A Dictionary of Iowa Place-Names
A Dictionary of Iowa Place-Names (Bur Oak Guide) Tom Savage, Loren N. Horton (Foreword)
Publisher: University Of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1587295318
DDC: 917.77
Edition: Paperback; 2007-06-01
Summary:
Lourdes and Churchtown, Woden and Clio, Emerson and Sigourney,
Tripoli and Waterloo, Prairie City and Prairieburg, Tama and
Swedesburg, What Cheer and Coin. Iowa’s place-names reflect the
religions, myths, cultures, families, heroes, whimsies, and
misspellings of the Hawkeye State’s inhabitants. Tom Savage spent
four years corresponding with librarians, city and county officials,
and local historians, reading newspaper archives, and exploring local
websites in an effort to find out why these communities received
their particular names, when they were established, and when they
were incorporated. Savage includes information on the place-names of
all 1,188 incorporated and unincorporated communities in Iowa that
meet at least two of the following qualifications: twenty-five or
more residents; a retail business; an annual celebration or festival;
a school; church, or cemetery; a building on the National Register of
Historic Places; a zip-coded post office; or an association with a
public recreation site. If a town’s name has changed over the years,
he provides information about each name; if a name’s provenance is
unclear, he provides possible explanations. He also includes
information about the state’s name and about each of its ninety-nine
counties as well as a list of ghost towns. The entries range from the
counties of Adair to Wright and from the towns of Abingdon to
Zwingle; from Iowa’s oldest town, Dubuque, starting as a mining camp
in the 1780s and incorporated in 1841, to its newest, Maharishi Vedic
City, incorporated in 2001. The imaginations and experiences of its
citizens played a role in the naming of Iowa’s communities, as did
the hopes of the huge influx of immigrants who settled the state in
the 1800s. Tom Savage’s dictionary of place-names provides an
appealing genealogical and historical background to today’s map of
Iowa. “It is one of the beauties of Iowa that travel across the state
brings a person into contact with so many wonderful names, some of
which a traveler may understand immediately, but others may require a
bit of investigation. Like the poet Stephen Vincent Benét, we have
fallen in love with American names. They are part of our soul, be
they family names, town names, or artifact names. We identify with
them and are identified with them, and we cannot live without them.
This book will help us learn more about them and integrate them into
our beings.”—from the foreword by Loren N. Horton “Primghar, O’Brien
County. Primghar was established by W. C. Green and James Roberts on
November 8, 1872. The name of the town comes from the initials of the
eight men who were instrumental in developing it. A short poem
memorializes the men and their names: Pumphrey, the treasurer, drives
the first nail; Roberts, the donor, is quick on his trail; Inman dips
slyly his first letter in; McCormack adds M, which makes the full
Prim; Green, thinking of groceries, gives them the G; Hayes drops
them an H, without asking a fee; Albright, the joker, with his jokes
all at par; Rerick brings up the rear and crowns all ‘Primghar.’
Primghar was incorporated on February 15, 1888.”
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