Monday, June 6, 2011

Tika & "County" Trivia

"Tika," I said, "this sort of thing is really interesting to genealogists." You see her response. But I was reading some notes I took from the book The American Counties by J.N. Kane, 1972.  I learned stuff like:

Of the 3067 counties in the U.S. only 2136 have been named for individuals. This figure includes the 203 counties named for 25 presidents. The president for whom the greatest number of counties was named  is (would you guess?) George Washington who leads the list with 31, followed by Thomas Jefferson at 26. Jackson has 21 counties named for him, excluding Hickory County, Missouri, for his nickname.

There are 20 counties named for Madison, 17 for Monroe, 17 for Lincoln, 12 for Grant and 11 for Polk. There is a long list of presidents for whom 1 to 8  counties were named. Only one president had both his first and last name used as the name of a county. Millard Fillmore had Millard County named for him in Utah as well as Fillmore County in both Minnesota and Nebraska.  And there are 11 presidents who do not have a county named for them.

So if there were 3067 counties and only 2136 have been named for people, that leaves 931 counties named for other than individuals. What about your county of birth?  (Mine: Kalamazoo, MI)  Or your county of residence?  (Spokane, WA) Have you ever thought about the origin of "your" county's name?

Tika has not. She was born somewhere in Idaho, remember.

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