Rancho Boca de Santa Monica

Ernest Marquez has been documenting his family’s history and that of California since the 1950s. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Aug. 10, 2013 11:36 AM PT

Ernest Marquez, at 89, is racing against his own mortality to write the definitive narrative of his family’s connection to Old California. “Historians have ignored my family’s role,” he said. “I want to correct that.” For decades he’s been collecting documents and artifacts that relate to his family’s Rancho Boca de Santa Monica.

Marquez holds a lantern slide projector slide holder, from the 1890s. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Ernest Marquez with a paper negative of an 1881 map of Rancho Boca de Santa Monica, showing the land divided among the wife of Francisco Marquez (his great-grandfather) and her five children. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Ernest Marquez at the Marquez family cemetery in Santa Monica Canyon, where he has directed his children to spread his ashes upon his passing. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Marquez at the gravestone of his grandparents in the Marquez family cemetery in Santa Monica Canyon. The cemetery, owned by Marquez, is the last portion of the original Rancho Boca de Santa Monica. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

A statue of San Lorenzo is protected from possible vandalism, behind bars at the entrance to the Marquez family cemetery. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)