Bernardo Antonio Yorba (1801-1858) - Find a Grave Memorial

American Frontier Pioneer. He was an early California land grant pioneer, receiving a grant in 1834 encompassing 13,328 acres which today is the location of the historic city of Yorba Linda. He is remembered most for constructing a huge adobe hacienda in nearby Santa Ana Canyon. He named his land grant "Rancho San Juan Cajon de Santa Ana" and his new residence "San Antonio" after his favorite saint. The spacious two story adobe had over 100 rooms with the rancho having hundreds of employees to tend the vineyards, crops and cattle fed by water from the Santa Ana River marking the first large irrigation system in California. Bernardo liked young women. His first wife 16 year old Maria in five years between marriage and death gave birth to one son and three daughters. He next married fifteen year old Felipa who died giving birth to her twelfth child. His third wife he married by proxy and had a friend travel to Los Angeles on his behalf to take the marriage vows at the historic Plaza Church. Andrea was 29 years younger than her new husband but she bore him four sons. At the age of 57, Don Bernardo Yorba died leaving behind a large and prosperous rancho and twenty children. He was interred in the old Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles. He left the land for a cemetery, the Yorba Cemetery, in his will but it was not ready for a burial until 1862. He and 9 of his family members remained at Calvary until 1923 when they were all moved and reinterred at Yorba cemetery. His second wife, Felipa Dominguez, was one of those moved. His last wife, Andrea Avila, remarried and she is buried along with her second husband in an unmarked grave at the Yorba cemetery.