Fernando Tico (d. 1862) married
María Margarita López in 1821. By 1829, Tico had served as alcalde of Santa Barbara. López died in 1834, and he remarried, to María de Jesus Silvestra Ortega. Tico was granted the four square league Rancho Ojai grant in 1837. In 1845, Tico was granted 29 acres (0.1 km2) immediately to the west of the church at Mission San Buenaventura by Governor Pío Pico.[3] In 1855, Tico (along with José Ramón Malo and Pablo de la Guerra) was elected to the first Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors.[4]
In 1853, Tico sold the rancho to Henry Starrow Carnes of Santa Barbara. Carnes was a lieutenant in Stevenson's1st Regiment of New York Volunteers.[8] In 1856, Carnes sold the rancho to Juan Camarillo. In 1864, Camarillo sold the rancho to John Bartlett. (Camarillo then bought Rancho Calleguas.) In the first subdivision of the grant, Bartlett sold one third to John B. Church, and the remaining two thirds to John Wyeth in 1865.[9] Church and Wyeth were associates of Thomas R. Bard, representing Thomas Alexander Scott of the Philadelphia and California Petroleum Company. In 1874, the valley's first settlement was named Nordhoff in honor of an east coast journalist Charles Nordhoff who had publicized this special area. Not until 1917 did the town become known as Ojai.[10][11]
References
^Ogden Hoffman, 1862, Reports of Land Cases Determined in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Numa Hubert, San Francisco