When
it came to naming their towns, East Texans were not shy about their selections.
Consider these examples.
Jumbo,
in Panola County, got its name from an elephant in P.T. Barnum’s circus. One of
the largest African elephants in captivity, Jumbo was killed by a train while
the circus was unloading in a Ontario, Canada, freight yard.
Rake
Pocket, also in Panola County, was named for the way merchants treated
their customers. The community was later known as Pine
Hill.
Shakerag in Rusk County got its name from the sight of
a young baseball player running the bases with a rag shaking in his back pocket.
Pee
Dee in Madison County go its name from the Pee Dee Indians of South Carolina.
A family also named Pee Dee settled in Madison County and all eight members of
the family died when someone poisoned a spring used by the family. Buena
Vista, in Shelby County, was originally known as Buck Snort when
Granny Elizabeth Richards tried to chase a large buck from her garden. The buck
pawed the ground and snorted at Granny.
Chickenfeather,
in Rusk County, got its name when several young men stole some chickens and cooked
them. They then threw the chicken feathers into a well, forcing men in the community
to clean out the well. The settlement today is known as New Hope.
Looneyville, in Nacogdoches,
was named for a local family, not for the people living around Crazy Creek.
Goober
Hill in Shelby County was named for peanuts, known locally as goobers, that
were a major crop in the area.
Terrapin Neck, named for a turtle,
lies in Harrison County. The town was later named Gill for a ferryman.
Deweyville, in Newton County, was called Possum Bluff because
the woods were overun with the critters.
Jot‘
Em Down in Delta County was named for the Jot Em Down Store owned by mythical
storekeepers Lum Edwards and Abner Peabody of the long-running radio series.of
the 1930s and 1940s.
Pluck,
Plank and Pert. Pluck
was, in Polk County and was named because it supposedly took a “plucky man” to
live there. Plank was a sawmill town in Hardin County where townspeople
called the lumber “planks.” Pert,
in Anderson County, was a sawmill town known earlier as Mount Vernon.
Slip
Up And Hitch is near the Crossroads Cemetery on Farm Road 1 in Sabine County.
Yallo Busha in Camp County, often called Yellow Bush, was
named by Jim Keel, who was building a school house and named it for a stream in
his native Alabama. The name came from an Indian phrase.
More names in
a future column.
© Bob
Bowman November
16, 2011 Column
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