You’ll have to ask Downey residents how they pronounce it: “PEL-lit” or “pel-LAY”? Properly it should be the latter, for Pellet Street was named in 1923 by landowners Celestin (1888-1931) and Agnes (1893-1976) Pellet, French immigrants both. Celestin came to California in 1907, Agnes three years later. They married in Los Angeles in 1913 and, after some time in Monterey Park, set up a vegetable farm on Old River School Road, where they raised daughters Rose, Emma, Alice, and Yvette. Then tragedy struck – twice: Celestin, despondent over ill health, committed suicide in June 1931; three years later, teenagers Emma and Alice were killed while driving to a Halloween dance on rain-slicked roads. Agnes had remarried by then, to fellow Frenchman Cesar Bertrand. He met his own strange end, dying on his birthday, New Year’s Eve, 1947. Agnes and her surviving daughters all made it to old age.
Find it on the map:
