Robert Cooper Grier

“ The next fact which we can admit as sufficiently proved is, the sale by Benito Diaz of the land claimed to Thomas O. Larkin, in September, 1846, reciting a grant or patent to Diaz, dated 25th of June, 1846. This instrument purports to be a patent or definitive title to Benito Diaz, for all the land included in the boundaries mentioned in the petition. The public fortifications which protect the harbor of San Francisco are not excepted. The value of such a grant might easily be anticipated, when the occupation of the country by the United States had taken place. ”

“ His certificate, that he has recorded it in the proper book, he does not prove to be true; or if he was at Santa Barbara, with Pico, on the 25th, how he could record it in Los Angeles, where alone the records were kept. If he executed and recorded it in Los Angeles, he does not explain why it is in the handwriting of Benito Diaz, and not drawn up by the clerks of the department as other grants; and how it came to pass that the date of the paper, and his certificate, are in the handwriting of Benito Diaz, who was at San Francisco, some five hundred and twenty miles distant ”

“ A petition of Benito Diaz, dated April 3, 1845, in which he asks for a grant of land which he calls 'a vacant place within the jurisdiction of San Francisco, known by the name of 'Punta de Lobos,' bounded on the north by the sea, which flows to the port of San Francisco ”