Last updated: March 7, 2023
Person
Issac Slover
Quick Facts
Significance:
Important figure on the Old Spanish Trail
Place of Birth:
Pennsylvania
Date of Birth:
1810s
Date of Death:
1854
On 14 December 1849, a group of emigrants from Iowa arrived in California's San Bernardino Valley, exhausted after navigating Cajon Pass. Luckily for them, they stumbled upon the homestead of Isaac Slover and his wife, María Bárbara Aragón Slover, who regularly assisted travelers on the Old Spanish Trail. Isaac opened his smokehouse and supplied the famished travelers with bacon and squashes, a feat of generosity that seems to have been a regular occurrence. New settlers found that the Slovers would help them survive until their own crops had been planted and harvested.
Perhaps the Slover's own history motivated them to be helpful. Born in Pennsylvania, Isaac made his way to Taos in the 1820s, where he met the widow María Bárbara Aragón (and her two children). The Mexican government was beginning to grow weary of outsiders, but Slover's eventual marriage to Aragón, his conversion to Catholicism, and his acceptance of Mexican citizenship provided him with the means to trap and trade freely along the Old Spanish Trail. They relocated to California's San Bernardino Valley in 1837, and--along with other New Mexican emigrants--founded the communities of Agua Mansa and La Placita de los Trujillos in the 1840s.
In addition to hungry emigrants, established figures like Judge Benjamin Hayes and Captain Jefferson Hunt of the Mormon Battalion visited regularly. Hayes noted that Doña Bárbara’s home was a place that “one first comes to and never leaves without regret”; he also complimented her ability to make “the lightest tortillas, wheat or corn.” When Mormon emigrants entered the San Bernardino valley in 1851, the Slovers sent them two wagons loaded with enough food and supplies to get them through the winter; reportedly, Isaac and Bárbara visited them throughout that winter to look after their well-being. The Mexican-American War eventually disrupted trade and travel over the Old Spanish Trail, but the Slover homestead remained a beacon of hospitality on a restless and ever-changing frontier.
(Special thanks to University of New Mexico PhD candidate Angela Reinche for compiling this information)