Andrew A. Boyle (1818-1871) spent 13 quiet years in Los Angeles after 40 dramatic ones elsewhere. The Ireland native came to the U.S. with his siblings in 1832 in search of their father (mother had died) and settled in an Irish colony in Mexican-owned Texas. As a young soldier, Boyle survived the 1836 Goliad massacre during the Texas Revolution; he then spent the 1840s running Gulf of Mexico commerce out of New Orleans. There he married Elizabeth Christie and had two children. Their son died in infancy and Elizabeth herself perished in 1849 while Andrew was in Mexico, having narrowly escaped a sinking ship. (It’s said that the false report of her husband’s death gave Elizabeth the “brain fever” that killed her.) Boyle sailed to San Francisco in 1851 to run a shoe store, then came to L.A. seven years later with his daughter Maria Elizabeth (1847-1933) and purchased the late Esteban López’s Paredón Blanco (“White Wall” or “White Bluff”) vineyard east of the river. While selling shoes and his Paredón Blanco wine, Boyle – a Southern Democrat who was opposed to giving blacks and Asians the vote – eventually joined City Council. As for Maria Boyle, in 1867 she married future mayor William H. Workman. The two of them, along with Isaias Hellman and John Lazzarevich, subdivided Paredón Blanco in 1875 and rechristened it “Boyle Heights”. Boyle Avenue was named three years later.
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