5.4.3a Portrait of Eulalia Perez de Gien

Eulalia Perez, a Mexican California woman who spent her life in Southern California, was interviewed in 1877. She passed a year later at the age of 110. The mother of 12 children, she worked as part of the mission system — and is credited with inventing lemonade that the missionaries shipped overseas. As a result of her labor, mission authorities granted her a great deal of land around modern-day Pasadena. As a manager at Mission San Gabriel, Perez played an important role in the development of California. She also accumulated a great deal of wealth and land for herself, her family, and the Mexican government. In this excerpt of an interview she gave as a very old woman, she described how she worked for the Spanish mission system to create goods that would be bought and sold. What does her life story reveal about how and why people settled in North America?

Eulalia Perez, a Mexican California woman who spent her life in Southern California, was interviewed in 1877. The photograph was also taken at the time of her interview. She had 12 children, worked as part of the mission system, married a wealthy Spaniard, and was granted a great deal of land around modern-day Pasadena. She played an important role in the development of California by working as a manager at Mission San Gabriel (established 1771). She also accumulated a great deal of wealth and land for herself, her family, and the Mexican government. Perez’s life story provides one way for your students to understand the economic purposes of California as a Spanish colony, even as it became part of Mexico and eventually the United States. In this excerpt of an interview she gave as a very old woman in the 1870s, Perez described how she worked for the Spanish mission system to create goods that would be bought and sold.