Juana Briones
(1802-1889)

Businesswoman, Healer, Landowner

Doña Juana Briones de Miranda was a Mexican-American pioneer who prospered through numerous changes, among them having three different flags over her homeland. She was one of the first three settlers in Yerba Buena before it became San Francisco. Though unable to read or write, she obtained a legal separation from her husband in an era when there was no divorce in Mexican-Californian society. When the title to her property was in doubt after the U.S. won the war with Mexico, her respect in the community allowed her to retain ownership of her property when many others did not.

Juana's mother and maternal grandparents traveled over 1600 miles to colonize California with the De Anza expedition in 1776. They were of mixed African and European heritage, coming from a colony of Nueva Espana (current day Mexico) where a racial caste system was prevalent. They came to the northern frontier where people of mixed heritage had more economic opportunities.

Juana was born in present day Santa Cruz, then called Villa de Branciforte. Her father was a retired soldier by then but still involved in military activities and was a founding member of Branciforte. It was to be a new type of pueblo in California using retired soldiers and their families. The Natives were the majority population at Branciforte and were always her close neighbors. Her knowledge of herbal medicine came from her interactions with them and her mother as well. As a curandera, or healer, she later cared for people who were sick or in danger, including Native Americans, Mexicans, and English. Refusing payment, she would say: "If they get well, I am satisfied."

Stanford University archaeologists have determined that native Californians lived alongside the Briones, as evidenced by artifacts--such as flaked and ground stone tools--found at an excavation of their house at El Polín Spring in Tennessee Hollow in the Presidio. The Briones family moved to this small valley in 1812 when Juana's mother died.

In 1820, Juana married a cavalryman stationed at the Presidio de San Francisco, which was at the time a fortified military village used for farming and livestock grazing with freshwater springs providing water year-round. She settled with her husband on land called Ojo de Agua de Figueroa. It bordered the Presidio near today's Green and Lyon Streets and was on a trail from El Polin Spring where her sisters still lived. Apolinario Miranda and Juana eventually had eleven children, three of whom died. It was common for families to set up household and later apply for ownership to Spanish authorities. Her husband was granted title to the property in 1833. After Mexico had won its independence from Spain, there was an increase in sailing ships visiting San Francisco Bay. While her growing family lived in the Presidio, Juana tended sick sailors and with her attic as sanctuary for deserting sailors, arranged for their passage to her brother's ranch in the East Bay. She could have received a bounty offered at the time.

In 1835 the Presidio was temporarily abandoned when Commandante Vallejo transferred his military headquarters north to Sonoma. Juana complained of her abusive husband and with the aid of a bishop and the alcade (mayor), and moved across the sandy wasteland to the western foot of Loma Alta (now Telegraph Hill). She built a one-and-a-half-story adobe--the first private house built between the Presidio and the Mission Dolores--with the title in her own name. She had a garden and cows and the enterprising Juana sold milk and vegetables to ships' crews and continued to be a nurse and midwife to the growing community. Without formal training, she treated smallpox and scurvy patients, delivered babies and set broken jaws, using remedies from local herbs. It was said the community of Yerba Buena was named for her healing mint tea made from this herb.

In 1844, Juana Briones de Miranda purchased a 4400 acre tract called Rancho la Purisima Concepcion to further expand her cattle and farming interests for her family. A part of her adobe home still stands on Old Adobe Road in Los Altos Hills in what is now Santa Clara County. When land holdings had to be confirmed by the United States government as a result of statehood for California, many lost possession. Juana succeeded in the complex process due to her tenacity, as well as surveyor's maps and carefully chosen advocates. Juana Briones' later life is well documented as she acquired several other properties. She was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Menlo Park in 1889. Although there are no surviving diaries, letters or photographs, traces of her life can be glimpsed in the many accounts of early travelers, as well as legal papers, newspaper articles, maps and deeds and old history books.

Her fame as a healer and her generosity made her a legend even in her own time, when today's North Beach was called La Playa de Juana Briones. In 1997, the State Department of Parks and Recreation honored her with a plaque at her home's site in Washington Square. In Palo Alto there is a park and a school named for her and the Juana Briones Heritage Foundation and other conservation groups work to preserve her house in Palo Alto and her heritage.

1. The following research states her birth year as 1796: 
J. N. Bowman, "Juana Briones de Miranda," Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly, September 1957. Both Stanford University and the JB Heritage Foundation cite this source.

(top of page)

Return to Biographies Home