Died in 2009
There was a large palm in the middle of the parking lot northeast
of the
intersection
of Main Street and Weller Lane where a city park is now
located. Local legend is that Joseph Weller planted this
palm on his ranch. The palm was relocated by a developer to
the corner of Main Street and Weller Lane, but died for lack of
water after transplanting.
Around 1860, before Main Street took it's present path
under the Calaveras
Blvd. overpass, it followed the same route as the present Carlo
and Winsor Streets.
Joseph Weller
had filed squatter's rights to over 100 acres of land belonging to
Rancho San Ignacio (Tularcitos) in February 1853. Soon, he
built his home and ranch buildings just north of his brother
Abraham's 200 acre farm and blacksmith shop on the northwest side
of this road
(then known
as Oakland-San Jose Road or Mission Road). What is today
Weller Lane was the access road to his ranch. Where a walled
housing development is located today, Joseph Weller's ranch house,
barn, and dairy farm stood back in the 1870s. Back then, the
Oakland-San Jose Road passed right through what is now the
Milpitas Public Library parking garage!
Joseph Weller came to Milpitas in 1852 and set up a blacksmith
shop with his brother Abraham Weller. He had been a teacher in
New York and
retained his life-long love of learning after traveling west. He
helped
to create
the first school district in Milpitas and was a founder of the
Republican Party in
the county. The first grammar school was built on the north
boundary of Abraham Weller's land just west of the Oakland-San
Jose Road, not far from the old Milpitas Grammar School building
that is now part of the library.
It was Joseph Weller who formally named our town Milpitas
when a Post
Office was established for Milpitas Township in 1856 in Frederick
Creighton's Dry Goods Store. Fred Creighton was to be the
first Postmaster of Milpitas Township. According to local
legend, there was
strong sentiment
to call the new town 'Penitencia,' the name some had been using
for
years, and the name of the nearby creek. Weller, who was the first
Assistant Postmaster, reasoned
that to untrained ears, the name closely sounded like
'penitentiary'
and should not
be used. So, he filled in the name 'Milpitas' on the postal
form
because it was the
commonly used name of the rancho on which the settlement stood. In
time, with the
passing of the
older generation, the new name stuck.
Following the fire of 1912 that destroyed the first school on Main
Street and while
the new Milpitas Grammar School was under construction, classes
were
held in some
of the ranch buildings, perhaps without charge to the school
district. That new
grammar school
served for over fifty years, became the first city hall, then the
city
library, Senior Center, and
is now part of a new library.
The Weller Palm was one of a handful of tangible reminders of our
city's
past. Many have been lost in the rush to develop Milpitas.