Career
Reid was given the 13,319-acre (5390 km2) Rancho Santa Anita as a land grant by Mexican Governor Pio Pico in 1845. His reconstructed rancho home, known as the Hugo Reid Adobe, is located on the former estate of Lucky Baldwin at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, in what is now the town of Arcadia. Reid was nicknamed the Scotch Paisano during his days as a Scottish settler in Mexican Southern California.
Reid wrote a series of 22 letters which were published in the Los Angeles Star during 1852, and which provide an important ethnographic picture of the little–known Gabrieliño and were republished in book form several times.
He died in Los Angeles on December 12, 1852. His funeral was held at the old Our Lady Queen of Angels church, on Main Street in Los Angeles, and was buried in the adjacent cemetery.
His body was later moved to the Campo Santo (cemetery) on North Broadway (now the site of Cathedral High School), and then disinterred again and placed in the new Calvary Cemetery in the East Los Angeles section of the city.
