Pleasant Hope and Pin Hook Again

When I was growing up in Fair Grove (MO), I often heard Pleasant Hope, our neighbor ten miles to the northwest, referred to as Pin Hook, and I used to wonder why it was called that. I always assumed it was just a nickname that came about because both Pleasant Hope and Pin Hook start with the same two letters.

In 2012, I found an 1872 article in a Springfield newspaper that seemed to contradict my childhood assumption. I concluded from the article that Pleasant Hope and Pin Hook were, in fact, two separate places, because it reported that a new town called Pleasant Hope had recently been established a short distance away from the site of old Pin Hook, which was now (1872) nothing but a cornfield. This suggested to me that Pin Hook must have been a village that predated Pleasant Hope, and that the new town of Pleasant Hope took the name of its predecessor as a nickname. 

But I was never quite satisfied that what the Springfield newspaper seemed to be saying was the real story; so, recently I decided to dig a little deeper and see what else I could come up with about early-day Pleasant Hope/Pin Hook. As it turns out, my interpretation of what the 1872 article was saying was wrong, and my original assumption that Pin Hook was just a nickname for Pleasant Hope was closer to the truth. At least, I think, based on my recent research, that such is the case. In fact, I believe my interpretation of that 1872 article was so misleading that I have now deleted the blog entry that I posted thirteen years ago.  

According to a history on the City of Pleasant Hope's website, an academy affiliated with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church started near the town's present site in 1849, and a small settlement soon grew up around or near the academy. U. S. Postal history tells us that this community, under the name Pleasant Hope, got its first post office in 1851. This post office was discontinued in November 1855, but Pleasant Hope got a new post office in December 1860. It may have briefly had a post office between 1855 and 1860 as well. The town did for sure have a post office during the Civil War (at least during part of the war) and for several years after the war ended.

However, this is where the confusion comes in, because in 1870, C. E. Bushnell applied for a post office to be established at a new village called Pleasant Hope, which was located about a mile north of where the previous town or at least the previous post office had been located. Bushnell said the new village of Pleasant Hope had only four families at the time, and he estimated that about 78 people lived within a two-mile radius of the village. Apparently, the original Pleasant Hope, which somewhere along the line acquired the nickname Pin Hook, had died out for some reason, and a new town by the same name was created a mile or so away. And the new village of Pleasant Hope inherited the nickname of Pin Hook, the same sobriquet by which the previous village had also been known.

So, when the writer of the 1872 article in the Springfield paper referred to the new town of Pleasant Hope being located a short distance from old Pin Hook, he was not saying that Pin Hook was actually the name of the older town, but, instead, he was simply referring to the old town by its nickname.