Guns Garrett,
I am looking for a peculiarity ... my spreckled Spanish would not last for more than a minute or so. So the perfect persona, both from a historical and personal viewpoint, would be to emulate one of the many Yanquis who came to California prior to the Treaty of Guadelupe-Hidalgo in 1848, and married into a Spanish family, becoming Catholic and a Mexican Citizen. As such, their Spanish would not have to be perfect, and they would have one foot in both worlds, as a Yanqui turned Mexican Citizen who was repatriated back to American citizenship after the 1848 treaty.
Finding land grants in this area is fairly easy. Besides Sutter, there was a land grant that held most of what is now West Sacramento and Davis. I thought I had found my identity in Jared Sheldon ... but he was shot by miners and killed a year before I would be reenacting ....
Jared Dixon Sheldon, one of our earliest pioneers and originally from Vermont, came to California in 1832 and at some point afterward became a Mexican citizen. In 1842, Thomas Larkin, who was then the American Consul to Mexico, was awarded the contract for expansion and improvement of the Customs House in Monterey, which had been built in 1827. Jared Sheldon worked on this project for Thomas Larkin. Based on the size of the land grant he received as payment for services to the Mexican government on this project it could be assumed he was a foreman. He was granted Omochumnes Rancho, nearly 14,000 acres near present day Sloughhouse and Rancho Murieta, in 1843 for his work. It was there that he and friend William Daylor built a grist mill in 1845 to mill wheat for Capt. John Sutter on the Cosumnes River. To supply water to his crops south of the river he built a dam 16-ft high, double-walled of heavy oak, and filled with large stones. On July 12, 1851 he was shot and killed by 40 to 100 angry miners in the river below his dam. Also killed in the shootout were 2 of Sheldon’s 12 friends, James M. Johnson of Iowa and Edward Cody of Illinois. Three men were wounded, including a miner. The prevailing miners destroyed the sluice gate in the dam. They had unrecorded gold mining claims in the river-bottom on Sheldon’s land, which would be flooded by the rising water upstream from the dam. Subsequent floods continued the dam’s destruction, and hydraulic mining in Michigan Bar buried the remnants in silt. Public right of access to California streams was not clarified until 1879. This display shows how the mill worked and pictures of the remains of the mill. Various parts of the mill are now on display at the Heritage Park in effort to help preserve this part of our rich heritage. Plans are underway, as funding allows, to create a working model of Sheldon's Grist Mill.
So far, I have not found such a person .....