Humphreys Avenue and Ford Boulevard owe their names to developer John Ford Humphreys (1839-1922). The streets were christened either in 1893 or in 1886, when Humphreys opened the “Humphrey’s [sic] First Addition to Boyle Heights” tract with Eugene Riggin. Like Riggin, Humphreys hailed from St. Louis, where he made it big in real estate. Mining interests drew him to the boomtown of Leadville, CO in 1879 and he was elected its mayor the following year – no mean feat, as Leadville’s population of 15,000 was larger than that of Los Angeles at the time. (It’s around 2,600 today.) Humphreys came to L.A. in December 1882 with his wife Fannie and son William and opened the Humphreys & Riggin realty firm months later. Among his other roles: City Council president (1887-1889); Chamber of Commerce cofounder; member of a commission that renamed hundreds of L.A. streets in 1897. Fannie died that year and Humphreys soon moved to Philadelphia, where he tied the knot with one Lida Fritchey. Then came stays in Spokane and Vancouver before returning to Los Angeles. Humphreys divorced Lida in 1912 – she’d deserted him five years earlier – and married the widowed Kate Field in 1914. Their honeymoon was marred by a jilted fiancée who sued Humphreys for breach of promise (she won $8,250). Not the luckiest in love, our subject.
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