Aquila Pickering and partners originally established Whittier in 1887 as a Quaker community and thus chose Quaker poet/abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) as its namesake. It’s said that Mr. Whittier was offered a free plot of land here, should he ever wish to leave Massachusetts for California, but the old man was happy where he was and never visited. Instead he suggested that a “little hall” with a “neat little library” be built on his plot – which never happened – then wrote a short poem for his eponymous town. Titled My Name I Give to Thee, it reads as sort of an excuse for not joining the brand new colony. (“What can my evening give to thy morn,/My Winter to Thy Spring?”) Whittier Avenue itself didn’t appear on the 1887 map of the townsite but was mentioned in the May 10th, 1888 Whittier Graphic newspaper, so it came around soon enough.
Find it on the map:
