What historian has not dreamed of a similar scenario? During the 1978 restoration of the family home of Thomas Fallon, an early mayor of San Jose, California, workers discovered an old manuscript secreted in a cavity behind the fireplace mantle. They gave it to Tom McEnery, a San Jose city councilman and history buff who had championed the restoration of the home. As McEnery looked over the faded pages, he became increasingly confident that what he held in his hands was the personal diary of Thomas Fallon—a window into the early history of San Jose that McEnery had done so much to uncover. Fallon was not only an early mayor, but also the man who raised the American flag over the seat of Mexican government in San Jose during the Bear Flag rebellion of 1846, signaling the new era of American government. McEnery first read the manuscript early in the summer of 1978, spent the next few months editing and researching the historical context of the journal, and published it before the end of the year, a task that he mused was “a worthy and timely accompaniment to the restoration of the Fallon Home itself. . . . in a very true sense the return of both the man and the house to the way they were over a century ago.”
Only it wasn’t. While the apparatus of the book declared it to be an edited historical document, it was actually an elaborate ruse that served a particular purpose—to bolster the character of a man Tom McEnery intended to be the historical mascot for a revitalized San Jose. Fallon’s was an American story, inspiring in much the same way that the Broadway smash hit Hamilton is inspiring: an immigrant makes good. Fallon emigrated from Ireland as a child. Embracing his new nationality, he Americanized his name from O’Fallon to Fallon. He traveled west, worked as a fur trader, joined John C. Fremont’s second expedition, arrived in California just in time to raise the American flag over the Juzgado in San Jose, befriended leading Latino citizens and business leaders, and married and raised a family with Carmel Castro Lodge, daughter of a prominent Californio landowner. To McEnery, Fallon appeared to be the perfect unifying symbol for the multicultural city of San Jose. Under his direction, Fallon’s historical monuments in San Jose would grow to include the restored mansion, a proposed educational curriculum, and a heroic-sized bronze sculpture of Fallon on horseback, carrying the American flag.