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City changes street name to correct spelling of McGlincy
Famous 1896 murders memorialized by city
By Erin Mayes
Plenty of streets in Campbell are named after the city's founding fathers. Campbell Avenue is named for Benjamin Campbell, who arrived in California at the age of 20 during the early stages of the gold rush, making his fortune not as a miner but as an orchardist.
McGlincey Lane was named for the "McGlincy" family (notice the difference in spelling), which first makes its appearance in the history books in the late 1800s.
Although upstanding members of the community, the McGlincys might not have been mentioned at all if not for their unfortunate claim to fame of having been murdered one by one on a lazy summer evening in 1896. Two family friends were also killed in the melee, victims of Col. Richard Parran McGlincy's son-in-law, James Dunham, who left only his infant son untouched. Dunham fled and was never found.
The mass murder held the record for Santa Clara Valley until 1988, when seven people were killed in Sunnyvale.
The McGlincy family has been memorialized in what is supposed to be its namesake, McGlincey Lane, if only it had been spelled correctly.
City Administrative Analyst Zarka Popovic says the street name has been around since the 1920s, but used to be named for a farm that took up most of the land surrounding the road.
Regardless of how long it's been around, a monument to misspellings, McGlincey Lane is finally going to be changed to "McGlincy" Lane, minus the "e."
The Civic Improvement Commission last week voted to correct the decades-old error.
"I've been wanting it changed for years," Campbell Mayor Jeanette Watson says. "Someone on the staff finally picked it up and said, 'Yes, this is doable.' I'm so thankful."
Watson guesses that at some time, somewhere, someone misspelled the name, and the mistake was simply repeated in a very public way. She's right.
Popovic says that in her research of Santa Clara County's plot maps, planners sometimes spelled it correctly, and other times not. When the city was incorporated, almost 50 years ago, Popovic says the incorrect spelling must have been chosen off the most recent plot map at the time.
"Since we're going into our 50th anniversary, we want to have everything the way it ought to be," Popovic says.
Campbell will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of its incorporation in March.
Now that the commission has approved the name-change, the item will go before Campbell City Council in February and Popovic estimates that the new signs could be installed by April.
Business owners on McGlincey Lane have been notified of the impending name change, and Popovic says only one person was unhappy with the idea, having sent the city a letter asking why it wanted to waste taxpayers' money.
Popovic says the receipt of the residents' and business owners' mail will not be affected, although they should take note of the change when the time comes to update their stationery and business cards. The city will be notifying the utility companies of the change on behalf of the residents, she says.
In Watson's book, Campbell, The Orchard City, she writes a detailed account of how the McGlincy family came to live in Campbell and of their murders, citing newspaper sources that published stories about the infamous crime, which made news all over the Bay Area because of the number of people killed and the ruthlessness with which the act was carried out.
Dunham reportedly first killed his wife, Hattie, gagging her and then breaking her neck. The family's maid, Minnie Shesler, was the next to go. She, too, was gagged and then axed in the head.
Hattie's mother, Ada, received five blows to the head with Dunham's axe and Hattie's brother, Jim, was shot numerous times. Witnesses reported that Jim's clothes were on fire when his body was found.
Col. McGlincy was whacked with the axe, but not mortally wounded until Dunham shot him straight through the heart.
Family friend Robert Briscoe was the last killed, shot six times as he attempted to escape through a window.
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Campbell, California
