The Saints and Not Saints of Marin Toponyms
By Carol Acquaviva
Here’s an SAT word for you: toponymy. It means the study of toponyms which are the formal names of geographic places. In Marin County, there are a great many schools, churches, towns, streets, neighborhoods, and other defined areas and landmarks named for Christian saints. Some names and their origins are more familiar than others.
Saint Raphael, for whom today’s city, school, church, and several Marin streets are named, is considered to be one of seven archangels. Appearing in the new testament Book of John, Saint Raphael is today a symbol of healing, and is a patron saint of young people, as well as sick people and travelers. Mission San Rafael Arcangel was founded on December 14, 1817, initially as a medical facility to handle the overflow of sick Indians from Mission Dolores in San Francisco. Mission San Rafael — which became its own independent mission in 1823 — experienced better year-round climate as it was sheltered from harsher conditions found in San Francisco.
Saint Quentin, an early Church saint, was also a healer, curing the blind, deaf, and infirm. He was imprisoned, tortured, and eventually put on trial, and tortured even further. Saint Quentin’s date of death is noted as October 31, 287. However, the San Quentin Peninsula on which the state prison is located, was named originally for an Indian with the Spanish name of Quentin or Quintino. A sub-chief of Chief Marin, or Marino, Quentin was captured alongside Marino in 1824 and taken to San Francisco where he spent a year incarcerated in the presidio. Quentinio later skippered boats for priests at Mission Dolores, and eventually was in charge of a flat-bottom barge for General Vallejo. The 1835 diseno — the Spanish-Mexican map showing physical boundaries of land granted to Mexican citizens — notes the place as “Point of Quentin.”
The name Santa Margarita also appears on a diseno in 1834, referring to the rancho that includes today’s Terra Linda and Lucas Valley. Saint Margarita was born in present-day Turkey during the reign of Roman Emperor Claudius II, in 270 AD. After refusing to renounce her Christianity, she was tortured and beheaded.
There was no “Saint Venetia”; Developer Mabry McMahon named his proposed community “Santa Venetia” for the series of canals he imagined to host a luxury subdivision modeled after the Italian city of Venice. For more information about this residential San Rafael neighborhood, we have a digital collection that includes two promotional brochures from 1914, around the time of McMahan’s “Grand Opening” celebration.
Saint Clement was a bishop of Rome in the late first century — likely the second or third bishop after Peter. While imprisoned by Roman emperor Trajan, Clement led a prison ministry. He was executed by being tied to an anchor and thrown into the sea, and is recognized as a patron saint of mariners. San Clemente Creek in Corte Madera is now more accurately described as a tidal slough since sediment has filled the channel. Built in 1873, the North Pacific Coast Railroad Company ran a route that, from the Pine Point Station (leaving downtown Sausalito), circled around, across Richardson Bay via a trestle, to Strawberry Point. As the railroad climbed past Lyford’s Station, then Summit Station, it dipped down to San Clemente Station, a stop popular because of its access to a racetrack and proximity to prime hunting lands. Today, the name is reflected in San Clemente Drive, between Tamalpais Drive to the north and what turns into Paradise Drive to the south.
It is apt that Saint Vincent’s School for Boys, founded as an orphanage in 1855, was so-named. Saint Vincent de Paul is the patron saint of all works of charity. A French Catholic Priest who lived in the 16th and 17th centuries, he dedicated his life to serving the poor, and is noted for his compassion and generosity. Timothy Murphy, one of Marin County’s original land grantees, left a portion of his land — about 317 acres in San Rafael — to San Francisco Archbishop Joseph Alemany, with the stipulation that it be used as a school. The deed read in part:
“[T]he grantee shall within two years from the date hereof [January 13, 1853] cause a school or seminary of learning to be established and maintained upon said land, and cause suitable buildings to be erected upon said land for the use of such school or seminary of the value of at least one thousand dollars….”
Archbishop Alemany offered the land for use to the Sisters of Charity, who were Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. In January of 1855, the Sisters established a girl’s seminary and named it “School of St. Vincent at Las Galinas”; that endeavor did not flourish due to low enrollment and it’s isolated location away from San Rafael proper. (It was a day’s journey from San Francisco, so getting a priest to travel to say mass on Sundays was nearly impossible.)
In late 1855, Father Maurice and fourteen boys from San Francisco’s Market Street Orphanage took up residence at St. Vincent’s. Before the end of that year, the organization had flourished, with a roster of 28 orphans and a free school serving 40 pupils. In 1874, a newspaper reported there had been thousands of orphaned boys who had benefited from the “pious care” of the orphanage and school.
Some of the “saint” names in Marin come by way of locations outside of Marin County, for instance the following streets: Santa Barbara Avenue in San Anselmo; Santa Rosa Avenue in Sausalito; and Santa Clara Court in San Rafael. Like “Saint Venetia,” there was no “Saint Cruz.” Santa Cruz — also an avenue in San Anselmo — was named by Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola around 1769, a reference to “holy cross.”
The Anne T. Kent California Room has a number of excellent sources on place name origins, including the following which cover Marin County locales:
California Place Names of Indian Origin, by A.L. Kroeber.
California’s Spanish Place-Names: What They Mean and How They Got There, by Barbara Marinacci.
Place Names of Marin: Where Did They Come From?, by Louise Teather.
Quentin’s Guide to the Streets of Central and Southern Marin, by Lawrence W. Rand.
