Even as a child, Robert Earle Lopez knew his family tree was deeply rooted in the soil of Los Angeles. He'd heard stories:
In 1826, when the City of Angels was a mere struggling pueblo, Lopez's great-great-great grandfather, Claudio Lopez, was the mayor. Claudio's son, Esteban Lopez, owned much of the land that is now Boyle Heights. Esteban's son, Francisco "Chico" Lopez, made a fortune as a cattle rancher; and Chico's son Frank -- Robert Earle Lopez's grandfather-- became one of the city's first auditors.
In 1838, Marie Rita Valdez, another ancestor, was granted the deed for what is now Beverly Hills. Francisco Lopez, a distant cousin, discovered gold while digging for wild onions at the foot of an oak tree in Placerita Canyon, six years before the 1848 find at Sutter's Mill sparked the California gold rush.
Robert Earle Lopez grew up believing that his Spanish pedigree was strictly upper crust, grounded in Castilian nobility, as his aunt used to say. But a clearer picture emerged years later, after Los Angeles' bicentennial celebrations in 1981.
That's when Lopez, digging deeper into his family's history, discovered that one of his great-great-great-great grandfathers was Luis Manuel Quintero, one of the original settlers -- or pobladores -- who founded El Pueblo de La Reina de Los Angeles on Sept. 4, 1781.
Quintero was the son of a black slave. Indeed, Lopez learned, more than half of the city's original settlers traced all or part of their heritage to Africa.
The fact that his forebear was not a Spanish blueblood came as a surprise. But Lopez quickly embraced the lineage that connects him to the original 11 families whose 44 members -- a group of poor farmers of African, European and Indian extraction -- laid the foundation for the second largest city in the United States.
"I come from one of the colored guys," the 86-year-old boasts. "I guess by the time it got to me, there wasn't much color anymore. Still, I'm proud to say I come from that ragtag group that founded Los Angeles."
Not everyone connected to the original 44 shares his view.
Robert Lopez likes to say that his mother missed the chance to cast a ballot in the first presidential election in which women had the right to vote. She was in the hospital giving birth to him on Nov. 2, 1920.
