Background
Botello was born about 1813 in Real de los Álamos in the Viceroyalty of New Spain (colonial México). Shortly after, he married a daughter of General Joaquin Ramirez y Sesma, commandment of the local Mexican military department.
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Narciso Botello
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In the first census of California under United States administration, in 1850, he was listed as married to Francisca Ruiz, with two children, Narciso and Francisca. He may also have had a third child, Maria, who is listed in the 1860 census. Botello died in East Los Angeles on November 20, 1889, at the age of seventy-six.
He was survived by a daughter.
At that time his home was on Hawkins Street in East Los Angeles
When Los Angeles was within Mexico, Botello was chief of staff for Mexican General Ramirez y Sesma. In 1833, he was provisionally granted four square leagues, or 17,706 acres, of the Rancho Santa Maria de Los Peñasquitos, but because he "failed to fulfill the requirements," the rancho was then granted to Jose Joaquin Ortega in 1843.
In 1837, Botello was secretary of the ayuntamiento of Los Los Angeles "He was for eight years Jefe de los Archivos of Los Angeles, and served a term as Prefecto.
In 1845 lands of Rancho Ex-Mission San Buenaventura were granted by the Mexican government to Botillo and a man named Jose Arnaz, and later it was said that the mission"s former lands were "illegally sold" to Arnaz.
Afterward, he was county recorder of Los Angeles County, or, in Spanish, jefe de archivos. He also was a prefeto or judge. In 1859, he was a notary public.
Botello completed two manuscripts — Anales del Sur de la California and Comunicaciones Sueltas de un Angelino — to which Hubert Howe Bancroft and his team referred in writing the Bancroft histories of California.
The former is now at the Bancroft Library.
Membership
After California became a state in 1850, Botello was the first member of the California Assembly in the California Legislature from the southern part of the state, and he served two terms. Botello was a member of the Los Angeles Common Council, the governing body of the city, in 1852-1853. In 1856, Botello was a member of several committees of the California Assembly, including one charged with "the use of Spanish missions in California in facilitating resources for war against the United States, revoking mission land grants/sales made by Pico, and continuing to rent the lands.".
