46

Lot 46: 1833 Mexican Broadside - California

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles Start Price:1,500.00 USD Estimated At:2,500.00 - 4,500.00 USD
Lot   46: 1833 Mexican Broadside - California
<b>Autographs</b><hr><b>California Secularization Act of 1833 Broadside</b>

<b>(CALIFORNIA) Rare Early Broadside Secularizing Church Property in Order to Encourage Settlement.</b>
Letterpress Broadside, signed in type by President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and Secretary of State Carlos Garcia, in Spanish, 1 page, 8” by 11.75”, Department of the Interior, Mexico. November 26, 1833. Being the official notification of the Secularization Act. In Choice Extremely Fine.
Under the Spanish, California was held primarily by twenty families and the Church - a situation brought to an abrupt change by the revolutionary Secularization Act of 1833. With this law, the Mexican government would distribute the national domain, formerly held by the Church, to private petitioners with lavish generosity. Public land was granted not by the acre, as in the States, but by the square league. No service or pay was required - just that the grantee should occupy the land, build a house on it, and put several hundred head of cattle out to graze. Thus the mission era came to a sudden and dramatic close, and the golden age of the ranchos begun.