Thomas Seymour Wadsworth (1853-1930) named this street on a 1902 tract he owned with Charles W. Hollister. Wadsworth, born into one of Chicago’s first wealthy families – his father Elisha was eulogized as “the pioneer merchant” of that city – got into real estate as a young man and spent much of the 1880s building up both Billings, MT and Jamestown, ND, over 500 miles apart from each other. Wadsworth married Mary A. Lyon (1862-1953) in 1882 and Jamestown was their primary home until 1893, when Mary and their kids came to Los Angeles to escape the Dakota cold. Wadsworth joined them full-time a year later and went on to develop properties all over California, including Pismo Beach (where there’s another Wadsworth Avenue), Fresno, and Redlands, where the Wadsworths retired in 1923. The couple had two children: Julian, who died at 14 while vacationing in Mexico City with his mom, and Charlotte, who never married but lived with another woman for several years.
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