Lights free person papers(copy)
*The birth of Allen Light in 1805 is celebrated on this date. He was a Black sea mariner.
Born in Philadelphia, he arrived in Santa Barbara, CA, in about 1830. Light hunted sea otters, gained Mexican citizenship, and guarded the California coastline against white and Native American poachers. In part because of heavily depleted otter populations, the Mexican government instituted conservation laws in 1830 and prohibited foreigners from hunting otters and participating in all coastal trade in Alta, California.
George Nidever (a sea otter hunter) and Light got around these laws by hunting under the license of Captain William Goodwin Dana, a Bostonian. He had migrated to Santa Barbara and acquired Mexican citizenship. In exchange for the use of his license and provisions, the otter hunters gave Captain Dana 40 percent of their catch. Hunting parties usually set out in groups of three canoes, each containing a gunman and two rowers. Once an otter was spotted, the hunter would stand at the head of the boat and shoot, aiming for the head to keep the precious pelt intact. Allen Light's excellent marksmanship soon made him famous along the southern California coast.
Later in 1836, Light signed on as a mercenary soldier in Juan Bautista Alvarado’s revolutionary army. Unwilling to accept the Mexican government's new centralist constitution, Alvarado marched into Los Angeles and subdued the city without bloodshed. Alvarado was appointed governor of California and paid Allen Light between $30 and $40 for his services. By 1839, Light had become a naturalized Mexican citizen. In January of that year, Governor Alvarado ordered an investigation into reports of an unidentified ship seen hunting illegally near Santa Barbara. Light testified that he had seen the same ship, the Llama, tracking otters two years earlier. The same John Bancroft who had ordered the attack on Allen Light's hunting party off Santa Rosa Island captained the ship.
That same year the Governor appointed Light “principal arbiter of the National Armada, assigned to the branch of Otter Fishing.” Light continued hunting sea otters for the next two years, sometimes traveling to San Juan Capistrano. In 1842, he decided to settle in San Diego. Records indicate that Richard Freeman, also a Black, bought a four-room, single-story adobe house from Henry Fitch for $96 on February 10, 1847, and lived there with Allen Light. The Freeman-Light House stood on the west side of the plaza beside the Casa de Machado and was said to have been a grog house or saloon. Light left San Diego in 1851.
In 1948, workers installing a heater in the Machado Chapel of Old Town discovered two documents buried behind two half-sized blocks of adobe walls. Both of the papers revealed the life of Allen Light. The older two documents were issued by a notary public in New York on November 27, 1827, and described Light as “a Colored man aged about twenty-two years old, born in Philadelphia." Commonly known as sailor protection papers, such a certificate could substitute for the "free papers" that states required Blacks to carry.
The Freeman-Light House became a part of Old Town State Park in 1967. Today, after over a century of being stashed in various hideaways, the Allen Light papers may be viewed at the San Diego Historical Society's Research Archives.
