Ragusa/Dubrovnik in History
The fortress city featured in the picture at the top of my home page has been recently featured in the popular television series Games of Thrones. Historically an independent city-state in the Adriatic Sea, then later part of the Venetian Empire of Medieval and early modern Europe, Ragusa anchors the southern part of the Adriatic region of Dalmatia, and became Dubrovnik with the creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after World War I.
When my maternal grandparents left Dalmatia for America at the end of the 19th century, this region was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. My grandfather Marco Tomasevic came from a town near Ragusa, which dates from the 7th century AD, while my grandmother Maria Skorlic was born on a small island near the northern Dalmatian city of Zadar, which dates back to the 4th century BC.
Both Marco and Maria would arrive in San Diego at the beginning of the 20th century, where Marco would become a successful businessman and president of the downtown San Diego Restaurant Owners Association. Marco and Maria would eventually move to the neighborhood of Kensington in San Diego, where in the early 1950s they built a home overlooking Mission Valley and Mission San Diego de Alcala on land that had been owned until the early 1880s by the descendants of Santiago Arguello.
Northern New Spain
The earliest records that I have of my paternal ancestors come from the northern frontier outposts of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Jose Dario Arguello was born in Queretaro, New Spain, some 130 miles north of Mexico City, in the early 1750s. As a young man he joined the Spanish army as a soldier, and rose in the ranks to serve as a sergeant at the presidios of Altar, Pimeria Alta (Sonora) and Tubac (picture below right) , some 50 miles south of Tucson. At Altar he married Maria Ygnacia Moraga, the daughter of the Spanish officer Jose Joaquin Moraga in 1781.
After Jose Dario’s promotion to Alferez (sub-lieutenant), they t
hen traveled overland with other colonist and soldiers to Alta California, where on September 4, 1781 Lt. Arguello was present, and recorded the distribution of lands to the first pobladores (settlers) of El pueblo de Nuestra Senora La Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula, aka Los Angeles.
Moving on from this new settlement he and his wife would settle at the Presidio of Santa Barbara, then later at Monterey and finally in 1787 at the presidio of San Francisco (pictured left), where Jose Dario would 
serve off and on as commandant from 1787 to 1791, and again from 1796 to 1806, and later as military governor of the province from 1814-1815.
Jose Dario and his wife Maria Ygnacia would have 13 children in Alta California, one of whom, Santiago, my great-great-great grandfather, would arrive in San Diego during the late 1810s, the last years of the Spanish Empire in North America. By the early 1820s, with the independence of the new Mexican Republic, Lt. Santiago Arguello would serve as commandant of the San Diego presidio from 1830-35. He was also involved in the north-south political divisions and rebellions of the province. At the time his brother Luis, also a military officer at the presidio of San Francisco, was the first elected governor of the Mexican province of Alta California.
At the time of the outbreak of war between the United States and Mexico in 1846, Captain Arguello was in charge of the Port of San Diego. He and several other Californios, including Miguel Pedrorena and Juan Bandini, welcomed the American occupation of San Diego. Captain Santiago Arguello joined the California Battalion, led by Lt. Col. John C. Fremont, and was commissioned as a Captain by Commodore Robert Stockton, commander of the U.S. Pacific Squadron. He would continue as Captain of the port of San Diego through the 1850s.
The Pacific War 1941 – 1945
The Arguello tradition of military service was continued by my father, Alexander, during the Pacific Campaigns of World War II. Drafted into the US Army in April of 1941, he quickly rose from Private to Staff Sergeant while a member of the California-based Seventh Infantry Division.
SSG Alexander (Huey) Arguello participated in the following campaigns, and was awarded two Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart:
- Aleutian Islands – Attu
- Marshall Islands – Kwajalein
- Philippine Islands – Leyte
- Okinawa