When you think of WWII General George Smith Patton Jr. (1885-1945), you might picture the 1970 film Patton, with George C. Scott playing “Old Blood and Guts” in front of a giant American flag. You probably won’t picture Patton as a San Marino toddler, the well-scrubbed scion of wealthy Angelenos. In fact Patton Way honors the future general’s father George Smith Patton Sr. (1856-1927), if not the Patton family as a whole. George Sr. was a powerful attorney and businessman whose first partner was his uncle Andrew Glassell and whose wife Ruth (1861-1928) was the daughter of über-landowner Benjamin Davis Wilson. Born in Charleston, WV and raised in Los Angeles, Patton began practicing law in 1880. He married Ruth Wilson in 1884; three years later, the Pattons, along with little Georgie and newborn daughter Anne (1887-1971), decamped to the late B.D. Wilson’s Lake Vineyard ranch in San Marino. Here Patton would become Henry Huntington‘s close friend and associate – they died just 18 days apart – as well as San Marino’s first mayor.
Find it on the map:
