Background
Jonathan Trumbull Warner was born in Hadlyme, Connecticut, a descendant of Andrew Warner who was in Cambridge, Massachussets, as early as 1632. Jonathan's parents, who were distantly related, were Selden and Dorothy (Selden) Warner.
Jonathan Trumbull Warner was born in Hadlyme, Connecticut, a descendant of Andrew Warner who was in Cambridge, Massachussets, as early as 1632. Jonathan's parents, who were distantly related, were Selden and Dorothy (Selden) Warner.
He appears to have been well educated.
In the fall of 1830, in ill health, he reached St. Louis, and in the spring of 1831 was hired by Jedediah Smith as the clerk of a trading expedition to New Mexico. The party, with the exception of Smith, who was killed by Comanches, reached Santa Fé early in July. Warner then joined David E. Jackson's trading expedition to California, arriving in Los Angeles on December 5. For two years he trapped and hunted. At the end of 1833 he returned to Los Angeles, where he was employed by Abel Stearns, and in 1836 he opened a store of his own. About this time he changed his given name to Juan José, chiefly because his middle name was not easily pronounced by those who spoke no English, and had no Spanish equivalent. In December 1839, he set out on a visit to the East. While in Rochester, N. Y. , in August 1840, he delivered a lecture (later published both in England and in America), in which he urged the retention of Oregon, with the acquisition of California, and suggested the practicability of a transcontinental railway. He was again in California in June 1841. In 1843 he became a Mexican citizen, and on November 28, 1844, received a large grant of land in the Valle de San José, 110 miles southeast of Los Angeles. This was the beginning of what was known as Warner's Ranch, which became famous because of the many notable events occurring on or near it during and immediately after the war with Mexico. Warner was elected to the California Senate from San Diego County in 1850. The following year an Indian uprising drove him and his family from home, but on its suppression they returned. In 1855 he moved to Los Angeles, and in 1858 began publication of a weekly newspaper, the Southern Vineyard. In 1860 he was elected to the Assembly. He served for a time as provost marshal of Los Angeles and thereby acquired the courtesy title of colonel. By 1861 all of his ranch property had passed from his hands. He seems, however, to have retained a competency, and his later years were spent in leisurely quiet. He was the joint author (with Benjamin Hayes and J. P. Widney) of An Historical Sketch of Los Angeles County (1876). In 1884 he published a pamphlet, The Warm and the Cold Ages of the Earth in the Northern Latitudes. He also wrote "Reminiscences of Early California From 1831 to 1846, " which was printed in Annual Publications of the Historical Society of Southern California. Toward the end of his life he became totally blind. He died at his home, survived by several children.
Warner was six feet three in height, a stature that caused him to be familiarly known as Don Juan Largo (Long John). He was dignified, courteous, and friendly. Although essentially a man of peace, he was not without his share in the turbulence of the early days; he seems to have been a member of the vigilance committee of 1836 that put to death a woman and her paramour for an atrocious murder; he had an arm broken in a political row in 1838, and he was twice in serious trouble with the American authorities in the difficult years of 1846-49.
He married, at the mission of San Luis Rey, Anita, daughter of William A. Gale of Boston.
