed of such men as representatives of France, Spain, and Portugal, as well as Charles Carroll, his cousin Daniel, and Thomas Fitzsimmons, Catholic members of Congress, officers and soldiers of the foreign contingent, merchants and others.
Diego de Gardoqui laid the cornerstone of St. Peter's, the first permanent structure for a Catholic church erected in the State of New York, on October 5, 1785.
Gardoqui worked with John Brown and General James Wilkinson in 1788 to procure a treaty between Kentucky and Spain concerning navigation on the River.
Morgan and Gardoqui worked out an agreement whereby 15,000,000 acres (61,000 km2) west of the Mississippi, south from its junction with the Ohio, and north of the St. Francis River would be deeded to American settlers.
Gardoqui was the Spanish counterparty to the Jay–Gardoqui Treaty of 1789, negotiated by John Jay of the United States, relating to the navigational rights of Spain in the Mississippi River.
