Toy Avenue
Well-respected Chinese herbalist and landowner Toy Wah Hing was born in Sacramento in 1869.(There also are avenues names Wah and Hing.) The family name, however, was Yee. His father was Yee Fung Cheung, a Chinese herbalist who treated Leland Stanford’s wife, Jane, when she was deathly ill. Stanford called him Dr.Hing, and he came to assume that name, said Melvin Hing, a great-grandson of Yee. Toy Wah Hing also too up the name and herbalist trade, but also invested in large tracts of land, including the land from Auburn in Placer County to areas south of the city of Sacramento. His herbal practice sometime ran afoul of authorities who accused him of possessing morphine, heroin and opium when he was raided in 1920. Nevertheless, his family, including 16 chilren, was the only Chinese family lived in downtown, and he was the first Chinese man in town to own a car. Grandson Melvin Hing remembers going around to collect rents in the 1930s in an “old jalopy”. Toy Wah Hing’s land holdings included an area now know as Woodbine, where in 1915, he plotted out streets named Toy, Wah and Hing. The streets were plotted on a map. They did not appear on the grounds for years. Song, a street named for his wife, was never built. Three other streets were named Yee, Lock and Sam, the herbalist’s Chinese names…….(until now, only Lock was built, Fan’notes). Toy Wah Hing’s home was at 725 J street.
Carlos Alcala.Sacramento Street Whys: The Whys Guy’s Wise Guide to Sacramento Street names. Big Tomato Press. Sacramento. 2007 page 71-72.
Yee Fung Chung, Sacramento Pioneer.
Yee Fung Chung came to Sacramento during the gold rush. In 1862,Jane Stanford, the wife of Sacramento businessman and California governorLeland Stanford, became sick…..After moving to Virginia City, Noveda, in 1869, he bagan using his second birth name Wah Hing, a name he utilized until returning to Sacramento. The exact date of his return is unknown, but advertisements for his business at 1209 Third Street, under the name of Yee Wah Hing, appeared in 1901, and he opened an office at 725 J street in 1905. His son, Yee Lok Sam, adopted the name T. Wah Hing in about 1897, continueing his father’s business on third street, but he resumed the name Yee Lok Sam in 1910. Yee Lok Sam’s son Henry grew up in the United States and later continued the family tradition of herbal medicine at another office on J street.
William Burg. Sacramento’s K street, where our City was born. The History Press.Charleston.2012.Page 37-38. (03/25/13 searched)
Virginia Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine 