Badillo Mystery Solved?

There's been all kinds of speculation in recent years about the name of Badillo Street in Covina and why it differs from the pioneer family's traditional Spanish name, Badilla.

Covina's main east/west street was named "Badillo" on the original Phillips Tract survey map in 1884.
Courtesy Covina Valley Historical Society.

I briefly mentioned my own ideas about this controversy at the end of the article about Hollenbeck and the Badillas that I posted back in 2021. I noted that the family appeared to use a terminal -o in their surname themselves on occasion, and theorized that the street was named "Badillo" because that was the name the farming brothers were best known by.

I didn't have direct evidence for the former claim until just yesterday, though, when I found this letter published in a newspaper in 1877¹ that was signed, "J. Julian Badillo." This was the first time I'd ever seen printed evidence that one of the famous coffee-growing brothers actually used the Badillo spelling himself (and the first I've seen the name of their coffee plantation was "San Isidro Ranch.")

Santa Barbara Daily Press, February 7, 1877.

So then I thought, since I'm already on the newspaper archive website, I decided to take pen in hand and manually tally the number of times each spelling was used, and in which contexts they appeared.

This is what I found:

Book Report

I just read a new novel called "Gone in Time" by F. K. Matthews. It's a story about a young man who mysteriously finds himself transported to Covina in 1960. Quite an enjoyable time travel story, especially if you grew up on the "west side" of town, and particularly so if you were a "gearhead" who loved working on vintage cars. :) The descriptions of places and life in Covina in the Sixties are pretty much spot-on, the characters are very relatable, and it has a unique twist-ending, too. I was really captivated by it, myself. Couldn't put it down! In fact, I can't recall finishing a book of that length in one day before. Definitely recommended! ^_^

Available on Amazon

 

The Issei Fathers of West Covina

Relatively few valley residents today are aware that people of Japanese ancestry played a significant role in the early history of West Covina. During the first two decades of the 20th century, dozens of farmers emigrated from Japan to settle here, owning and working the land, raising families and becoming productive members of the local community.

And what a community it was! Early West Covina was a remarkable assemblage of nationalities. No previous author has stated this specifically, but unlike the parent city,¹ there was no racial separation to speak of in pre-war West Covina. Americans, Europeans, and first-generation immigrants from Japan (termed "Issei") all lived, farmed and participated in society with full freedom of association. There's perhaps no better visual evidence of this societal integration than this photo of Grades 1-3 at West Covina School in 1938. Look at all those happy faces!

Teacher Frances Maxson Sanchez (1900-1999) was the daughter of West Covina's first mayor, Benjamin Franklin Maxson, Jr., and her husband, Juan C. Sanchez, was a great-grandson of founding pioneer John Rowland.²

Tags

Some readers may have noticed that I recently added subject tags to my postings. This is to help people directly access articles related to specific topics. Might be worth bookmarking this page for future reference. (I have!)

Particular attention is called to the New History tag. There you will find facts about Covina history that have appeared nowhere else before. Covina Past exclusives, you might say!

Below are all the tagged subjects, with clickable links for your convenience.

Post-War Postcard

Time for another episode of vintage Covina photo sleuthing! Got ahold of another uncommon postcard of Citrus Avenue recently for which I hoped to pinpoint a date.

Post-war view north on Citrus Avenue from its intersection with Center Street.
Click on image for a larger view.

It's unused, so there's no postmark to give us a ballpark estimate. Just eyeballing the cars, though, I could tell it was from the Forties, but when, exactly?

When Was Covina Founded?

For people born in centuries past, it was not uncommon to not know one's precise birthday, and the same applies to historical places, even Covina!

Covina's founder, Joseph Swift Phillips (1840-1905).

Various sources have claimed with authority that Covina's origin date was 1882, 1884, 1885 and 1886. So, which of these is correct? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the answer is... complicated.