Angelo E. Benedict (1870-1955) was the youngest member of Benedict Canyon‘s namesake family. Born and raised in the canyon, Benedict left school after eighth grade to focus on farming, then married Agnes Spencer (1872-1931) in 1893 and had three children with her. They eventually moved to Fullerton, where Benedict established a career as an oil well driller. Of their three kids, William died in Bordeaux, France in 1919 (he survived WWI but perished from pneumonia), Emma died in childbirth in 1920, and Stanley was sentenced to San Quentin in 1935 for molesting a boy. (He was still there in the 1940 census but disappeared from public record after that.) Benedict married his second wife Irene sometime after Agnes’s death. The only other time he made the news was in a 1936 human interest story about his having driven 350,000 miles in California traffic without a single accident or violation. His brothers Pierce (1856-1937) and Frank (1863-1945) were more prominent: Frank was an LAPD detective and Pierce was on the Beverly Hills board of trustees. His 1934 book on BH history confirmed that Angelo Drive was named for his little brother.
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