Smith Reuben “S.R.” Gunn (1829-1899) came to this area in December 1882 and bought 1,179 acres with partner Rev. Augustus C. Hazzard. (One account credited Gunn’s son Harry with the purchase.) Gunn was born near Terre Haute, IN and spent some years in Wisconsin and Minnesota with his first wife Martha and their four kids. The family relocated to San Jose in 1870. Martha died two years later and S.R. married her sister Mary a year after that. After a decade on their South Whittier ranch, dubbed “Blue Gum Grove” for its thicket of eucalyptus, Mary succumbed to typhoid in 1893. S.R. then wed Winnifred Allen, forty-four years his junior, in 1895. They had one daughter: Gertrude. Gunn Avenue was named in 1908 when the ranch was subdivided. Postscript from the Police Files: Befitting her surname, young widow Winnifred gunned down ranch foreman Tolman Vestal in 1905 when he drunkenly attacked her and little Gertrude one night. It was ruled self-defense. (A dying Vestal admitted, “I got what was coming to me.”) Less justifiable is another shooting incident in 1920, in which Winnifred and her second husband Samuel Bly, now living in Calabasas, emptied their guns at Gertrude’s boyfriend John Foley simply for entering their property. Luckily they missed.
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