Tuesday, May 11, 2010

County Names

In an entry I posted a year or so ago, I remarked that certain towns in the Ozarks were once known by a previous name, such as Dadeville having first been called Melville. The same is true about some of the counties in the region. For instance, Texas County was first called Ashley County, and McDonald County was first named Seneca County (after the Seneca Indians who lived in the region). What was originally Kinderhook County is now Camden county, and Dallas County was supposedly given its present name because its original name, Niangua, was considered too hard to spell and pronounce. One of the more interesting name changes pertains to Ozark County. It was originally given that name when it was first formed but changed its name to Decatur County and was known as such for a couple of years during the 1840s before changing its name back to Ozark.
I'm not sure whether there is an equivalent town in the Ozarks--one that briefly flirted with a different name before changing its name back to its original.

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