"People who take no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants" 
- Macaulay

The Berryessa Family Heritage

as written by my Grandfather Max J. Berryessa in his words, March 12, 1998

The first known ancestor in the Berryessa family line was Louis Cayetano Berrelleza, a soldier in the Royal Spanish Army which conquered Mexico in the 16th Century and occupied the land until early in the 19th century.  While stationed in Mexico, Luis courted and married Maria Micaela de Leyva, a native of the province of Sinaloa, Mexico. 

The Spanish Government at that time desired colonists to occupy the California Territory which was part of Mexico.  So in 1775 it commissioned Army Colonel Juan Bautista de Anza to form an expedition party of immigrants to the California territory to fulfill the purpose.  Anza set about recruiting a party of approximately 200 men, women and children, including quite a number of enlisted soldiers who were provided as a means of protection for the immigrants.  Each of the recruits was equipped with a set of clothing from head to foot and given pay and rations for the journey.  The party set out for California on October 23, 1775 and arrived in the San Francisco area on March 27, 1776.  Included in the party were the two children of Juan and Maria Berrelleza, Ana Isabel, born in 1754 and *Nicolas Antonio who was born in 1761.  The story has come down through generations that these two young people were very unhappy over the arrival of a stepmother in their home after their mother died, and seeing a chance to leave home, joined the Anaza Expedition.  Isabel was twenty-one at the time and Nicolas was just fourteen.  They made the journey in company with the Gabriel Peralta family.

Shortly after arriving in the new territory, Isabel married Juan Jose, a son of Gabriel and Francisco Peralta on October 10, 1779.  Nicolas also married into the Peralta family, choosing Maria Gertrudis, the youngest daughter in the family, as his bride.  Isabel and Juan Jose were never able to have children, but Nicolas and Maria had ten children, one of whom was my (Max) great-great grandfather, Jose de los Reyes who married Maria Zacarias Bernal.  This couple was blessed with fifteen children which included my (Max) grandfather, Frank Joseph Berryessa.  He, in turn, married Alice Rose Tucker in Ogden, Utah in 1883 and they became the parents of four children which included my (Max) father, Walter Samuel.

Early California records show that "The Berryessas of the early 1800's were among the wealthiest families in California whose property stretched for hundreds of thousands of acres over some of Northern California's finest lands.  Their individual holdings included foothills of what is now Sonoma County and much of the fertile Napa and Santa Clara Valleys.  This was a period of great promise for the Berryessa family, soon to be dampened, however, by misfortunes attributed to the influx of "foreigners" from the United States and the discovery of gold.  The plundering of the family's horses and cattle, the continued struggle with lawyers of those squatters who settled on their land and the murders of many of the male members of the family by marauding American soldiers, as well as American settlers, reduced the holding of the Berryessas to next to nothing."

The family name was originally spelled Berrelleza.  Since in Spanish the double L takes the sound of Y and Z takes the sound of S, the squatters who took over the land originally owned by the Berrelleza family found it easier to spell the name with an Anglicized spelling.  Thus, the name in the early California records was spelled Berryessa.  However, one of the sons of Nicolas Antonio Berrelleza, Antonio Nicolas by name, went to court to have the spelling of his named legally changed to Berryessa and so his descendents, even today, still use that spelling of their name.

For more information can be found here: