The Two Adobes and the Armas Brothers

On School Street stand two adobes end to end, sole remaining structures of the Franciscan mission. Surmise from the best records is they were built about 1810 for quarters for members of the escolta.

Back of one, known as the Neary adobe since its purchase in 1864 by a young Irishman, Patrick Neary, is a well-cared-for garden which dates back to Spanish and Mexican days. Neary's purchase was from Felipe Armas.

About 1830 King Kamehameha of the Sandwich Isles appealed to California for vaqueros to subdue cattle which, running wild, were becoming a nuisance. Among the vaqueros sent were Felipe Armas and his brother, Joaquin. The former at least was a soldire in the San Francisco presidio company.

In 1845 the Armas brothers returned to California and established homes at Santa Cruz. Felipe had married in the islands and brought two daughters, four and seven years old. Record of their baptism here in 1851 lists their mother as "Maria Richason." Felipe remarried. His second wife, Antonia, daughter of Sebastion Rodriguez, grantee of Rancho Bolsa del Pajara, where Watsonville stands.

For residence Felipe bought the adobe from two Indians who had received it in the distribution of mission property. His deed, put on record when the county was formed in 1850, shows the purchase from "J. Petra y Isidro, indios."

Near the house was the well with its high curb. Back of it was a porch with a flight of steps leading to a little second-floor room in which, while Felipe was still occupant of the building, in 1853, the Santa Cruz Masonic lodge was organized.

When state and county goverments were formed in 1850 Felipe was made justice of the peace and member of the court of sessions. He acted on a committee which financed the county's first jail. IN 1860 he ran unsuccessfully for supervisor and soon afterward removed his family to Pescadero.

"Maria Richason", who was the wife of Felipe Armas in the Sandwich Isles, has been partially identified by R. S. Kuykendall, associate professor of history in the University of Hawaii. Two Richardson families lived in Hawaii in early days. A son of one, John, probably a brother of Armas' wife, was member of the Privy Council of the Kingdom of Hawaii, ten years in the legislature and eight years a circuit judge.

Joaquin Armas died a bachelor in Santa Cruz in December, 1850, leaving a will declaring he had worked for the king of "los Islos de San Dich" and that he and Felipe owned a house there.

The adjoining adobe passed into the hands of Roman Rodriguez, one of the sons of Jose Antonio Rodriguez, the Branciforte invalido settler of 1798, at the time of the distribution of mission property after 1834, and remained in the family until death of his granson, another Roman, in 1936.