The grant was made to seven former
Presidio of Santa Barbara soldiers: Valentine Cota, Salvador Valenzuela, Vicente Pico, Rafael Valdez, Vincent Feliz, Leandro Gonzales, and Rafael Gonzales. Valentine Cota, the corporal of the guard at
Mission Santa Inés. Jose Vicente Pico (1797-1863) married Maria Estefana Bruno Garcia in 1822. Rafael Gonzales built the
Rafael Gonzalez House and was later
alcalde of
Santa Barbara. 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. As required by the Land Act of 1851, a claim for Rancho El Rio de Santa Clara o la Colonia was filed with the
Public Land Commission in 1852, and the grant was
patented to Valenta Cota et al. in 1872. In the 1860s,
Thomas R. Bard agent for
Thomas Alexander Scott and his Philadelphia and California Petroleum Company, bought a five sevenths undivided share of El Rio de Santa Clara o la Colonia. The Gonzales family refused to sell other two sevenths share to Bard and instead sold to the Camarillo family. ==See also==