The Shrodes were a pioneer Duarte family. Patriarch David Shaw Shrode (1825-1895), a blacksmith and wainwright from Indiana, moved to east Texas in 1851 with his first wife Elizabeth. In 1859, less than a year after Elizabeth’s untimely death, Shrode married Maria Christina Moore (née Hargrave, 1826-1900), a widow with a teenage daughter. Along with the five children from Shrode’s first marriage, the couple had five more together. After the Civil War – Shrode’s biography insisted that he was “a Union man in principle” and was forced to enlist in the Confederate Army – Shrode was ordained as a Methodist minister. He, Maria, and most of their eight surviving kids wagoned out to California in 1870. Initially settling in El Monte, the family came to Duarte in 1887. Shrode Avenue was named by 1889, the year son Francis took over the smithy.
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