Emma Huston’s (1881-1963) life story reads like a melodrama. Born Emma Cecilia Bachmann in rural Indiana, she was the illegitimate daughter of Magdalena Bachmann and an unnamed father. She was then raised by nuns in a Terre Haute orphanage until being taken in at 13 by Frances Rose Howe, a wealthy spinster. An ill-fated elopement with her adopted mother’s Swedish coachman in 1906 made national news – even here in Southern California. Two years later, Emma married traveling shoe salesman James Lee Huston in Kansas City and they relocated to Los Angeles, where they had son Francis and daughter Geraldine. Frances Rose Howe died in 1917 and Emma likely inherited $125,000; reports that she received $3 million (over $50 million today) were absurd, especially since the Hustons never upgraded from their modest digs in East Hollywood. Nevertheless, Emma invested some of that money in a piece of land east of Tujunga Avenue, where Huston Street originated in 1922. She had already divorced James Huston by that point – and was in the midst of breaking up the marriage of John and Jennie Price. She wed Price in 1924 but, ironically or not, she caught him messing around with yet another woman and dumped him in 1927. Price had apparently squandered away all of Emma’s inheritance, so she had to work as a household cook to make ends meet and spent her final years with Geraldine’s family in Arcadia. As for her son Francis, a musician, he killed himself in 1937. P.S. There’s some debate over how this street name is pronounced; given the various records that misspelled Emma’s surname “Houston”, you may presume it’s pronounced like the Texas city.
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