[3][4][5] At the direction of Governor José Figueroa in 1835, Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo began construction of the Presidio of Sonoma to counter the Russian presence at Fort Ross.
[6] McIntosh and Dawson agreed to make application jointly to the Mexican government for the two square league grant known as the Rancho Estero Americano, to confirm the title given them by General Vallejo.
In June 1840, James Dawson married 14-year-old María Antonia Cazares (also spelled Caceres and Caseres), born the daughter of a Spanish sergeant of dragoons in 1826.
[7] María Antonia Cazares de Dawson married Frederick Gustavus Blume (1815–1890), a Sonoma, California physician, surgeon and merchant, in November 1847.
[7] 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.
[1] Frederick Blume was forced by a settlers' league to sell much of his valuable estate at nominal prices; at his death in 1890 he owned little of the original grant.