Francisco Garcia received one and half square leagues, and built an adobe house.[4]
James Watson (1800-1863), born in Scotland, arrived by ship from the
Sandwich Islands in Santa Barbara in 1824, and went to
Monterey. He established a hide and tallow business, and married Mariana Escamilla (1805-1871) in 1830. In 1850, Garcia sold Rancho San Benito to James Watson.[5] With the
cession of California to the United States following the
Mexican-American War, the 1848
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided that the land grants would be honored. As required by the Land Act of 1851, a claim for Rancho San Benito was filed with the
Public Land Commission in 1853,[6][7] and the grant was
patented to James Watson in 1869.[8]
Watson sold Rancho San Benito to Alberto Trescony of the adjacent
Rancho San Lucas in 1885.[9]
^Ogden Hoffman, 1862, Reports of Land Cases Determined in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Numa Hubert, San Francisco