Don Jose de los Reyes Berreyesa was born at Mission Santa Clara de Asis in Alta California, the third child and first son of two members of the Anza expedition of 1776.

His father was Nicolás Antonio Berrelleza; his mother was María Gertrudis Peralta. His parents were married October 10, 1779 at Mission Santa Clara de Asís (the location was later known as Santa Clara, California).

He was married to Maria Zacarias Bernal (1791-1869), and they were the parents of 11 boys and 3 girls. Among their children who survived to old age were Maria Petra Magdalena Berreyesa Fernandez, and Maria Loreto Berreyesa Bojorques.

In time, Berreyesa was given a land grant that included the location of present-day San Jose, California, and the site of the New Almaden quicksilver (mercury) mine. He was the patriarch of a wealthy and well known family in the San Francisco Bay area.

Berreyesa was murdered during a journey from Santa Clara to the town of Sonoma, after being summoned by relatives because three of his sons had been jailed as political prisoners during the Bear Flag Revolt. The Revolt was an uprising by a small number of illegal aliens (from the United States). At the time, his son Jose de los Santos Berreyesa was the alcalde (mayor) of the town of Sonoma.

During his journey, he was accompanied by two youths, Francisco and Ramon de Haro, the eldest twins of his late cousin Miliana de los Reyes Sanchez de Haro and her husband Don Francisco de Haro (himself a former alcalde of Yerba Buena). They traveled by rowboat across San Francisco Bay, from Point San Pablo in present-day Contra Costa County to Point San Pedro in present-day Marin county. After the boys obtained horses in nearby San Rafael, they returned to Point San Pedro to retrieve their saddles. The two unarmed boys, who were only 18 years old, were murdered by three gunmen in front of Berreyesa, as they were carrying their saddles.

When Berreyesa asked the three killers why they had shot and killed the two boys, they then shot him dead as well, then stripped the clothing off Berreyesa and the de Haro boys, leaving their naked bodies on the ground.

The killers assured that there would be no attempt at a Christian burial. The local Native Americans buried the bodies.

The killers were doing the bidding of their employer, an ambitious man who had little respect for human life: John C. Fremont, a foreigner in Alta California who at the time was the head of a security detail for a party of land surveyors. According to a later statement by Fremont's longtime employee Kit Carson, Fremont often required his employees to kill unarmed civilians, such as Berreyesa and the de Haro twins.

In separate circumstances, Berreyesa's sons, all of them prominent citizens and land holders in the San Francisco Bay Area, were subsequently murdered. In all, eight Berreyesa men were killed, causing other Berreyesa men to flee the Bay Area in order to save their lives.

The facts of the murders of the elderly Berreyesa and his young de Haro cousins spread through the San Francisco Bay Area, but Fremont's role was not well known until he became the first person to run for election on the Republican ticket for the office of U.S. President, in 1856.

An eyewitness to the 1846 murders, the well-known and respected land surveyor Jasper O'Farrell, wrote an account of what he saw for a southern California newspaper. O'Farrell further stated that, having witnessed the killings, he considered Fremont to be a murderer and a coward.

The circumstances of the murder of the elderly Berreyesa and the young de Haros finally became well known throughout California. Fremont lost the presidential election in the state of California, and thus the national election.