Ephraim Willard Burr (E. W. Burr) was born in Warren, Rhode Island on March 7, 1809. He began a family with his wife Abby Miller Child, having five children between the years of 1836 and 1846. In 1849 E. W. Burr was working in the whaling industry managing four whaling ships, when one of his ships, the Niantic, went missing. E. W. Burr sailed to California, arriving in San Francisco in the early months of 1850 to find the ship had been grounded and abandoned, its crew lured by gold in the California foothills and mountains. Recognizing commercial opportunities in Gold Rush era San Francisco, E. W. Burr decided to stay in the city. By April of 1850 E. W. Burr had formed Burr, Mattoon and Company, which operated a general store and grocery. Once successfully established Burr sent for his wife and children and built a home for them at Filbert and Van Ness streets.

E. W. Burr proved successful in a variety of endeavors. In 1854 he organized the San Francisco Accumulating Fund Association (later renamed the Savings and Loan Society), the first savings bank on the Pacific Coast. He was elected president of the association in 1857 and remained president for 21 years. In September 1856 E. W. Burr was nominated by the People’s Reform Party for mayor of San Francisco; he was elected in November 1856, serving as mayor of San Francisco until 1859. E. W. Burr speculated in mining in Mariposa, Monterey, and Placer counties and was also prolific in real estate, holding deeds to land in Alameda, San Francisco, and San Mateo counties. E. W. Burr was an early urban developer of San Francisco, particularly in the Lagoon Survey, an area of San Francisco now known as Cow Hollow and Russian Hill. E. W. Burr retired from business in 1879 and died on July 20, 1894.

John Winslow Allyne was born on April 18, 1841 in Brewster, Massachusetts. At age 18 he sailed with his father around the Cape Horn to San Francisco, with the rest of the Allyne family following soon after. Allyne worked as a clerk for the Stanford brother’s Pacific Oil and Kerosene Works. Allyne partnered with William White to form the Allyne and White firm and in 1869 they purchased Pacific Oil and Kerosene Works from the Stanford family. In 1871 Allyne married Mary Newell Burr, daughter of E. W. Burr, bringing together the Burr-Allyne families. They had two children, Lucy and Edith, and made a home at Green and Gough streets. Allyne died on December 4, 1901.

Ephraim Willard Burr’s son Edmund Coffin Burr (E. C. Burr) had come from Warren, Rhode Island, to reunite with his father in San Francisco in 1852. As a student he studied chemistry in Leipzig, Germany. E. C. Burr married Anna Barnard in 1875 and together they raised three daughters, Elsie, Marian and Alice in their home on Vallejo Street in San Francisco. E. C. Burr successfully took control of the Alameda Sugar Company in 1889, which produced sugar from beets. Like his father, E. C. Burr also speculated in mining, holding land in Monterey and Alameda counties for this purpose and was also successful in real estate; in 1902, with his siblings Lucy, Mary and Clarence, he founded Baden Company, a real estate and property management company with holdings in Alameda, San Francisco and San Mateo counties. E. C. Burr died in September of 1927.

Elsie Burr, the eldest daughter of E. C. and Anna Barnard, was born in 1877, traveled and studied abroad in Europe from 1904 to 1905 and attended University of California, Berkeley, where she first met her husband, Harry Overstreet. Elsie and Harry had three children and she spent some years living in New York State, where Harry was a professor of psychology at City College of New York. They divorced in 1930; soon after Elsie settled in Berkeley, California. She died in 1957. Alice Burr, the middle daughter, was born in 1883 and was active in the League of Women Voters. Alice took interest in photography in her teens, perhaps influenced by her aunt, Mary Newell Burr Allyne. In 1916 Alice graduated from the Clarence White School of Photography where she was a student of White. Alice’s work is attributed to the school of Pictorialism, the subjects of her photography usually San Francisco scenes, nature scenes and portraiture. She worked in silver and pigment prints, experimenting in bromoil and pigment and the color Autochrome process in her studio on the property of the Burr home on Vallejo Street. Alice also photographed many of her travels with her sister Marian, even filming their travels in Africa with her motion picture camera.

Marian Burr, born in 1887, was active in the Red Cross of San Francisco and traveled extensively with her sister Alice through Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa, and Japan. Both Marian and Alice remained in the Burr family home on Vallejo Street until their deaths in 1966 and 1968, respectively.