This street, christened by 1875, takes its name from Fair Oaks Ranch, the 262 acre property that convinced a group of settlers to establish Pasadena. Benjamin S. Eaton (1823-1909) bought Fair Oaks in 1865. The name was supposedly coined by the ranch’s previous owner, Eliza Griffin Johnston (1821-1896), widow of a Confederate general. (Some say she grew up on a Virginia plantation called Fair Oaks; I’ve found no record of that.) She bought the land from her brother Dr. John S. Griffin (via B.D. Wilson) in late 1862, but didn’t stay long: her son Albert Jr. was killed in the 1863 explosion of Phineas Banning‘s ferry the Ada Hancock, so in grief she abandoned the ranch and sold it to Benjamin Eaton, her pseudo brother-in-law. (Eaton’s late wife Helena was sister to Dr. Griffin’s wife Louisa; later, Eliza Johnston’s son Hancock would marry Eaton’s daughter Mary!) Eaton applied his renowned irrigation skills to the drought-ravaged Fair Oaks and reaped the rewards from its vineyards and orange groves. In 1873, he was visited by Daniel Berry, whose “California Colony of Indiana” was looking for land to, well, colonize. Eaton told Berry that he’d come to the right place, so Berry’s cohorts formed the San Gabriel Orange Grove Association, appointed Eaton its president, and Pasadena was underway. Eaton sold Fair Oaks to James Fillmore Crank in 1877.
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