Interesting facts about father francisco palou picture

Relación Histórica de la vida y apostólicas tareas del Venerable Padre Fray Junípero Serra, y de las misiones que fundó en la California septentrional, y nuevos establecimientos del Monterey

Mexico: Imprenta de Don Felipe de Zuniga y Ontiveros, calle del Espiritu Santo, 1787. Small quarto. [28], 344pp. 1 engraved portrait, 1 folding engraved map. (Abrasion on top edge of text block).

Contemporary vellum, manuscript title on spine (lightly rubbed, ties lacking). Housed in a half morocco and cloth folding box, spine gilt.

A primary source for information on the history of early California.

An outstanding book on early California. Palou was a disciple of Father Junipero Serra (1713-1784) for many years, and his work is still the principal source for the life of the venerable founder of the California missions. "The letters from Father Serra to Father Palou [provide] interesting details on the various Indian tribes and their manners and customs, together with descriptions of the country...This work has been called the most noted of all books relating to California" (Hill). "Both a splendid discourse on the California missions, their foundation and management, and an intimate and sympathetic biography of the little father-present. Better, by long odds, than the bulk of lives of holy men, written by holy men" (Libros Californianos). The map shows the locations of nine missions (of an ultimate total of twenty-one) and also the presidios at San Diego, Santa Barbara, Monterey, and San Francisco. "[The map] is of interest here because it seems to be the first on which a boundary line was drawn between Lower and Upper California" (Wheat). The plate is a portrait of Serra. First edition, second issue, with "Mar Pacifico" printed on the map (see Wagner). This is also the issue of the text with "car" instead of "pro" at the end of the index and with the phrase "a expensas de various bienhechores" p

Historical Essay

By Brother Guire Cleary, S.S.F.

The First Years of Franciscan Exploration and Presence
at the Port and Mission of San Francisco de Asís: 1769-1810

A story is recounted by the first Franciscan pastor of Mission Dolores and reputedly California’s first historian, Fray Francisco Palóu, about the naming of San Francisco. When the Inspector General of Mexico in 1768 informed Fray Junípero Serra of the names of the missions to be established in Alta California, Serra remonstrated saying, “Sir, and is there to be no mission for Our Father St. Francis?” José de Gálvez jested, “If St. Francis desires a mission in his honor, let him see to it that his port is located, and his name shall be given to it.”1 The mythology of our city’s naming begins with a challenge and a jest. Like so much of our history, the story may have gotten better in the telling. Franciscan historian Maynard Geiger opines that Palóu may have “...deliberately dramatized an event in conversation which merely occurred in correspondence.”2 Drama is a remarkably consistent component of San Francisco’s history. That Gálvez is said to have had bouts of mental instability3 might also make him a model for the politics of our city. This article sets out some of the history of the Franciscans at San Francisco, from Serra’s desire for a mission to be named after the founder of the Order of Saint Francis to the apex of Franciscan prosperity in 1810. It cannot be repeated too often, however, that what commonly passes for the history of this region is merely the thinnest veneer of 230 years of Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo experience on a bedrock of 12,000-15,000 years of human community contained in the largely unrecorded history of the First Peoples.

Oil portrait of the founder of Mission Dolores and California's first historian, Fray Francisco Palou. The artist was Tomas Horrach Bibiloni of Palma, Mallorca, Spain. It is inscribed as follows, "Father Francisco Palóu, O.F.M. 1723-1789.