Chapter 5: San Diego's Mexican Community, 1850-1910

4. What changed among Mexicans to make them Mexican Americans?

The Table below shows social data for Old Town up to 1870. This provides us with a "snapshot" of the Mexican population of this era. They were the ancestors of the present day Latino residents of San Diego. Further research needs to be done to study the population living in the surrounding countryside.

Population for Old Town San Diego 1850-1870*
Residents 1850 1860 1870
Number of town residents 233 293 319
Number of rural residents 499 438 1981
Total number of residents in city and county 4 732 731 2300
Dwelllings in Old Town San Diego 1850-1870*
Residents 1850 1860 1870
Number of dwellings 63 96 117
Families in Old Town San Diego 1850-1870*
Type of Family 1850 1860 1870
Male head of household
Anglo 1 13 10 38
Mexican 19 8 6
Mixed 2 4 6 5
Female head of household
Anglo 0 3 0
Mexican 5 7 3
Total number of families 41 34 52
Families Employing Domestics 3 in Old Town San Diego 1850-1870*
Type of Family 1850 1860 1870
Anglo 0 2 4
Mexican 0 9 0
Mixed 0 1 0
Average Number Living in each Family in Old Town San Diego 1850-1870*
Type of Family 1850 1860 1870
Anglo 4.3 5.2 4.8
Mexican 5.8 7.2 6
Mixed 7.5 7.6 6
Anglo female-headed 0 5.6 0
Mexican female-headed 8.2 7 6

* Note that this does not include all Mexican Americans living in San Diego County, which until the late 1800s included present-day Imperial, Riverside, San Bernardino and part of Inyo Counties. The data reported here is for Old Town only. Provided courtesy of Alexandra Luberski, California State Parks.

Footnotes

  • 1Includes European born.
  • 2Anglo husband with Mexican spouse.
  • 3Includes female head of households.
  • 4Taken from Albert Camarillo. Chicanos in a Changing Society: From Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios in Santa Barbara and Southern California, 1848-1930. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979, 116.

Conclusion

The following picture of Mexican Old Town comes from this census data:

  1. While the Mexicans outnumbered the Anglos in the early years, their majority was due to women and children but by the 1870s even this numerical advantage disappeared.
  2. Mexican families were larger than Anglo families, but not significantly so, and very few families employed domestic servants. The largest families were "mixed" households and those headed by Mexican women.
  3. The number of "mixed" families in the pueblo were notable. In 1870 six out of thirty-four (18 percent) of Mexican American households were "mixed," meaning, in all cases, an intermarriage of an Anglo-American male with a Hispanic female. And ten years later the proportion was five out of fifty-two households (10 percent).
  4. There was an increase in the proportion of families headed by women with children. In 1850, five out of thirty-four Mexican families (excluding "mixed" households), or fifteen percent were female-headed. In 1860 the percentage rose to 46 percent; and in 1870 it stood at 55 percent.