In this brief account of the first Yorba to settle in what is now Orange County, one cannot help but recognize the many names mentioned by the author which have permanently attached themselves to our Southern California landscape. The children of José Antonio Yorba I married into the Verdugo, Sepulveda, Serrano, Alvarado, Ortega and Dominguez families, to name but a few.

The Yorba name itself is derived from the village and castle of Yorba in the district of Barcelona. José Antonio was born in the village of San Sadurni de Noyar near the ancestral village of Yorba. His birth date itself is not recorded, but is assumed to be shortly before July 20, 1746, the day he was baptized.

The author, a Yorba descendant, has done an admirable task putting together the brief known facts of José Antonio's early life with the recorded facts of the Portolá expedition and the later Spanish occupation of Alta California. Yorba was one of the first white men to gaze upon the Santa Ana River and later returned as the grantee of the land which became known as Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana. His history is truly that of the beginnings of Orange County.