Art and "The Haunting of Mission Santa Cruz, Mexico" book on show in Old Villa de Branciforte

The photograph is of "The Magnolia Rose", the grande hotel was built in Capitola on the Spanish land grant to Martina Castro 1808, when Mission Santa Cruz was Mexico. Her son Jose Joaquin Castro was the Governor of Alta California, Mexico at Port Alviso from 1800 to 1831 when he moved to the Castro Adobe in Watsonville (then called Pajaro). This grande hotel was part of the massive land grabs of California after the American civil wars of 1856 to 1865 and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1866. The Castro’s land would be stolen in 1876 by a group of Puritans working underground with the Freemasons. The so-called founder of Santa Cruz was A. F. Hearnes, or Hinds, and is also Heinz of the Tomatoe Ketchup. He and his partners planned and executed the murders and disappearances of the last Castro heirs to Rancho San Andres (Soquel, Capitola, Aptos, Branciforte) and Mission Santa Cruz became “a city” one year later, in 1877. The name “Hearne” comes from German, and means “Mister”. It is the origin of the names “Neary” and “Kearney”. They are people and place names now.


Mission Santa Cruz was a Spanish-Moorish Mission, Villa de Branciforte was a port on the Monterey Bay and Capitola was the Capitola of Alta California Mexico and the Spanish-mexican navy was under Governor J. Joe Castro since 1787, and his then son-in-law by 1840. Gov. Joe Castro governed from the so-called haunted “Rispin Mansion” on Soquel and Wharf. This solid stone, 4 story, 22 bedroom mansion was the North Mexican White House used for international diplomacy by the Governor Joe Castro I (1797-1800), the famous Luis Maria Valenzia (1800-1831) and Governor Joe Castro II, from 1837 to 1867.