Gloria L. Hinshaw was born in Montana in 1918. Her parents lived in Seattle, Washington, and her mother, Grace Brown, was visiting her sister in Montana when Gloria and her twin sister were born premature. Her family first came to California in 1921 and resided in Riverside. They moved because her father, Roy Brown, was killed in World War I, and because her grandparents had already moved from Seattle to Riverside on account of her grandmother's asthma condition. From Riverside they moved to San Bernardino, and Gloria went to school there from third grade on up and graduated from San Bernardino High School in 1935. After her first year at San Bernardino Valley College, she moved back to Riverside and married Frank Hinshaw. Frank was a subcontractor for a company in San Bernardino and when the company sent him to work at their branch in Pasadena, Gloria and he looked for houses in the area. In their search they came upon Sierra Madre and bought a house there in 1944. When she first came to town, Gloria worked for several years at McCarty Brothers Pottery and in 1951 she started working at the Sierra Madre Public Library as a library assistant. She would eventually spend twenty-nine years at the library, twenty of which she spent as the children's librarian.
From the description of Oral history interview with Gloria L. Hinshaw, 1989 Mar. 22. (Sierra Madre Public Library). WorldCat record id: 54794689
