“Pasqualito” is the diminutive and misspelled form of “Pascual”, as in Rancho San Pascual (a.k.a. San Pasqual), the 1834 Mexican land grant that would eventually become Pasadena, South Pasadena, and San Marino. Benjamin Davis Wilson bought the rancho from Manuel Garfias in the 1850s; in 1872, he parceled out 700-ish acres of it as Rancho San Pascualito/Pasqualito, which is when future governor George Stoneman purchased some of it. It’s unclear, however, when lumberman John M. Griffith picked up the thirty acres that, in 1885, he would give to his daughter Alice and her husband Jackson A. Graves. The Graves family built a house on these acres in 1888 and the street they lived on would be known as Pasqualito Avenue until the early 1900s, when it was absorbed into the new Huntington Drive. It was 1928 when our current Pasqualito Drive was laid out. Since it pointed right to the Graveses’ home on Huntington, developers wanted to call it Graves Avenue, but Jackson nixed that plan and suggested Pasqualito instead. (He liked the name so much, he had even anointed his prize boat with it.)
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