Known by the Road They Lived On

 

In sorting out the various pioneer families named Ashley in our county—each of whom claimed the same surname—it was interesting to discover that local people differentiated those men by the road they lived on. There was, for instance, George H. Ashley of the Woodbridge Road, and George W. Ashley "on the Cherokee Lane road." Fortunately for me, since I've been tracing the history of the latter Ashley and know the roads in this area, these designations helped. It is, after all, my goal to determine who might have been the specific person from the right Ashley family whose name subsequently was carried on a street sign near my home.

However, the 1930 census revealed that the naming of the street, which I had supposed to be named after George W. Ashley, was already accomplished. There, residing on Ashley Lane, was the subject of my hypothesis, along with his wife Clara and daughter Lorett. 

The 1930 census gave me some guidance on where the Ashley property might originally have been. As census records of the 1900s provided, the first vertical column contained entries for the street names as the enumerators made their rounds through each neighborhood. Just above the listing of families on Ashley Lane were the names of families living on Foppiano Road. A quick check of a street map shows the corner where the two streets intersect, now the domain of a local fire station near the Calaveras River in California's San Joaquin County. 

Searching through local newspaper collections for both the city to the south—Stockton—and the city to the north named Lodi, I found additional guidance concerning the property. George W. Ashley was apparently a vineyardist who eventually believed that smaller parcels would better suit the needs of those who specialized in wine grapes. That, in fact, was what he decided to do with half of his 350 acres in 1922, according to one article in The Lodi Sentinel, subdividing the land into ten and fifteen acre parcels and selling them.

That, however, couldn't be the end of the story, for the census previous to that 1922 newspaper article's announcement also revealed the name of the street where George lived, at that time listed as Ashley Road.

This George W. Ashley had an interesting life, judging from the many mentions I found of his name in local newspapers. He ran for state office and was elected, for instance, as a representative to the California state assembly from 1916 through 1920, as well as being active in many local organizations. The presumption could be that someone with a life story like that might logically have been the one to see his name appended to a street sign or other honorary remembrance. But the honor might have gone to someone else in this case of the lane called Ashley.

A brief mention in the obituary of George W. Ashley's mother might shed some light—though I'm still far from accomplishing any goal of finding documentation of the source of that designation. When Algeline Jackson Ashley died in 1903, a long obituary featured her history in the Stockton Daily Record on September 14. Among the notes concerning the widow of William D. Ashley—"one of the oldest and best known women in the county"—Mrs. Ashley's obituary mentioned her connection to a prominent son in Stockton: Arthur H. Ashley, a former District Attorney, and brother to George W. Ashley. As for George's own mention in his mother's obituary, it was noted that he "conducts the Ashley farm."

Was George the son who inherited the family farm? Was it George's father to whom the honor of the namesake street sign was owed? Unlike the story of the Hildreth family, whose descendants knew well for whom that street was named, I have yet to run into any mention of the Ashley family history reflected in the obituaries of William Ashley's descendants. But I'm still far from done reviewing all the descendants of William and Algeline Ashley. Perhaps another son's descendants will echo that story in subsequent generations.