“Edmaru” stands for Edna, Mark, and Ruth: the children of early East Whittier residents Frank and Carrie Fletcher. Francis Augustus Fletcher (1842-1917) was a Vermonter who, after fighting in the Civil War, relocated to Minneapolis in 1871. Two years later, he married Carrie Alvira Bidwell (1849-1925), a Massachusetts transplant. (She was actually Frank’s second wife: his first died just three weeks after their 1869 wedding.) The couple’s kids – Edna Viola (1875-1944), Marcus Elwood (1877-1954), and Ruth Elvira (1881-1959) – were all born and raised in Minneapolis. In 1899, most of the Fletchers came to East Whittier to get into citrus and bought a house and orchard near present-day California and Mar Vista. (Newlywed Edna stayed behind but moved to Los Angeles about six years later.) The house itself was name-checked as “Edmaru” in a 1905 newspaper; I assume the family christened it when they moved in. Mark and Ruth both married in Whittier. Although Ruth became a popular local artist, only Mark stayed in town. Indeed, he spent the rest of his life in Edmaru, which still stands not on Edmaru Ave. (laid out in 1947) but on California Ave.
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