Dr. Edward Turner Bale

Edward Bale sailed from England to California in the 1830s and settled in Monterey, where General Mariano Vallejo named him surgeon-in-chief of the Mexican Army. In 1839 he married Vallejo’s niece, Maria Soberanes, and in 1841 received a large rancho in the upper Napa Valley. There, cattle were raised for hides and tallow, wheat was planted along the river, and Bale built a gristmill to process locally grown grain. He also built a sawmill on his rancho, where logs were cut for the area’s early frame buildings. He died in 1849 at the age of 38, leaving his wife and six young children.

California · United States