March 9, 2002 — Martin R. Ruiz (II) was born in Los Angeles County, presumably in his parents' (Martin Sr. and Florestina) adobe in Bouquet Canyon, on March 6, 1868. He ran his own saloon in Newhall and, following his death on Feb. 26, 1900, his widow married another Newhall innkeeper, Nicanor H. "Nick" Rivera, who raised Martin's children.

Martin Ruiz (I) was a Sonoran who came to the Santa Clarita Valley in the middle-1800s. His progeny would spread throughout the local canyons.

Martin settled in lower Bouquet Canyon where he built his family home, an adobe, on the east side of the current Bouquet Canyon Road, roughly opposite today's Benz Road — either in 1865 or possibly earlier, after 1845, for Francisco Chari, who gives us the name buque (misspelled "Bouquet"). Buque (pronounced BOO-kay) was an old Californio word for "ship." Chari was a sailor.

At the time of the 1870 U.S. Census, Martin, 51, and his wife, Florestina, 38, had 9 children ranging in age from 3 months to 15 years. Most, probably all, were born in the Bouquet Canyon adobe.

One of them was Leonardo Ruiz, aka Leonard, born in 1858, who is credited with having helped to expand the adobe home (for obvious reasons) around the time Martin sold it in 1874 to another family patriarch in the making, an Italian immigrant named Juan Batista Suraco. Leonardo would later homestead a quarter-section of land, 160-acres, on the south side of Ravenna in Soledad Canyon. The patent was granted in 1899. Leonardo died in 1930 and was buried in San Francisquito Canyon — curiously not in the Ruiz family cemetery where...

Another son, Enriquez Ruiz, aka Henriquez, aka Henry Ruiz, born in 1854, married Rosaria Perea, daughter of lower San Francisquito Canyon homesteader Ramon Perea. Henry and Rosaria established their family on the Perea-Ruiz ranch in the canyon where almost all of them were killed in the 1928 St. Francis Dam Disaster.

Daughter Guadalupe Ruiz (1966-1947) married Francisco N. Dominguez and lived on the Dominguez Ranch in Piru. They had at least 10 children including "Lady Linda" (Linda Packard, then Linda Cullen), who would eventually move to a portion of the old Perea-Ruiz property in San Francisquito Canyon.

Another son, Martin Ruiz (II), born in 1868, ran a saloon in Newhall. He left behind two young daughters when he died in 1900.