Brief
History:
Marin County is one
of the original 27 counties of California,
created February 18, 1850, following
adoption of the
California Constitution of 1849 and
just months before the state was admitted
to the Union. The Mission San Rafael
Arcángel
According to General Mariano
Vallejo, who headed an 1850 committee to
name California's counties, the county was
named
for "Marin," great chief of the
tribe Licatiut." Marin had been named
"Huicmuse" until he was baptized as
"Marino" at about
age 20. Marin / Marino was born into
the Huimen people, a Coast Miwok tribe of
Native Americans who inhabited the San
Rafael area. Vallejo believed that
"Chief Marin" had waged several fierce
battles against the Spanish. Marino
definitely did
reside at Mission Dolores (in modern
San Francisco) much of the time from his
1801 baptism and marriage until 1817,
frequently serving as a baptism
witness and godfather; he may have escaped
and been recaptured at some point during
that
time. Starting in 1817, he served as
an alcalde (in effect, an overseer) at the
San Rafael Mission, where he lived from
1817
off and on until his death. In 1821,
Marino served as an expedition guide for
the Spanish for a couple of years before
escaping and hiding out for some
months in the tiny Marin Islands (also
named after him); his recapture resulted
in a
yearlong incarceration at the
Presidio before his return to the Mission
San Rafael area for about 15 years until
his death in
1839. In 2009, a plaque
commemorating Chief Marin was placed in
Mill Valley.
Another version of the origin of the
county name is that the bay between San
Pedro Point and San Quentin Point was
named
Bahía de Nuestra Señora del Rosario
la Marinera in 1775, and that Marin is
simply an abbreviation of this name.
|
