American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1872-08-17

of infancy. In his amusing account OF
Suffolk surnames, Bowditch tells us that,
in 1870 Pepper Mixer, Esq, was permit
ted to change his mixed address. Soon
after Mir. Whitcfoot dropped his foot. In
1S4S, a whole family of Vests Invested
themselves of their old name. In 1850,
Thomas Jest decided to Jest no longer.
A distinguished lawyer of MiddleseX
County, in Massachusetts, named Burn
side, dsiking his Christian name, APP
piled for leave to change it. Unfortunate
| ly, he wrote bad hand and so the clerk
ofthe Great and General Coert thought
he also petitioned to change his last name
into Burnside. The Legislature granted
the petition rs the clerk read it, and,
when the law passed, the gentleman woke
up to the fact that he was Mr.. Burnside.
For one year, and until the Legislature
riet anew, did that name cling to him;
and then, by dint of writing a plain hand,
| he was legislated into his old patronymic.
| Great names sometimes come to an ig-
| noble destiny. George Washington has
lately been sent to the Georgia State
Prison, where Thomas Jefferson and Dan
iel Webster were already confined. In
December, 1869, Henry Wilson was ar
rested for selling liquor without license.
Napoleon Bonaparte has but lately re-
ceived his just sentence of Imprisonment
for life in an American Jail. And surely
among great names may be included the
late Mrs. Knox, of Boston, whose first
name was ntiphoskiphorbia.
But this lady always signed herself "a.
Knox"
In the Yale College catalogue, of thirty
years ago, we were amused with stu
dents name of Spear, to whom a poetical
father had given the Christian name of
William Shake. And Dickens tells us
that his well known epithet of Boz orig
mated in playful application to his
younger brother of the name of Moses,
from the Moses of "The Vicar of Wake
field" First, it was Moses, then Bosses,
and finally and forever Boz.
AS we turn from the name of the indi-
vidual to that of the locality, we find the
same general rule that early circumstances
always embody themselves in the desig
nation. The name of the town will gen
orally unlock to us its early history. We
might be sure, even if the New England
historian did not inform us of the fact,
that our Massachusetts, Boston was set
tied by those who once lived in st. Bo-
tolph's town, in England; that the earliest
citizens of bewitched Salem were those
Puritanic forefathers of ours who came
hither saying, LET us have peace;" that
our Oldest seat of learning received its
name from Cambridge in England; and
that that place in its turn lifts its schol |
arly towers where a bridge spans the
Cam. But as this country expands and |
grows older, we find a great paucity of
original names; first settlers are not usu-
ally persons of much mental culture.
The number of acknowledgement |
real-estate owners, who would project |
themselves on to pOsterity by weighing
down whole communities with their bap
tismal ugliness, is unfortunately very
great. Over sixteen hundred post-office
villages in the United States wilfully
terminate their names with vile, from
Abbeville, of which there are five, as well
as one Abbeyville, through Grubville in
Missouri, to Gillville in Alabama, and
louisville in Indiana. And, in the year
of grace 1869, Strong Pepper, Esq, de-
creed that the village around his resi-
dence should bear the name of Pepper
vile.
Five towns rejoice in the name of
Napoleon. Our Catholic proclivities are
shown by the fact that one hundred and
villages commence their
names with the title of Saint; three hun
bred and thirty-seven begin with Mount.
We have spoken Of that early home
of our Puritan fathers in Massachusetts,
the town of Salem thirty-one other
towns or villages bare the same peace
full designation, including three Salem
Centres, Salem Chapel, Salem Church,
and Salem Y Roads. Since the Mexican
War, twelve Buena Vistas have sprung
into existence; since the rebellion, one
in Arkansas. There are two
to ten Enterprises. One hundred
and ninety-two towns verdantly begin
with Green, of which twenty-five are
thirteen, Greenfields; eight,
Greenlands: a Greenup and a Greentree.
North Carolina has its Lone Lady; New
Jersey, its Long-a-coming, and Illinois,
its Endor, without witch. Adam is
represented among his American posterity
by twenty-nine towns; while the more
popular John Smith has sixty-three vii
lagos that bear his name in some shape.
The paternity of the nomenclature of the
towns and villages in the United States is
A fruitful and suggestive study; but, I'M
endless.-IVm. e. Hooper, in
1pplet0n's Journal.