In 1800, when California and Mexico were under Spanish rule, a 7-year-old girl by the name of Apolinaria Lorenzana was one of 21 orphans sent to California from Mexico, in order to help Spain populate the region. All of the orphans had the same last name – Lorenzana – after the cardinal archbishop, who founded their orphanage. Apolinaria learned to read at the orphanage and worked hard to master writing by herself. By the time she was a teenager, she began to teach other girls at a mission in San Diego. She sponsored approximately 200 Indigenous and Californio (a term used to identify those of Mexican and Spanish descent during that time) children throughout her life, teaching them to read, write, sew, cook, and other necessary skills for the time. Spain had built 21 missions in California, in the late 18th century, in order to convert Native Americans to Catholicism and expand its territory. After Mexico won independence from Spain, the padres at Mission San Diego de Alcala gifted Apolinaria two ranches for her years of service and devotion, and she bought a third one. It was then that she became a rancher – and supervised workers constructing dams and raising crops like barley and wheat. After the U.S. took over California in 1848, Apolinaria was tricked by an American into signing papers giving her lands away. In her memoirs, she stated that she spent her last years blind and living in poverty. However, she was a pioneer of her time as a mixed-race single woman having had such authority, respect, and wealth, for much of her life.