Alameda County Biographies

AUGUSTIN BERNAL

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm

 

	Was born in San Jose, Santa Clara County, California, May 25, 1848.  His father, 
Augustin Bernal, who died June 19, 1872, was born at the Santa Teresa Rancho, in Santa Clara 
County, and was eighty-seven years of age at the time of his demise.  For more than twenty 
years he served as a lieutenant in the Mexican army, for which he received eleven leagues of 
land in the San Ramon and Livermore Valleys, known as the Rancho El Valle de San Jose, and 
which he divided equally with his brother, Juan Pablo Bernal, and two sisters.  As patented, 
the rancho contained forty-eight thousand acres, and extended from Sunol Valley to Livermore.  
He was twice married, and left a widow and large family of sons and daughters to mourn his 
loss.  He was much respected for his honesty, integrity, genial and generous disposition, 
while, he was an exception to the general run of his countrymen.  He was very careful and 
held on well to his property, and made it secure by dividing it among his children; the result 
is that the Bernals hold their ground on the original grant better than any other of the native 
families.  When but an infant the subject of this sketch was brought by his parents to what is 
now known as Alameda County, where he has since resided, at present owning an estate of eleven 
hundred and fifty acres, which he rents, and maintains a residence himself in Pleasanton.  
Married Miss Francesca Soto, a native of San Mateo County, by whom there is no issue.

History of Alameda County, California�, Oakland, M.W. Wood Publ., 1883, p. 848