This 1886 street takes its name from the city of Mentor, Ohio. With a population of only 500-600 souls at that time – it’s got some 47,000 residents today – Mentor was the birthplace of future Pasadenans Caroline Melissa Clapp (1845-1908) and Carrie Virginia Daniels (1853-1930). Both would marry in their hometown: Clapp to Dr. George Roscoe Thomas, a dentist from upstate New York, in 1866; Daniels to Vermont-born grocer Edwin L. Farris in 1879. (I don’t know how the two gentlemen found their respective ways down to Mentor.) After a couple of years in Minneapolis, the Farrises and little Edwin Jr. moved to Pasadena in 1882. The Thomases and their five kids, who had previously made their home in Detroit, followed suit in 1885. Messrs. Farris and Thomas co-owned the tract that birthed Mentor Avenue due south of Colorado Boulevard; it’s believed their wives had been friends back in Ohio. P.S. Dr. Thomas’s 1918 obituary stated that he’d anointed several Pasadena roadways, out of which only Mentor Avenue, Bellefontaine Street, and tiny Terrace Drive remain.
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