Every once in awhile we historians get research requests from real estate agenst. Which helps to prove, I guess, that we have some practical value. Here’s one:

Dear XXXX,

I am honored to be recommended by XXXX Since, as a historian, I am nosy by nature, I glanced at XXXX’s listings and found the home you cited. If that’s not the property, I will now blush.

I can’t ascertain whether 1930 is the right construction date, but the home once belonged to one of Arroyo Grande’s most prominent families, the Briscos.

Charles Brisco and his wife, Etta, moved to Arroyo Grande in 1902; they had three children. One of them, Leo (1892-1987), was a whirlwind. He owned one of the early garages in town, which would’ve stood about where the IOOF Hall parking lot is today.

Leo married the granddaughter of Huasna rancher and Union Civil War veteran Adam Bair–nearly sixty veterans like him are buried in our cemetery, where I give Civil War tours–

 who fought in the deadliest year of the war, Grant vs. Lee, in 1864-65.  If I start to feel sorry for myself, all I need to do is glance at the regimental flag of Bair’s 60th Ohio as it looked at the end of the war.

When the Norwegian lumber freighter Elg ran aground off Oceano in 1938, the captain had to jettison the cargo to get his ship afloat again. Pretty much the whole South County ran to the beach to get free lumber–one young man drowned and another, future World War II fighter pilot Elwyn Righetti, nearly did. And that’s how Leo Brisco got into the lumber and construction business.  It’s said that many of the homes and businesses along Brisco Road are constructed from Elg lumber.  Leo also bought the building, in the 1940s, that now houses Cafe Andreini; it’s sometimes referred to as the Brisco Hotel.

Leo was blind in one eye and wore a shaded eyeglass lens, so that’s him at Brisco Lumber today.

He was also one of the founders, along with my Dad, Albert Maguire, Walter Filer and others, of Mid-State Bank, today’s Mechanics’ Bank.
On Etta Brisco’s death in 1939, the home was inherited by her daughter-in-law, Marietta (1908-2001), who married a business partner of Leo’s, Frank Bosch (1902-1987). Here’s an advertisement from 1941 (I included the cow because I kind of liked the ad:

Sadly–if irrelevantly–Mary Agueda’s daughter was murdered in 1926, which has provided the Arroyo Grande area with its most poignant ghost story:

https://jimgregory52.wordpress.com/2021/10/01/little-alice/

Frank Bosch stayed in the service station/auto repair business and kept it in his brother-in-law’s name:

Mrs. Bosch was the head of the local Red Cross and spent countless hours in volunteer work and in teaching first aid classes, most notably during World War II.

Sometime in the 1950s, the home was acquired by Mrs. J.H. (Gertrude) Thurlwell. She moved away from Arroyo Grande in the mid 1950s but returned to the home to live out the final three months of her life in 1959.

Tragically, she lost a son, Vernon (upper left in this photo from the 1917-18 Arroyo Grande Union High School yearbook) who had been accepted to Stanford but was trying to enlist in the Army. The 1918 flu claimed him instead. (And, parenthetically, that hit Arroyo Grande hard, too, as the story in the link below describes):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1libbJd0azm2ZpdUJoBti7G_DUjHFJlv5/view?usp=sharing

Incidentally, a tool that just might bring up several conversation pieces between agents and their clients is this, an interactive history map of Branch Street. Enjoy, and feel free to share, courtesy of the South County Historical Society.

www.historicbranchstreetarroyogrande.com

I hope that some of this is helpful, and the Society and I wish you great success! We, in turn–as we battle our way back from over two years of Covid–welcome the support of the real estate community!

My best,
Jim Gregory, President