Golden Gate Park – Cervantes

Miguel Cervantes Memorial by Jo Mora

This work was presented to the City of San Francisco by J.C. Cebrian and E.J. Molera, September 3, 1916. It is so appealingly, Don Quijote and Sancho Panza looking up to their creator, the famous Spanish writer, Miguel Cervantes.

Joseph Jacinto “Jo” Mora, was born October 22, 1876 in Uruguay and died October 10, 1947 in Monterey California. Jo Mora came to the United States as a child, studied art in the New York, and worked for Boston newspapers as a cartoonist. He was a man of many other talents, art historian, sculptor, painter, photographer, illustrator, muralist and author.

Regarding the two benefactors:

“ONE of the most interesting private libraries in San Francisco is the property of E. J. Molera and John C. Cebrian, two young Spanish gentlemen. Associated together in their boyhood, schoolmates together ; partners in business in after life, their friendship has become so established and their interests are so identified, that they have accumulated a common library, every book of which bears the
stamp “Molera & Cebrian.”

This collection numbers more than two thousand volumes, and contains so many and valuable works
in the Spanish section, that we shall give a somewhat detailed account of its contents, trusting that
the scholar and student will find it of interest.

… This is the best collection of Spanish writers to be found, and one of the best of its kind ever published. The student may follow therein the true evolution of Spanish language and thought since the beginning of the thirteenth century; as it not only contains the classical or standard authors, but also any writer who has had any influence in Spanish literature, either for the better or for the worse. This collection contains the complete Spanish works of Cervantes, Quevedo, Calderon, Lope, Leon and their compeers, and even translations of some of their Latin works. ”

From Popular Science Monthly of December 1879:

A recent trial, in San Francisco of Molera’s and Cebrian’s system of dividing and distributing the electric light, is thus described in the San Francisco “Morning Call” of September 30th: “An exhibition of a new system of utilizing and dividing the electric light, recently discovered by Messrs. Molera and Cebrain, civil engineers, of this city…

This was apparently all an improvement on Edison’s electric light.

The gentlemen were true California immigrant pioneers and their lives may be more thoroughly investigated in the book “Conquerors, Immigrants, exiles: The Spanish diaspora in the United States”