Issue date: June 23, 1999
By Dick Barbour
The June 9 "Memories" reported on John T. Doyle, prominent attorney, Shakespearean scholar, and master of four languages.
He settled in Menlo Park in the 1860s and established an estate called "Ringwood" on property that is now part of the Menlo-Atherton High School campus. Previously we noted some of Mr. Doyle's legal achievements, one of them being his participation in legal action pertaining to the "Pious Fund of the Californias."
To appreciate that effort, we have to go back in California history, for that litigation lasted nearly a century and is one of the oldest and longest on record.
The Pious Fund came into being when the king of Spain ordered the Jesuits to possess California in the name of the crown, but not to turn their expense accounts into the royal treasury. Two missionaries, Fathers Salvatierra and Kino, then went about soliciting contributions from religious societies and private individuals. In 1697, the funds collected were placed in trust in Mexico City to help finance the missionary movement in upper and lower California. Interest in the Pious Fund contributed to the support of the missions until 1842, when the dictator Santa Anna ordered the entire fund transferred to his public treasury. During the next decade the fund and its original purpose became hazy in history.
In 1853, Archbishop Alemany, digging around in the archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, unearthed a bundle of documents relating to the Pious Fund. Enter John T. Doyle. He was retained by the archbishop to establish a claim for the church. Alemany could not have chosen a better investigator, for Doyle was not only a leading lawyer with a scholarly zest for California history, but he was fluent in Spanish. Years of research followed as Mr. Doyle studied treaties, Spanish history, and documents that were in Mexico City.
Finally, in 1870, Doyle presented his case before an American-Mexican Claims Commission and won a judgment of $904,700.79 for money accruing before 1869. The precision of his presentation might be suggested by the commission not bothering to round off the 79 cents. That decision was the first breakthrough.
In 1902, San Francisco attorney Garrett W. McEnerney pursued the claim and won more awards through the first international decision rendered by the Court of Arbitration at the Hague. Mexico continued installment payments from 1903 through 1912 and then suspended them until 1966, when they were resumed.
At last during the summer of 1967, after Mexico made a final payment of $719,546 for the benefit of the bishops of California, the State Department announced that the claim was totally settled.
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