A son of Gen. Mariano Vallejo had a tough act to follow given his father’s status as one of the most important figures in early California history. But Platon Vallejo made his own mark, becoming the first native-born Californian to be commissioned a U.S. Navy officer and to be licensed as a physician in the state.

Studious and observant, Platon also learned to speak English, Spanish, French, Italian and the unwritten Native-American language of the Suisuns, a Patwin tribe whose members included “Chief” Solano, his father’s trusted ally in protecting Mexican settlers in Northern California.

Besides his decades of medical service mainly in Vallejo, a city named after his father, Dr. Vallejo also wrote, producing a family memoir and a strong defense of California Indians who he said were unfairly labeled by some early-day historians as lazy, dirty, stupid and hostile. Referring to John McGroarty’s book California, Its Story and Romance, Vallejo once wrote, “I have seen histories invented by men who would not tell the truth — if they knew it — but preferred to write and tell lies, lies, lies!”

Dr. Vallejo also had no use for a common view that Californios — pre-statehood residents who, like his family, had lived under Spanish and Mexican flags in what became our nation’s 31st state in 1850 — were insignificant and addicted to leisure in contrast to hard-working Yankees who swarmed into the state during the Gold Rush.

Born on Feb. 5, 1841, in Sonoma, Platon was one of 14 children of Gen. Vallejo and his wife, Dona Francisca Benicia Carrillo. With Gen. Vallejo in charge of Mexican military forces north of San Francisco, the family home was the scene of much activity. As a boy, Platon met military men, explorers, government officials and world travelers. At age five, he witnessed the infamous Bear Flag Revolt, involving a small group of American settlers who rebelled against the Mexican government and proclaimed California an independent republic. Gen. Vallejo tried to negotiate with the settlers when they arrived at his Sonoma home but wound up being jailed for several weeks at Sutter’s Fort in Sacramento.

Platon was educated in secondary schools in Benicia, San Francisco and Baltimore, MD. At age 19 he entered Columbia University in New York as a medical student and graduated near the top of his class in 1864. His studies were interrupted temporarily in 1862 when he treated injured Union and Confederate soldiers, many of them wounded during the Civil War’s bloody Second Battle of Bull Run. His volunteer service in the New York Sanitary Commission Voluntary Surgeons was in the Washington, D.C., area and northern Virginia.

Following his 1864 graduation, Platon joined the Navy as a commissioned officer and served a year as assistant surgeon on the USS Farallones, a storeship stationed at Mare Island. That was followed by service as a ship surgeon with the Pacific Steamship Company.

On one of his many voyages Platon met Lily Wiley, and they were married in 1867. At that point, he decided to establish a family medical practice in Vallejo, where a brother and two sisters were living. Within a few years the couple had built a home, still standing, at 420 Carolina St. Over the ensuing years, he became a well-known physician and surgeon, with a practice that extended beyond Vallejo to Napa, Marin and Contra Costa counties. He also assisted with surgeries on Mare Island.

Dr. Vallejo also was a story-teller who, in the words of one current historian, had “a penchant for testing the limits of credulity.” He relied in part on tales heard from family members and from an old Indian named Tomo, who herded sheep for the Vallejos and also was assigned to “herd” Platon when he was a boy. It was Tomo who taught Platon the language of the Suisun — or Suysun, the spelling that Platon preferred.

In a 1914 memoir, Vallejo wrote about various Indian place names, stating that Mount Tamalpais was a corrupted version of Temel-pa, meaning “near the sea” in the Suysun language; and the source of Petaluma’s name was pe-talu-ma, three Suysun words that translate as “Oh! Fair land.”

As for Sonoma and its “Valley of the Moon” meaning, Vallejo said his father stated the name came from Sano, the Suysun word  for moon. But Tomo told him the Suysun word actually was Sono, or nose, and the Indian name Sono-ma honored a great tribal leader from the distant past who had a big nose. “Everyone is welcome to make his choice,” Vallejo wrote. “For myself, I like best the moon version, because it fits better with present facts. The nose has long since passed into dust, the moon is ever here.”

Historian Lee Fountain, in a well-researched 1991 Solano Historian article, said Vallejo “enjoyed a rich and significant life. Born to comparative luxury, reared in a devout and caring family, educated in the classics and medicine to serve his community, he fulfilled his destiny well.

“He saw his world change from a frontier wilderness to a suburban community in the shadow of a growing metropolitan sphere. In this world, he served unstintingly as a surgeon, obstetrician and family doctor. He reared his family of four daughters by himself after his wife’s death (in 1885). He was the mainstay for his aging parents; he was quoted by other doctors as never sending a bill for his services.”

Dr. Platon Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo died at age 84, on June 1, 1925, at the San Francisco home of his daughter, Francisca Vallejo McGettigan. He was buried in St. Vincent’s Cemetery in Vallejo.

— Vallejo and other Solano County communities are treasure troves of early-day California history. The “Solano Chronicles” column, running every other Sunday, highlights various aspects of that history. My source references are available upon request. If you have local stories or photos to share, email me at genoans@hotmail.com. You can also send any material care of the Times-Herald, 420 Virginia St.; or the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum, 734 Marin St., Vallejo 94590.