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Modesta Ávila (1867 or 1869 – September 1891) was a protestor in Orange County, California who became the county's first convicted felon and first state prisoner. Avila had only received a minor warning in 1889 for placing an obstruction on the tracks to protest against the Santa Fe Railroad being built through her property without adequate compensation, but she continued to taunt the authorities, and was eventually arrested four months later. Although the jury in her first trial was unable to reach agreement, Avila was convicted after a second trial at Orange County Supreme Court and was sentenced to three years in San Quentin State Prison. She died there of pneumonia in September 1891 after serving two years and seven months of her sentence. Today Avila is considered to be a folk heroine of Latino people of the county, and is suggested as the "White Lady", a ghost said to haunt the area, reported to have been seen walking along the railroad tracks since the 1930s. ==Background== Avila was born in 1867, or 1869 according to some sources, in San Juan Capistrano, in Orange County, California, located approximately southeast of Downtown Santa Ana. Little is known about her childhood and earlier life, but by the age of 20 she had inherited land from her mother just to the north of the Capistrano train station and was occupied in chicken rearing.〔 Physically Avila was described as a "dark-eyed beauty" in appearance and an "extremely proud woman".〔〔 The authorities would have considered her a Mexican even though she had been born in San Juan Capistrano and was technically a Mexican-American or Chicana; Mexicans were unpopular in the county at the time and subject to racism.〔〔 She had spent 30 days in Los Angeles County Jail in 1888 for "vagrancy" (often a euphemism for prostitution) and this, coupled with the fact that she was reportedly unmarried and pregnant at the time of her second trial, led to a belief that she supplemented her income by working as a prostitute.〔〔 The obituary in the ''Santa Ana Standard'' following her death in September 1891 seemed to add weight to this by referring to her as "a well-known favorite of the Santa Ana boys".〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Modesta Avila」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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