San Diego Historical Society

John Forster hid his brother-in-law, Pio Pico, at Mission San Juan Capistrano, from Fremont’s “dragnet.”

John Forster came to California from Liverpool, England, in 1833. He brought five pairs of shoes, $30 in cash, $75 in “safe-debts,” and some otter skins. Fifteen years later he’d become a California b y Don. By the time he died, in 1882, he had “owned or controlled” over 320,000 acres in Southern California, including present-day Mission Viejo, San Juan Capistrano, Camp Pendleton and Oceanside, National City and Chula Vista, Catalina Island, “and a great deal in between.”

Forster set out for California on the Roselle, a British brig, in 1830. For two and a half years, he worked with his uncle, James Johnson, in Guaymas, Mexico. Johnson was a smuggler, “which at the time carried the trait of respect and legitimacy as an occupation. The consumer, merchant, and the government expected this in ship-trading activity.”

In 1833, Johnson and José Antonio Aguirre of San Diego purchased the Facio, a brig that made cargo runs from Mexico to Alta California. Johnson and Forster had cartas de seguridad, which granted them safe passage. While the Facio was docked in San Diego harbor, Johnson and Forster bought $50,000 worth of “Chinese goods.” For the next two months they sailed up and down the California coast, selling their wares. By voyage’s end, Forster had become capitán de bandera, ship’s captain.

While working for his uncle, Forster gained the equivalent of a postgraduate education in the terrain, business, customs, regulations, and languages of Alta California. Late in 1833, Forster left his uncle. With a guide, he headed inland, through Mexico to Fort Yuma, and finally to Los Angeles, where he would seek his fortune. Forster was 18.

Some years later, he signed a three-year contract with Abel Stearns. As Stearns’s agent, he received 400 pesos— half in cash, half in trade — and half of the net from all transactions. He worked a store at Mission San Luis Rey, then a store at Pala, later at San Juan Capistrano. He also collected debts owed Stearns: “These were paid in cash, otter skins, sweat clothes, shoes, rice, and small sharks.”

While working for Stearns, Forster married Dona Ysidora Pico, sister to Don Pio Pico, who became governor of Alta California in 1845. They lived at Stearns’s Casa de San Pedro, where Forster eventually became captain of the Port of San Pedro, in 1842. “While operating the port, Forster became well known for his hospitality to visiting dignitaries.”

The port itself, according to Richard Henry Dana, was less hospitable. “The worst place we had seen yet,” he writes in Two Years Before the Mast (1840), “especially for getting off hides, and our lying off at so great a distance looked as though it was bad for south-easters.” Once the hides were unloaded, the crew often had to lug them “up the hill” as well. Stearns’s San Pedro business, however, exported an estimated $100,000 annually.

Between 1843 and 1845, Forster acquired titles to Rancho Nacional, Rancho Mission Vieja, Valle de San Felipe, and, with partner lames McKinley, the mission lands of San Juan Capistrano (the latter for an estimated $700). He may also have owned Rancho Trabuco and Rancho San Mateo as well. In three years he accumulated over 74,000 acres. He severed his ties with Stearns, moved his family into the main building of the San Juan mission, and encouraged the Rancho families of Orange County to call him either “Don Juan Forster” or “Don Juan Capistrano.”

For the rest of his days, “Living the life of a large landowner in California occupied most of Forster's time.” Battling to keep his holdings intact occupied much of that In 1846, when the war between the United States and Mexico commenced, Forster took control of all mission property — mostly stock and foodstuffs — at San Luis Rey. When the American forces, led by John C. Fremont, arrived, “Fremont became furious and viewed Forster as a foreigner who sided with the Californios and swore he would shoot Juan Forster.”

Fremont drove his forces north, to Mission San Juan Capistrano, “with the intent to capture and execute” the Englishman sympathetic to Mexico. They met, talked, and “tempers cooled down.” Forster told Fremont he “favored any government, whether it be the present one or the United States, which could guarantee permanent stability for the area.”

Forster mollified Fremont. At the same time, he hid his brother-in-law, Pio Pico, at Mission San Juan Capistrano, from Fremont’s “dragnet.” The most wanted Californio, Pico fled to Mexico with mules, horses, and supplies. Somehow he escaped American forces: Fremont’s, heading south from Santa Barbara, with 200 men; and General Stephen Watts Kearney’s, moving north from San Diego. The two armies formed a “pincer movement catching the Californios between them.” The aim: to put a swift end “to open hostility against the invading Americans.”

On January 2, 1847, Kearney and Commodore Robert Field Stocktons joint force camped at empty Mission San Luis Rey. “They received 28 yoke of oxen from Forster to assist them on their journey to Los Angeles.” Forster also warned them that Don Andres Pico had an army of 600 Californios awaiting them. Later, he rode north to warn Fremont “The line of march by the Americans underwent a tactical change based upon the information furnished by Forster, and probably annihilation at the hands of the Californios had been avoided.”

Andres Pico “secured a favorable settlement for his followers from John C. Fremont” and the war ended, January 13, 1847, with the “Capitulation of Cahuenga.”

Even in peacetime, Forster labored on an epic scale. In 1851, he sold 500 wild mares and 14 stallions to the California Stage Company, at $20 a head. And he would make Lonesome Dove-sized cattle drives from Capistrano to Sacramento, horses to Utah, and cavalry mounts to forts in Arizona.

To protect his lands from subdivision and fight encroaching tax strictures, Forster always made donations —today we’d call them bribes — to various governmental committees. “In 1858 all of his property came under close scrutiny of a federal survey team,” who questioned the legitimacy of Spanish land grants. The survey, however, justified his claims, “and the ranchero breathed a sigh of relief.”

Cave J. Couts was Forster’s friend and neighbor rancher (a sign of that friendship: Couts named two of his children Ysidora Forster Couts and John Forster Couts). Both “assisted local law-enforcement agencies [to] enhance the tranquility of the surrounding countryside.” In other words, they became famous—infamous, some suggest — for their treatment of criminals. They chased down Army deserters, “corralled” cattle thieves, captured murderers, and made sure justice was swift. “Forster could not understand the apathy displayed by the ranchers in the area with regard to capturing and punishing cattle thieves.”

When sheepherders wanted to graze on his empire, they’d leave suddenly, often at night. Forster and Couts also had “a reputation for disliking squatters and had, in the past, been accused of mistreating them.” When smallpox hit San Juan Capistrano in 1863, Forster moved his family, temporarily, to Los Angeles. In the interim, 15 squatters were mass-murdered on his property. Forster was arrested and imprisoned for the crime, though he wasn’t in the area when it happened No one proved the accusations, and charges were dropped.

Around 1870, Forster relocated his family to Rancho Santa Margarita. He “lived the life of a baron” and “permitted only the Spanish language to be spoken within the hacienda. The Indian servants were from the Mission San Luis Rey and the surrounding area. All of the cooking fell to a Chinese servant.”

Forster became Supervisor of the First District of San Diego — representing San Luis Rey, San Jacinto, Temecula, and San Pasqual. “He traveled to Sacramento to lobby for county projects such as a new courthouse, a new jail, a new county aid bill, and for the San Francisco and San Diego Coast railways.”

Forster’s land went farther than where the eye could see. At one time, he even had his own city. Dutch settlers wanted to homestead “along San Onofre Creek, where it empties into the Pacific.” Forster granted 40 acres to each family “who would spend at least $1000 a year on improvements to [his] land.” Many thought it a “promotional stunt,” but in 1873,“Forster City came to life.”

The Dutch government, dubious, sent a committee to inspect the site before sending the settlers. Due to a severe drought, the committee “found not one blade of green grass anywhere” and made an unfavorable report.

In 1878, a second Forster City had roads, lumber stored for buildings, and 35 families. But within a year the community “dissolved as quickly as it had sprung up. Lack of men and women to till the soil and erect new structures, coupled with harsh weather and dwindling incomes” contributed to the demise. As did growing debts that prompted Forster to sell parcels of his land to homesteaders and replace his herds of cattle and horses with sheep.

When he died, in 1882, Forster’s funeral “surpassed anything yet seen in the state. Thousands of mourners crowded into the railway station in Los Angeles to meet the train which bore his body. The internment took place in the Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles.”