José María Montealegre (19 March 1815 – September 26, 1887) was President of Costa Rica from 1859 to 1863.
The son of Mariano Montealegre, a wealthy coffee plantation owners, José María and his brother Mariano, travelled to Britain in 1827 in the company of English locomotive inventor Richard Trevithick and Scotsman John Meir Gerard.
Between 1827 and 1831 they attended boarding school in London before moving to Aberdeen, Gerard's birthplace. There they attended Marischal College as private students. Following that, José María Montealegre obtained Licentiateship of The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh on 22 February 1837.
He came to power following a military coup d'état against Juan Rafael Mora. In the first months of his presidency he convened a constitutional conventional, which produced the Constitution of 1859.
Under the new constitution he was popularly elected to a three-year presidential term in 1860, after which he handed on the presidency, peacefully and democratically, to Jesús Jiménez.
He suffered a political setback when a coup led by Tomás Guardia deposed his brother-in-law, Bruno Carranza. Montealegre decided to leave Costa Rica, and sailed with his family on the steamer Alaska to San Francisco in 1872.
He died in San Jose, California and his mortal remains laid near Mission San Jose (located in what is now Fremont, CA) until they were repatriated in 1978.
