Month: December 2014
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Old Greer County
I talked about the longest postal route in the United States recently. That saga recounted Jim Ed Bull and his 187.6 mi (302 km) daily slog from Mangum, Oklahoma through the rural countryside. I also discovered an interesting bit of trivia during my research. This little corner of southwestern Oklahoma used to be part of…
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That Other Warsaw
In the recent Not the City article I focused on Richmond, not the city of course, but the county. There, the local government centered on a village called Warsaw (map). That seemed like an exceptionally odd choice. There wasn’t a large Polish diaspora on Virginia’s Northern Neck as best as I could tell. Why name…
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Not the City
I examined a stack of family files online and I learned that a distant relative lived in Houston, Texas. I’ve traced numerous family members back through there so it didn’t surprise me. However the records didn’t make sense as I read through them. Geographic identifiers seemed unfamiliar and out of place. Then I slowly realized…
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Fighting Words
If someone named a town “Battle” then I would expect that it might commemorate a great conflict taking place nearby. I believed most logical people would find that a reasonable conclusion. So I examined several occurrences and discovered that it wasn’t necessarily the case. Usually the battles referenced were rather inconsequential or not even battles…
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Particularly Possessive
I noticed that Prince George’s County, Queen Anne’s County and St. Mary’s County — all in Maryland — included the genitive apostrophe to form their possessive constructions. I’d always taken it on faith that the United States Board on Geographic Names disallowed apostrophes for that specific purpose. That’s how we ended-up with Harpers Ferry and…