José de los Reyes Berryessa
Californio
José de los Reyes Berreyesa (6 January 1785 – 28 June 1846) was a Californio military officer and ranchero. He was born at Mission Santa Clara de Asís in Las Californias province of the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Spain (colonial México).
He was the third child and first son in the family of María Gertrudis Peralta and Nicolas Antonio Berrelleza. He served as an army sergeant at El Presidio Real de San Francisco.
In 1805, he married María Zacarias Bernal at Mission Santa Clara. The couple had 13 children during 1807–1833, with 10 living past infancy. They moved in 1834 to cultivate and hold land in the Almaden Valley, located in present-day Santa Clara County, California.
Rancho San Vicente
In 1842, José de los Reyes Berreyesa received from Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado a grant giving him one square league, or 4,438 acres (18 km2), of the land he had been cultivating, called Rancho San Vicente. It was located at the south end of Almaden Valley, near the Santa Teresa Hills.
The grant included a large section of the rocky hills upon which a rich source of mercury-carrying cinnabar ore was found in 1844–1845.
“José de los Reyes Berryessa” enters the record as californio. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what José, Reyes and Berryessa can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“José de los Reyes Berryessa” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, José, Reyes and Berryessa provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6294357. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1785, 1846, 1805 and 1807.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “José de los Reyes Berryessa”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow José de los Reyes Berryessa primary sources, José de los Reyes Berryessa archive and José research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “José de los Reyes Berryessa”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “José de los Reyes Berryessa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.