A Brief History of the Family of Francisco Solano (1817–1871)
Francisco Sales de Jesús Solano was baptized 29 January 1817 in Ujarrás, a city located in the heart of the Central Valley in the province of Cartago, Costa Rica. His age is not given in the baptismal record. The translated record reads:
29 January 1817. Priest: Josef Joachin Hidalgo. "Francisco Sales de Jesús, legitimate son of Felipe Solano and Juana Albarado. Paternal grandparents Mariano Solano and Francisca Javiera Molla. Maternal grandparents Bernardo Alvarado and Thomasa Solano. Godparents Marcos Morales and Margarita Alvarado." [Archivo Eclesiástico de la Curia Metropolitana, Rollo SJ-264 Item 7, Ujarrás, F. 95 (or 28), Asiento 86. Translated by Lawrence Bouett.]
Ujarrás was an Indian village and farming community at the time Francisco Solano was baptized. Its population was decimated at the beginning of the 19th-Century due to epidemics of fever. From the beginning, Ujarrás was the home of some of the descendants of Juan Solano de Tapia, a frontiersman who appears in the list of passengers to the Indies whose original destination was Panama as servants of Doña Catalina Hurtado, wife of the lieutenant governor of what was then called Tierra Firma, and who finally entered what is now Costa Rica as part of the company of the conquistador, Juan de Cavallón, in 1561. A possible connection between the descendants of Juan Solano de Tapia, whose family was very influential during the colonization of Costa Rica, and the two ancestral Solano lines of Francisco Sales de Jesús Solano, has not been established. Details of the economic activities and the possessions of subsequent generations, however, as well as the characteristics of the connections to their ancestors, reinforce at least this possibility. As the information, taken collectively, affirms the contention of Mauritius Meléndez Obando, it is possible that the surname has persisted in Costa Rica to the present. ["Avance de investigación Francisco de Sales Solano Alvarado: un tico en el viejo oeste (Los Ángeles, California)" by Luis Alberto Sell Biasetti, in ASOGEH Informa, Boletín de la Asociación de Genealogía e Historia de Costa Rica, Año 2 No. 4, Febrero 2009. Translated and annotated by Lawrence Bouett.]