Probably named after Henry Miles Mosher (1863-1948), a dime store merchant turned oil executive. I say “probably” because in 1906, when Mosher Avenue was named on the Montecito Park tract, Mosher and his family lived half a mile north of here, and while there’s no explicit connection between him and Montecito Park, records show that he did own some lots on it in 1908. Unless another Mosher emerges as a likelier namesake, I believe our man was part of the syndicate that purchased the land for the tract. Mosher was a hardware dealer from upstate New York. He, his wife Etta (1863-1937), and their kids moved to Los Angeles in 1895. Etta’s brother Allison Barlow was already here and making it big in real estate, but it was later claimed that the Moshers really left New York for the health of their polio-stricken son Samuel Barlow Mosher (1892-1970). In fact it was Samuel who would grow up to enrich the Moshers when he struck oil in 1922. His company Signal Oil became one of the largest petroleum producers in the U.S., went through several mergers over the decades, and is now Honeywell. Henry joined the original firm in 1923 and moved to Bel-Air (with Etta) five years later.
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