Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker

Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker
Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker
Born	Arcadia Bandini 1825 San Diego, California
Died	1912 Santa Monica, California
Spouse(s)	Abel Stearns, Robert Symington Baker
Parent(s)	Juan Bandini and Marie de los Dolores Estudio

Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker (1825–1912) was a wealthy Los Angeles landowner and Californio.

Early life

Arcadia Bandini born 1825 in San Diego, California, the eldest of three daughters of Juan Bandini and Marie de los Dolores Estudio. Arcadia and her two sisters were considered the most beautiful women of California. According to tradition, the first United States flag flown over the plaza in Old Town San Diego on July 29, 1846, was made by Arcadia and her two sisters out of red and blue flannel dresses and a white crib sheet.^[1]

Marriages

To Abel Stearns

At age 14 Bandini married 43-year-old Abel Stearns. Stearns was a former U.S. citizen who became a naturalized Mexican and converted to Catholicism in order to do business and own property in Mexican California.^[2] He had become one of the wealthiest men in Los Angeles and Arcadia had a sizable dowry in land. They lived in an elegant adobe, El Palacio, in Los Angeles. He died in 1871.

During this period of her life, in the 1850s and 1860s, Bandini "ruled Los Angeles society."^[3]

To Colonel Robert S. Baker

In 1874 she married Colonel Robert S. Baker (1826–1894), owner of Rancho San Vicente y Santa Monica, where they settled. Baker died in 1894.^[4]

Arcadia de Baker died in 1912, and is interred between her husbands at Calvary Cemetery, East Los Angeles.^[5] She left an estate of $7–8 million, with no will. ^[6]

References

1. Patricia Baker (1969). "The Bandini Family". sandiegohistory.org. Archived from the original on 2014-06-12. Retrieved 2014-06-12.
2. "January 1902: Calvary Cemetery; Griffith J. Griffith". Ulwaf.com. Archived from the original on 2014-06-12. Retrieved 2014-06-12.
3. Eileen V. Wallis (Summer 2009). ""Keeping Alive the Old Tradition": Spanish-Mexican Club Women in Southern California, 1880-1940". Southern California Quarterly 91 (2): 133–154. doi:10.2307/41172468.
4. Baker Family
5. "Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker". Find a Grave. Retrieved 2010-08-09.
6. Iris H. W. Engstrand and Mary F. Ward (1995). "Rancho Guajome An Architectural Legacy Preserved". sandiegohistory.org. Archived from the original on 2014-06-12. Retrieved 2014-06-12.