Named for Edith Octavia Shorb Steele (1872-1954), one of James De Barth and Sue Shorb’s 11 children, many of whom have namesake streets here on what was then the Shorbs’ vast property. (See Shorb Street for more.) Edith was among the first graduates of the Ramona Convent high school, funded by her father. After his death, she moved to San Francisco with most of the other Shorbs in 1900. Her family was central in that city’s high society, although Edith was reportedly less of a social butterfly than her siblings. In 1904, she married Sacramento’s James King Steele. A travel writer who specialized in East Asia, James spent years crisscrossing the Pacific, often with Edith in tow. They even lived in Manila in the early 1930s. On top of raising her own kids, Edith also had to deal with two disturbed brothers, Donald and Norbert. In one 1915 incident, Norbert threatened to kill Edith and her husband, and she tried to have him committed.
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