Not West 196,841st Street : Decisions About Street Names*

Asking why a street received the name it has might not be among your top research priorities, but in my case, I can't help but wonder. I've already uncovered paperwork revealing that a relative by marriage was the namesake of Shields Avenue in Fresno, California. And discovery of a road in my adopted California hometown bearing the unusual surname of another distant relative prompted me to trace that property owner's pedigree back to our most recent common ancestor—someone living over two thousand miles away. So you see, I come by this curiosity naturally.

Now, my attention is turned to John Hutchins, a Canadian who traveled the distance of a continent to land in Lodi, California, right after the state's gold rush. Perhaps owing to success in mining endeavors—or possibly because the land was so cheap at the time—John Hutchins acquired much property in the Elkhorn Township area which eventually became the city of Lodi. Even more so, his influence on the growth of the area in its earliest years may have landed him one tiny nod in the form of the area's current cityscape.

It just so happens that there is a major north-south artery in Lodi named Hutchins Street, now the location of the city's cultural center bearing that same Hutchins name. I'm curious how the street got its name. According to a timeline of the city's early years (see page 22), Hutchins Street was listed as the city's western limit in 1906, only seven years after John Hutchins' passing. Though his biographical sketch included in George Tinkham's History of San Joaquin County was glowing, perhaps his wasn't the most illustrious claim to the Hutchins surname.

It's fascinating to learn the process of just how municipalities decide upon names for their streets. Some cities are quite upfront about their requirements, such as the city of Buellton in Santa Barbara County, which posted its street naming procedures online. As associate professor of law Ann Bartow observed in her article in the law review of the University of California at Davis in April, 2004:

Few people are likely to want to live on a thoroughfare named 198,457th Street because such an address lacks personality and interest. When public amenities are accorded more colorful denominations, however, complications can ensue.

It is those "complications" which have precipitated precise local government procedures on who can name streets and just how they are to do so. One review of the situation by Fox News detailed the complexity of a process which might take weeks from start to finish, shepherded by the planning department with vital input from not only engineering and public works departments, but also police, fire department and even the post office.

While it may seem as if streets are bestowed their names through a scientific process—above all, avoiding "monikers that might be unappealing to residents," though, as one New York Times reporter found, such are in abundance despite being "unappealing"—there is also a certain politic nature to the granting of honorific designations. National heroes often become the focus of naming committees, with examples drawn not only from national history—every name from George Washington to Martin Luther King—but from significant hometown developments, as well.

And yet, of all the reports concerning the process of naming streets, most of these resources divulged details about how real estate developers in our current times approach the issue. What I'm searching for is just how street names from our past history were bestowed—and how to learn the stories behind those designations.


*196,841st Street: with thanks to Ann Bartow's April 2004 article in the U.C. Davis Law Review, "Trademarks of Privilege," for the footnote #114 on the absurd concept of naming a street with a number as inconvenient to remember as that example.

In Circles

Sometimes, it feels like a research project takes the researcher along a winding path which, eventually, leads right back to the place where it started. Take my discovery of a connection between my research subject and a man whose surname was significant to his adopted hometown of Lodi, California. I discovered that his biography, included in a History of San Joaquin County two decades after his death, mentioned his role in the establishment of Lodi in much more glowing terms than I was able to find anywhere else. At the same time, I discovered four other men were credited with the very same role—with no mention of the original focus of my attention. Which story was right?

I hoped that, in exploring what could be found about the history of each of those other four men, I would discover any connection between the two versions. Other than realizing that several of the men were connected to one particular fraternal order, I wasn't able to discern the root of the variations in the story.

So, what can be discovered about John Hutchins, the man from Canada who crossed the plains to arrive in San Joaquin County in the earliest days after the formation of the county? George Tinkham reported that Hutchins made his cross-country immigration in 1853. Yet, whether the Hutchins household in the 1860 census in Elkhorn Township includes our John Hutchins, I can't yet be sure. However, John's name did appear in the Great Register, where in at least two editions, he reported being naturalized at the county seat on August 27, 1866.

Almost a year later, John Hutchins married Ann Nevin, an Iowa girl whose family had moved to Stockton, and by the time of the 1870 census, the couple was living in Elkhorn Township, along with their daughter Nellie and son John. Although the senior John died in 1899, we can still find the names of his five children in his widow's household in the 1900 census.

But what of the street through the town of Lodi which now bears the Hutchins name? Was it named for John Hutchins, the one who supposedly donated land to jump-start the downtown area before it even became designated as a city? Or was that honor given to someone else with the same surname?

The ubiquitousness of street signs may dull our inquisitiveness about their origin, but I just can't help myself. I want to know how that street came to receive that name.

Suits me to a "T"

Trying to reconcile conflicting reports about the start of the city of Lodi, California, has come down to two initials: that of Allen C. Ayers or Allen T. Ayers. Of course, since the names are so similar, it could have been a typo in George Tinkham's 1923 History of San Joaquin County that started the whole pursuit. Considering that the Tinkham volume amounts to 1,640 pages, one could cut the guy some slack on one silly initial. But just in case, I felt obligated to check out the references to the Allen C. Ayers who supposedly was involved in some key real estate transactions that eventually benefited the establishment of downtown Lodi.

We already learned yesterday that the similarly-named Allen T. Ayers had a middle initial representing the name Trimble. Attempting to find further information on his contemporary, the man supposedly named Allen C. Ayers, led nowhere. There are no census records for the county in either 1860 or 1870 showing the existence of a man by that name anywhere near the Elkhorn Township which eventually formed the city of Lodi. More to the point, every Allen Ayers listed in California's Great Register for San Joaquin County spelled out clearly the full name of Allen Trimble Ayers. No Allen C. to be found.

Considering that the four names mentioned in the land issue that persuaded a railroad company to build its line through the downtown area included not only Allen Ayers but that of another man—John U. Magley—who happened to live in A. T. Ayers' own household through two decades of census enumerations, it seems far fetched to assume that the Ayers name represented in the Tinkham volume was anyone other than Allen Trimble Ayers.

But what about any mention of the fourth man to be included in that railroad deal? Could anything be said for Ezekiel Lawrence, the name we've yet to examine, to connect him with John Hutchins, whose own biography prompted me to call this whole history into question?

Of course there can. Though once again, there is no biographical entry bearing the name of Ezekiel Lawrence, there were a few mentioned of the name tucked away in those thousand pages of history that can assist us.

The earliest mention of Ezekiel Lawrence was when, in 1858, he provided some of his land, just south of the Mokelumne River, for a schoolhouse. The 1860 census confirms his location in Elkhorn Township, along with his wife Mary and two year old son William. By 1870, the census confirms the Lawrence family's continued residence there, with the addition of son George and daughter Nettie.

Similar to the story of fellow Lodian John Hutchins, Ezekiel Lawrence was from Canada—the province of Ontario, if we can believe his son George's report in his own passport application, many years later. Like the story of Allen Trimble Ayers, Ezekiel Lawrence must have come through El Dorado County, as well—the well-traveled route to Gold Country leading to "Hangtown," now known as Placerville, where Ezekiel and his wife Mary were married in 1857.

Despite his 1858 provision of land for the Lodi schoolhouse, Ezekiel Lawrence did not show up in the Great Register until 1867. The reason? The minute he officially became a United States citizen, the naturalized Ezekiel Lawrence immediately registered to vote on May 18, 1867 in Stockton, county seat of San Joaquin County.

The only other mention I could find of Ezekiel Lawrence was that of the roster of officers for a fraternal organization's lodge in Lodi. Though finding only a listing of his name as the treasurer for the Lodi lodge of the Odd Fellows may be disappointingly sparse, considering all that surely could have been said about the man, reading the rest of the list can provide some insight.

Now that we already know the name of the foursome whose influence was instrumental in setting the economic growth of their future city—Ayers, Magley, Wardrobe, and Lawrence—this list provides some perspective on relationships. Along with treasurer Lawrence, the I.O.O.F. lodge had, for their financial secretary, Allen T. Ayers. And listed among the lodge's charter members, according to the Tinkham history, was John Hutchins.

This, finally, provides the only context linking the four names together in their bid to persuade the railroad's consideration of a route through Lodi. In the meantime, we've explored the few details we could glean about four early leaders in the expansion of the city now known as Lodi.

Still, we can't simply be satisfied with this exploration into the friends and neighbors whose land tied them together at the start of the downtown Lodi area. We need to stay the course on our original objective. Researching these four men mentioned in the Tinkham history of Lodi is solely for the purpose of examining another claim: that there was a fifth man who, with "four associates," presented that offer of land to the Central Pacific. That other man was John Hutchins.

Above: Excerpt from the Map of the County of San Joaquin, dated 1895, as currently found at the United States Library of Congress, shows the property of Ezekiel "Lawrance" just south of the meandering path of the Mokelumne River; courtesy Library of Congress Geography and Map Division; in the public domain.

Initial Inquiries

Names containing only initials can be vexing for the ardent genealogical researcher. In particular, reading the history of the founding of Lodi, California, we find two mentions of the surname Ayers. One is A. C. Ayers, the other is A. T. Ayers. Close, but not necessarily the same individual.

In our continuing quest to rectify two tales of how the fledgling city of Lodi got its boost with the Central Pacific Railroad agreeing to build its line directly through the downtown area, we've been examining the biographical information on each of four men credited with the land donations influencing that change of plans. Behind that examination is the need to rectify the report in George Tinkham's History of San Joaquin County with that of his biography of another leading man in Lodi: John Hutchins.

So far, not only have we not uncovered any connection between John Hutchins and the first of our subjects—Reuben Langdon Wardrobe—but there was not much mentioned directly about R. L. Wardrobe in the entirety of the book's 1,640 pages.

As we'll see here, much the same can be said about the subject of today's post. There was no biographical sketch included by Tinkham for A. T. Ayers.

Worse, not only was there no specific entry for this man credited by Tinkham as making a donation of property to help clinch the deal which led to establishing downtown Lodi, but in some of the other entries about the surname Ayers, the author mentioned the name Allen Ayers. More troubling, sometimes that middle initial was a "C" instead of a "T."

If this indicates two different people rather than a simple typo in the text, which one was the right man? You know what that means: researching both names to see which one provides more reasonable indicators of representing the right person.

Fortunately, I decided to start with the name listed in the paragraph on the property donation, and looked for A. T. Ayers. First up, I discovered that A. T., like A. C., had a first name of Allen. That wasn't a promising start to this search.

If this is a troubling research problem for us, as far removed as we are from the event itself in the 1860s, consider how troubling it must have been to the man who might have had to constantly clarify which Allen Ayers he was. It wasn't long until I found A. T. Ayers' voter registration from 1866. The date of his registration was August 6 of 1866, showing him to be a thirty six year old farmer from Ohio, then living in the Elkhorn Township of San Joaquin County. Rather than simply relying on initials as at other times, his name was spelled out fully as "Allen Trimble Ayres."

Since we had already reviewed the story of one of the original Lodi settlers selling his land to "Allen Ayers," it was good to have this clarification, for in another section in the Tinkham volume, the name had been given as Allen C. Ayers. At this point, with a full name to research, I could more closely track the decade-by-decade movement of this Allen Trimble Ayers.

And that, I did. Starting with the 1880 census and working my way backwards in time, I found an "Allan T. Ayres" in Elkhorn Township, along with his wife Julia and teenaged daughters Estelle and Coralin. In the same household was an interesting addition: the presence of John U. Magley, immigrant from Switzerland, who just happened to be one of the four men mentioned as having donated land to bring the rail line through Lodi. Magley's residence in the Ayers home made me wonder whether he and Ayers were related by marriage.

Checking the 1870 census, I found Allen Trimble Ayers in much the same location: Elkhorn Township in San Joaquin County. Still in the household with his wife Julia and two daughters—both of whom were born in California, showing us that A. T. Ayers (well, at least his wife) was in the state as early as 1863—he also had a spot in his home for that same John U. Magley. In fact, the home site had enough room for horses, mules, cows, and a few pigs, as A. T. Ayers kept his 150 acres in winter wheat and barley.

Even before that point, Allen Ayers and his wife were in California in time for the 1860 census, although not living in Lodi. Julia and Allen Ayers were then living in El Dorado County, which, though not part of our story today, provides a hint about who his parents might have been, despite a name as common as Allen Ayers. Though A. T. Ayers originated in Ohio, he may not have traveled to California alone. There was a Stephen Ayers from Vermont listed not only in El Dorado County, but also on the Great Register on the same page in Lodi as Allen Trimble Ayers in 1866. Besides this, in census records including location of the father's birth, Allen always gave his father's birthplace as Vermont, same as this Stephen Ayers.

While many links can be found online purporting to have found Allen Trimble Ayers' place of burial outside California, a locally published book by a former member of our own genealogical society provides a clue that A. T. Ayers' wife and also his (likely) father were buried in a location south of Lodi which is now a defunct cemetery.

Known as the Live Oak Cemetery, its demise provides the kind of story that genealogical researchers seldom appreciate encountering. Apparently, some of the bodies of those buried at the Live Oak Cemetery were moved to a new burial place east of downtown Lodi, decades afterwards—but not, possibly, all of those originally buried at Live Oak. The newer burial place, known as Lodi Memorial Park, contains a memorial plaque for those re-interred from the Live Oak Cemetery. Whether Stephen Ayers' remains are at the newer resting place or the original burial grounds is hard to tell, though someone created a Find A Grave memorial for him indicating the answer is the Lodi Memorial Park.

As for the son, Allen Trimble Ayers, who knows what became of him. There is a memorial on Find A Grave speculating he somehow wound up in Nebraska and was buried there, but I do not feel confident of that conclusion—at least, not yet. A. T. Ayers' one daughter married a man from Stockton—Walter Eugene Ladd—whose family name was significant in his hometown then, as it is now. What became of the second Ayers daughter or her father, I can't say, but it is likely that they, like some of the other property owners from the early days of Lodi, moved out of the area long before George Tinkham ever considered omitting their mention from his ponderous history.

Counting on It

I can't always count on having enough time in a day to work on any genealogical research for my own family. I have specific research objectives for the four lines I'm following right now—one for each of my parents, plus one each for my in-laws—but there are always side interests diverting my attention.

The research plan, for the past four months, has been to focus on my mother's ancestral line which leads back to colonial Virginia. The reason is simple: I'm taking a class on that very subject next January at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, and I don't want to walk into that classroom devoid of any knowledge of the topic. I prefer to be mildly uninformed, not totally ignorant.

However, among those standing rules for research—at least in my case—are two other caveats. One is that, should an obituary surface for any distant cousins, I must stop what I'm doing and capture what I can glean from the published article. The second is that, in the case of a newly-discovered close DNA match, I check out what can be found about the line that match represents, not only to see if it is verifiable, but to make sure my tree reflects the full extent of what that discovery reveals.

Just those two orders of the day can keep me busy for a week at a time. And that's the way it's been since my last biweekly count.

I did, however, manage to get some work done on the main line of my Virginia focus. I was able to verify the addition of 149 new individuals, bringing the total on my mother's tree to 19,374 people. Even that progress, however, came at the same time, thanks to MyHeritage's Theory of Family Relativity™ prompts, as the discovery of a DNA match at that company.

Progress on my mother-in-law's line was unfortunately due to some obituaries I found through a subscription mailing list for her hometown. That brought on the addition of forty six new names, bringing the total on her tree to 17,194. I know there are several more obituaries I received notification on, so I'm still catching up on that list. The additional research from these obituaries will bring on more names for her tree next week, as well.

But even on my father's tree—the one that seems perennially stuck at the same spot—I managed to add some names. That tree is usually stuck, owing to the brick wall of my paternal grandfather's unrevealed past, but bit by bit, DNA matches are unlocking the secrets there, leading to the addition of thirty four new names in the past two weeks. My father's tree now includes data on 654 people, after having been stuck at the same count for weeks on end.

That count on my dad's line does not include the world of DNA relatives I've met through seven DNA matches since last summer. I started an entirely separate tree to work on that puzzle—I still don't know for sure how all these people match me, other than to hypothesize that they connect with my paternal grandfather's mother. Until I know for sure, I am keeping that tree separate. Whereas I had 174 names in that private, unsearchable tree two weeks ago, I've added 106 more names to the tree to bring the new total to 280 individuals in that extended family. Someday, that will become an instant increase to the 654 people I now have on my dad's confirmed family tree.

It looks like all four of my major trees received some attention in the last two weeks. Even my father-in-law's tree managed to gain another twelve names, to edge up to 1,563 names. Working this plan, and keeping at it, bit by bit each day, over the long haul, the progress can stack up. And that, of course, is encouraging, especially on those lines in which I never expected to learn anything more.

The Pathos Behind Closed Genealogical Doors

Unexpected discoveries can await the unsuspecting family history enthusiast who chooses to test his or her DNA for genealogical purposes, but that isn't the only avenue ushering in research surprises. These upstart details can approach us from the more low-tech route of chasing the paper trail, too.

Thanks to a MyHeritage Theory of Family Relativity™ notice I received this week, I brushed up on one particular descendant line from my Tilson family connection. This MyHeritage match and I connect to each other as fifth cousins—and yes, that is according to my records, as well. However, in checking over the material I had included in my own family database, I noticed this branch's details were rather thin. It was time to rectify that oversight.

Usually, I look for obituaries when no death certificates are available online. This is, as it turns out, a family line settling in Tennessee—a place far from where I sit, right now. However, I could find no obituaries, and not even any links to Find A Grave or other such resources. At this point, I decided to alter my search approach. Rather than just entering the year of the death, I left the search parameters wide open, while searching in the various newspaper collections available to me. While that can leave me wide open to an avalanche of unrelated information, it might also capture some other news reports which include the individuals I am seeking.

In this case, that it did, all right. I ended up learning far more than I wanted to know about some branches of this family tree. Let's just say there was news copy on the messy aspects of life that go far beyond birth, marriage, or death. I can now understand why there might not have been an obituary published for some of the people in this line.

I ran across everything from the parental permission for a fourteen year old daughter to marry a sixteen year old groom—this woman died barely eight years later, after having given birth to four children—to a lawsuit claiming premature death due to corporate pollution of an entire town, on behalf of parents succumbing to cancer. In between these surprising details were many other deaths at ages far younger than expected, from such events as vehicle collisions or work-related accidents.

We may tend to adopt a clinical detachment from the ancestors we find on paper in our research, but remembering that they, too, were people for whom such horrific experiences triggered strong emotions, I couldn't help but experience a wave of pathos pour over me as I read through all these newspaper reports from bygone decades. Somehow, birth announcements or marriage licenses—even wills—seem so sanitized when we view their digitized form through our computer screen. But each slip of paper carries with it the weight of emotional gravitas. Somehow, that realization calls out for respect and solemnity as we uncover these family experiences, no matter how removed we are from the moment which first elicited such expected responses.

Shipped in the Knock-Down

After the survey had been made through Lodi, A. T. Ayers, John U. Magley, R. L. Wardrobe and E. Lawrence petitioned the railroad company to locate a station on their land. As a bonus, the three owners first named agreed if a station was there built and a town laid off, to give the railroad every odd lot in the proposed town and a railroad reservation of twelve acres in the center of the town.

George H. Tinkham, History of San Joaquin County California

It is clear, from looking at an 1895 map of California's San Joaquin County, that R. L. Wardrobe held property close to the downtown area of Lodi, and yet, trying to find any entry featuring the heading of his name in George Tinkham's biographical entries of the leading men of the county, there is none to be seen.

Reuben Langdon Wardrobe was indeed in San Joaquin County as early as November 13, 1866, the date in which he reported his residence to be Elkhorn Township, when he registered to vote. And yet, as instrumental as his role was reputed to be in securing rail service for the growing town of Lodi, he merited not much more of a mention in Tinkham's volume than a section of a paragraph in an entry about the son of his brother, Samuel Valorious Wardrobe.

S. V. Wardrobe, it seems, had been traveling back and forth from his home in Massachusetts to the spot of his intended  new property in California, a ranch in the "Live Oak" section of San Joaquin County. Realizing that lumber in the new country was "very scarce," on his next trip back to Massachusetts, S. V. Wardrobe arranged for his brother, a carpenter by trade, to frame an entire house—though admittedly tiny, at twelve feet square—which was then "shipped in the knock down" around the Horn to California.

That brother, incidentally, was Reuben Langdon Wardrobe.

The two brothers had the dismantled house shipped up the delta from the San Francisco bay to the port at Stockton, and they then hauled it to the Live Oak property near Lodi. While S. V. Wardrobe remained on that property long enough for two of his sons to be born there, Reuben Wardrobe apparently moved to Elkhorn Township, acquiring land of his own—some of which eventually played a role in enticing the Central Pacific Rail Road to opt for the survey report which favored a line through the developing town of Lodi.

As for Reuben Wardrobe, that is about all that is mentioned of his role in the growth of the city of Lodi. By 1900, according to census records, he was living farther south in Riverside County. Unfortunately, digitized copies of that census cut off the name of his wife, but marriage records show he was married in 1875, to Mary A. Dixon, back in San Joaquin County. Finding the family in the 1880 census, still back in the vicinity of Lodi in San Joaquin County, with children aged much older than the five years of his marriage at that point indicates Mary was at least his second wife. Voter registration records indicate he may have left the county as early as 1886 and apparently stayed in that southern location of the state until the date of his death in 1908.

Perhaps it was because his last days were spent, not in Lodi, but far removed from that location of his brief legacy as a founding father that we see no separate entry for Reuben Langdon Wardrobe in the annals of Lodi's history. Except for that fleeting mention of the role played by his decision, along with others, to put up land in exchange for the future prosperity of the town where he once lived, there is little passed down to us about the part R. L. Wardrobe played in that offer which clinched Lodi's future.

Above: Along with the names of Elkhorn Township property owners E. Lawrence and John Hutchins, we see the parcel just south of the downtown area of Lodi bearing the name of R. L. Wardrobe, one of at least three local men who influenced the proposed route change of the new Central Pacific Railroad line from Sacramento south to Stockton in 1869. Map courtesy Library of Congress Geography and Map Division; in the public domain.