Mission
Preservation Foundation
Member, Gretchen Stroscher Thomson
Gretchen Stroscher Thomson's roots in the San
Juan Capistrano community go back more than a century.
Her grandparents, William and Frederica Stroschein
(who would later change their name to Stroscher), arrived in San
Juan in 1887. They purchased a ranch and lived in a farmhouse across
the street from the Mission. At the time, the town consisted of
little more than the Mission, a general store, several saloons and
some adobe residences.
The Stroscheins did not share the Catholic faith
of many of San Juan's residents; they were German Lutherans. They
banded together with local Protestants and built the town's first
Protestant Church, which would later become Community Presbyterian
Church.
Ms. Thomson's grandfather also served on the
town's first public school board, which built the town's first public
elementary school.
The Stroscheins were close friends with Fr. St.
John O'Sullivan, pastor of the Mission 1910-33. When O'Sullivan's
sister would come down from Los Angeles to visit her brother-priest,
she would stay with the Stroscheins. The Stroschein's son (Ms. Thomson's
father), Herbert, sang in the Mission choir, despite being a non-Catholic.
Herbert became a dentist and moved to Santa Ana.
The family frequently visited San Juan Capistrano, and were regular
visitors to its old Mission. She remarked, "As a girl, I remember
strolling through the Mission gardens, and enjoying the flowers,
the pepper trees and the fountains."
Ms. Thomson attended both Stanford University
and USC, and became a professor of history. She taught at USC and
for community colleges. She now works in land development and property
management, as her family still owns parts of San Juan Capistrano.
She is married and has three grown children.
Today, she lives part-time in Monarch Bay and
part-time on a ranch near Stockton in Northern California.
She is pleased to be a part of the effort to
preserve the old Mission today: "As a historian, I recognize the
importance of the Mission, both to California's history and that
of the United States."
