Putting the Friend in Friendly

When I first moved to this Redwood City neighborhood, one of the things that appealed to me was its name, "Friendly Acres" (not to be confused with the Friendly Acres Ranch in Half Moon Bay).  Our neighbor and a real estate agent had mentioned that there was a indeed a man behind the name.  A man by the name of Friendly who had been the developer of the neighborhood we had bought into, and that he had possible lived on Marsh Road.  That's about as much as the real estate agent knew.

There was nothing online about Mr. Friendly.  But the Redwood City archives yielded a little bit more information, as did Ancestry.com, and some venerable Polk directories.

Harry Friend was his name - a "friendlier" anglicized version of his real name, Abraham Freund, which he adopted after arriving at Ellis Island at the turn of the 20th century.

His story begins back in 1880 in Prussia, (or Poland in today's geo-political maps).  Landing first in New York then he moves west to San Francisco, making a series of property acquisitions south through the Peninsula - residing in Burlingame, San Mateo, and Sweeney Ranch (south of Redwood City) where he purchased some acres, subdivided it, and settled in - calling his settlement "Friendly Acres", before retiring with his wife to San Carlos.

He left us with his name.  But then he's not the only one to have done so.  The entire neighborhood is threaded with names from the past, some of whom were earlier developers and landowners of the area, and others simply civic employees who by their contributions to the city were awarded the honor of a street sign in our vicinity.