Juana Briones de Miranda

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Juana Briones de Miranda
Born	1804 Villa de Branciforte, now Santa Cruz, California
Died	1889 Mayfield, in modern Palo Alto, California
Occupation	Businesswoman, Curandera, Landowner
Spouse	Apolinario Miranda (1820–)
Parents	Marcos Briones María Ysiadora Tapia^[1]

Juana Briones de Miranda (1804-1889) was born near the Santa Cruz Mission, in California. Her parents arrived with the earliest explorations of this then remote fringe of the Spanish empire, and her family members had accompanied both the Gaspar de Portolà and the Juan Bautista de Anza Expeditions. She was the daughter of a Marcos Briones, a soldier posted near Monterey, who later moved to the San Francisco Presidio. She married a soldier, Apolinario Miranda, in 1820^[2] and raised seven children plus an orphaned Indian girl. She later gained a clerical separation from her husband. After establishing a farm near the Presidio of San Francisco, Juana became a pioneer settler at Yerba Buena, the area of San Francisco which is today known as North Beach. On early maps this area was designated as Playa de Juana Briones (Juana Briones Beach). The area of North Beach presently known as Washington Square, San Francisco was at that time under her cultivation. A natural entrepreneur, she marketed her milk and produce to the sailors from whaling ships or those who arrived in port for the hide and tallow trade. Her pioneer status is commemorated by an historical plaque on the square.

[edit] Land purchase

In 1844, she used her revenues to purchase, from two Indians, the 4,400 acre Rancho la Purisima Concepción in Santa Clara County, south of San Francisco. Juana Briones managed to retain the title to her land in San Francisco and Santa Clara counties throughout the tumultuous American period that followed the Gold Rush. Briones excelled not only in business and farming: her reputation for hospitality and skills in medicine were widely recognized. She trained her nephew, Pablo--who was later known as the Doctor of Bolinas (California)--in medicinal arts, although she never received a formal education and could not read or write.

[edit] Early residence

A remnant of her early rancho home remains in the foothills above Palo Alto, California. Although it is contained within a structure that dates from the early twentieth century, two remaining walls in the oldest corner of the home still exhibit the original rancho home's construction. These walls are historically significant, as they preserve a rare construction method: infilling a crib of horizontal redwood boards with adobe. This technique provided her dwelling with the excellent insulating characteristics of adobe, while protecting that building material from erosion problems during the rainy season, and destruction by earthquake, two problems with traditional adobe construction. Other than the unusual method of using materials, the original home exhibited the familiar layout of the traditional adobe: a strip of connected rooms with an external corridor.

Juana Briones sold about half of her rancho to members of the Murphy family, settlers who preceded the California Gold Rush. She died in 1889 in nearby Mayfield (now part of Palo Alto, California). She gave the remaining portions of her rancho to her children, who bore their father’s name, Miranda. Her footprints on the local landscape include the house, Juana Briones Elementary School, Juana Briones Park, and several street names incorporating either Miranda or first names of her children.

Juana Briones, like many early Hispanic women of California, has been overlooked by traditional histories, but she was mentioned in the following sources:

Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California
J.N. Bowman, “Juana Briones de Miranda”, Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly, September, 1957.
Florence M. Fava, Los Altos Hills, 1976.
More recently, she was profiled in a Radcliff Institute exhibition and related article titled “Enterprising Women” Harvard Magazine, January- February 2003
1860 CA Census has her in SC County page 436 Fremont Twp as age 56 she is listed as Juana Miranda dwellin 1747