Burrell Park Neighborhood Association
Burrell Park History
Who We Are
A 1914 map indicates the area known as Burrell Park was originally owned by Rebecca Smith. At that time the area was full of orchards. In 1922, Frank Lester Burrell, along with his wife, Anne, proposed to subdivide their orchard property at the intersection of Park Avenue and Hedding Court. The development included extending Hedding Street and McKendrie from Park Avenue to Dana Street and creating Burrell Court within these boundaries. An initial house, 1595 Burrell Court, was built at the corner of Dana and Burrell Court. In 1924, the plan was amended and received final approval. Barnett and Phelps, a San Jose Real Estate Company managed the development of Burrell Park and several other nearby developments. The builders, C.W. Cook started building 10 houses and C.V. Brown began building four homes in Burrell Park. The homes sold for $4500 to $7500, however, there was a racial restriction limiting the owners and residents.
The development was annexed into the City of San Jose on October 8, 1925. In May 1960, the City acquired land on the north side of Hedding Court and in August began to widen Hedding Court and extend it to Bascom Avenue.
In October 1962, Hedding Court was renamed Hedding Street. The large intersection at Burrell Court and Dana is due to the fact that a weigh station exited there to weigh the produce to the neighboring orchards. In 1990, the City created a large traffic island there, which was replaced with a smaller island in 1994 after the neighborhood petitioned for the change to improve traffic flow.
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Gayle Frank’s article in the PAC*SJ newsletter provides a perspective to the history of Burrell Court with the time period.
​Mary Jane Burrell (7/29/1922–10/13/2014) graduated from Stanford University with a doctorate in psychotherapy. She married a dentist, Benjamin Curry Ledyard, in 1943 and went on to establish a private practice in psychotherapy and was a senior faculty member at the Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville, VA. She had four children: Anne Proudfoot and Jane Ledyard of Cary NC, James of Santa Fe and Margaret of Rainier, WA, along with four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
Frank Lester Burrell Jr (9/12/1927-11/21/2012) attended Bellarmine College Prep and San Jose State and was a graduate of University of Washington Pacific Coast School of Banking. He enlisted as a private in the Army on 8/31/1945. After starting his own advertising business, he became vice president at Crocker National Bank and Bank of America before starting his own investment banking firm, Burrell & Co in San Francisco. On 6/25/1955, he married Margaret M. Campbell. He built a house in San Francisco in 1966 and lived life to the fullest. He had three children: Frank Burrell of Monte Sereno, Peter Burrell of Santa Rosa and Katherine Burrell of Aptos, and seven grandchildren: Jackie Rogers, Patrick Johnson, Kaitlin Johnson, Victoria Johnson, Frank Burrell IV, Jessica Burrell and Ethan Burrell. He died in 2012.
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The BPNA is grateful to Frank Lester Burrell, III, who contributed $1500 to the Burrell Park Centennial Celebration, and his sister, Katherine and her daughter, Victoria, who attended on August 24th 2024.
Many thanks to Ann Manley and Gayle Frank for their research into the history. More information can be found in:
· Burrell, Lyman J. “Recollections of an Octogenarian” compiled by Mountain Echoes in 1881-1882
· The Burrell Letters, Stuart, Reginald R. ed. (1949) California Historical Quarterly v.28, no4
Burrell Family History
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The Burrell Family has a long and fascinating history in Santa Clara County. It began with:
Lyman Jabez Burrell (9/5/1801-6/2/1884) was born on a farm in Massachusetts and moved with his family to a farm in Sheffield, Ohio when he was 15 years old. There he worked on the family farm, completed his secondary education and started his own farm on the 100 acres that his father gave him. He married Mary Stillman in 1823 and they had a daughter, Eliza M., (12/1/1834), however, his wife died in 1837. He and Eliza moved to Elyria, Ohio and he worked as a quarryman and made soap and candles. In 1839, he married Clarissa Wright (1805-1857) and they had four children: James Birney Burrell (8/4/1840), Martha A (1843), Clarissa R (1845), and Willie who died young. In 1949. At the age of 48, Lyman went to California to find gold and worked as a miner for 18 months. He returned home with $2,000. A year later he returned to California to try farming. His wife, Clarissa, sold the farm and on October 16, 1852 left Boston with her children on the maiden voyage of the clipper, Westward Ho, to San Francisco. They took a steamer to Alviso and met Lyman, who was working there. She stayed with a friend in Los Gatos, while Lyman and James Birney felled and milled trees and built a two-room cabin on the Santa Soquel Mexican land grant near the summit of the Santa Cruz Mountains. He tried raising cattle and hogs, but the bears killed the livestock. However, he was successful growing grapes and stone fruit.
Lymon Burrell and his wife, Clarissa
After Clarissa died in 1857, he married her younger sister in 1864, Lucy Mix Wright Lewis (1810-1875) on 11/22/1864. She was the widow of Dr. William Lewis and the sister of James Wright, a Presbyterian minister, who had moved his family to California in 1869 and established Wright’s Station next to Lyman’s property. Lyman donated an acre of land for a community school in 1870. Lucy died in 1875. On 2/16/1876, Lyman married Philomela Thurston Reed Vining (10/21/1823). He lived on the farm with his wife’s brother and 24-year-old son Alden Vining until he died on June 2, 1884. Although Lyman’s children contested the will that left the property to Philomela, she prevailed and by 1890 was living in Oakland where she died in 1900. She and Lyman are interred in the Mission City Cemetery in Santa Clara.
James Birney Burrell (8/4/1840 – 9/14/1921), came to California when he was 12 and helped his father clear the land in the Santa Cruz Mountains, in the now defunct town of Burrell. Later he acquired 40 acres next to his father’s land, and 300 acres on Los Gatos Creek. On 6/18/1871, he married Mary Lucille Campbell and they produced three children: Frank Lester, William Arthur and Clarissa L. Between 1982 and 1888 he made four trips to Mexico where he had property. After his father died, he moved his family to 41 North 10th Street, San Jose. Birney kept a journal which is located at the University of the Pacific.