Died 2009
Once there was a large palm in the middle of the lot northeast of
the
intersection
of Main Street and Weller Lane. Local legend is that the
date palm had been planted by J. R. Weller in the early years of
the twentieth century. When the parcel was sold to a
developer in 2005, the tree was moved to the northeast corner of
the intersection of Main Street and Weller Lane.
Unfortunately the tree did not survive and for many years its
upright dead trunk was seen by visitors to the Public Library next
door.
In
the latter half
of the nineteenth century, before Main Street took it's present
path
under the Calaveras
Blvd. overpass, it followed the same route as the present Winsor
Street.
Joseph Weller
had built his home and ranch buildings on the northwest side of
this road
(then known
as Oakland-San Jose Road or Mission Road).
Joseph Weller came to Milpitas in the 1850s. 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. It was Joseph Weller who formally named our town
Milpitas
when a Post
Office was built here in 1858. According to local legend, there
was
strong sentiment
to call the new town Penitencia, the name some had been using for
years. Weller 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
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 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 Milpitas Public Library.
The Weller Palm was one of a handful of tangible reminders of our
city's
past.