On the Streets Where we Live

 

Perhaps the reason First Families programs seem so interesting to me is that I've realized how history surrounds us. In all the sights around us are tokens of our location's past. Consider, for example, street signs. Those street names may well be bearing witness to the people who once lived in the very place they are marking.

I've taken an old plat map for our county—San Joaquin County in northern California—and stared at the names listed on the labeled boxes representing farmland ownership. The map is not very old—drawn up in 1895—but it is certainly old enough to be long before my time. Yet I recognize the names of former property owners in my neighborhood, thanks to those very street signs. These are names which can easily be catalogued in our register of First Families. Talk about local roots: if nothing else, that is a project which could help our neighbors recognize their county's heritage.

Take, for instance, the name of rancher Elias Hildreth. This was an immigrant to California from Rhode Island, but he was originally from Gardiner in Kennebec County, Maine. Like many young men in 1849, news of a gold rush launched him on a six month journey around the Horn, arriving in San Francisco on September 9 that same year. Like many, he found that augmenting his mining efforts—which he abandoned by 1851 to work his own trade as a blacksmith—proved to be more profitable in the long run, bringing him eventually to San Joaquin County, where his name can be found on the county's plat map—and on a street sign in the vicinity.

A similar story goes for another surname found on a county street sign: Ashley. Though there are several by this surname in our county, one such family by that name owes its residence in our county to another frantic chase after the gold in the California hills. Whether Jireh Perry Ashley from Massachusetts or any of his descendants were part of the family for which this California street was named, I can't yet tell, but I do see that name featured among those in the 1895 plat map for my county.

Likewise for another California gold rush arrival: a man by the name of L. U. Shippee. Arriving toward the end of the gold rush era in this state, L. U. Shippee found the prospects not as bright as anticipated, and returned to his launching off place in Stockton. There, he met up with a former acquaintance and began the first of several business ventures from which—at least according to one flowery biographical sketch—he eventually experienced a good measure of success. His name, too, appeared among those identified in the county's plat map, and his surname is still commemorated on a street sign as well.

These are just three early settlers in our county whose personal history could use augmentation with some family history, for those descendants who may be seeking more information on their local roots. We'll spend some additional time this week exploring those connections.

Map above: Portion of 1895 plat map of San Joaquin County, California, courtesy of the U. S. Library of Congress.