Developer William Carlson named this 1906 street for Aveline Malin Dufour (1876-1932), one of his salesmen. Dufour’s life was a wayward one. He was born in Washington, D.C. to a government clerk and a music teacher who divorced in 1893. An accomplished mandolinist, Dufour followed Mom into music instruction and was also a fleeting singer and songwriter. His first marriage in 1903 quickly went belly-up; he married second wife Gertrude in Maryland in 1905 and the following year they were living in Redondo Beach, with Dufour working for Carlson. (It’s unknown what prompted the cross-country move.) Then came years of volatility: Dufour was arrested for disturbing the peace in Redondo in 1908, flitted between Oakland, L.A., and San Francisco for a few years, got divorced by Gertrude on grounds of desertion in 1912, was charged with threatening to kill his stepfather in San Diego in 1913, and married his third(?) wife in 1915. After weaseling out of the WWI draft by claiming a broken wrist, Dufour spent some time in Asia. The 1930 census showed him divorced again and living in a San Francisco hotel. He died in obscurity two years later.
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