Named for a French family who once owned a sheep ranch here. Joseph Eugene Masselin (1830-1898) allegedly left his hometown of Havre, France for San Francisco in 1849, then worked as a ship’s captain for many years up and down the California coast. He married Marie Sehabiague (1833-1919), a native of France’s Pyrenees region, in 1860 – just a year after her own arrival in SF. The Masselins, who would have six children, then turned to sheep raising. Evidence shows them living in the Anaheim area between 1875 and 1877, but by 1879 they had purchased some 120-140 acres of the La Ciénega and La Brea ranchos and made a home for themselves and their sheep. After Marie’s death, the five surviving Masselin children – John, Jennie, Joseph Jr., Zellie, and Julia (Cornelia, the youngest, died of uremia in 1909) – sold the land to subdividers. Masselin Avenue was named in 1922.
Find it on the map:
