Early Years
José Antonio Romualdo Pacheco, Jr. was born in Santa Barbara, California, Mexico to a prominent Alta California family. His father, Captain José Antonio Romualdo Pacheco, had moved to California from Guanajuato, Mexico in 1825, and served as an aide to Governor José María de Echeandía. Captain Pacheco was killed at the Battle of Cahuenga Pass in 1831, when the young Romualdo was just five weeks old. His mother, Maria Ramona Carrillo de Pacheco, was a sister-in-law of General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, and a daughter of Maria Ygnacia Lopez de Carrillo, the grantee of Rancho Cabeza de Santa Rosa. After the death of his father, Romualdo's mother married Captain John D. Wilson, a Scotsman, who sent Pacheco to Honolulu, Hawaii for his education.
At age twelve, Pacheco began an apprenticeship aboard a trading vessel. The Mexican-American War broke out two years later, and he was briefly held by American forces on one trip in July 1846 as he brought cargo to Yerba Buena (which is now San Francisco). The ship he was on was searched, and he made an oath of allegiance to the United States and was released.
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