Place Names recalled through history and local lore.

 Actual published place-name stories of our county's features such as hills, rocks, caves, creeks and even some of our old roadways are very few. Oral tradition seems to offer a greater potential harvest of these historic old name places we are familiar with.

The making and telling of place-name stories to explain names given by our older generations is such a vital part of our county history, that we want to know the history or reason for the name. Are they actually a historic fact, are they told as an actually happening, or are they really only a local widely known story. Perhaps they are pure invention, imaginative attempts to explain names on the basis of their sounds. 

 

All stories presented in this article are local and traditional explanations of how places were named. Like all legends, most of them are told as the truth, or believed, to be true. Some may even be historical fact, such as the naming of some of our old, now gone, post offices, and others may be local lore.

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The story of Sheridan.

For many years a line of houses has stood at the place where Sheridan, Kentucky, is now located. It was always a convenient resting place, half way between the ferry at Elizabethtown, Illinois, and Marion, the county seat of Crittenden County, Kentucky. 

 

In the early days it was referred to as "Dog Trot", because the log houses were almost all built in the old familiar pattern of two large rooms connected by a ·roofed passage or a "dog trot." The town was then described by a contemporary as being "three miles long and thirty feet wide."

As time passed, the Post Office Department wished to establish a post office there and give it an official name. At that time the leading citizen was one Richard Bebout, known to everyone far and wide as Cousin Dick. He owned the largest house in town and the only general store, and had established the local Masonic Lodge. He took most pride, however, in his record as a Civil War veteran. 

 

As the post office was to be located in his general store, they left the selection of a name up to him. He mulled over the question for days, asking everyone who came in the store for suggestions. No one came up with anything he liked, so he finally gave it up and fell to reminiscing about his army experiences. “And so one day General Sheridan said to me ---" he began. Then, "I've got it! We'll call the town Sheridan in honor of my favorite general, Philip H. Sheridan." So it was done. 

 

(Told by Mrs. Dorothy Clark Spence, Fall, 1953. She heard the story from Mr. Ather McMaster of Sheridan, Kentucky, and the description of Sheridan from Mr. Gene Guess, both in November 1953, this appeared in the book Place Name Stories About West Kentucky Towns, 1961, by Violetta Maloney Halpert.)

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Irma

Located halfway between Tolu and Sheridan. It was a farming community, with 2 general stores, a church and a school. Samuel S. Sullenger ran one of the grocery stores and it held the post office. He was asked to name the post office as he was in charge of it. He named it Irma, it was thought for one of his daughters. (He actually did have a daughter named Ermine). There was also a church there locally called Whites Chapel, it was named for a local family rather than for the color of the building. The church was located several hundred yards west of the original post office site. (Information from Niles Minner, interview in 1978. From Robert M. Rennick's Kentucky Place-Names, 1984)

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Maple Sink
Between Marion and Dycusburg, Kentucky there is a small lake, people fish and hunt around it. It gets its name from this story.

 

Once there were three sisters: Mary, Mag, and Maple. They were daughters of a local preacher. He was very strict on them; but one time he was away from home, and they wanted to have a little fun. It was winter time and the local pond was frozen. They called up some boys and girls and told them to meet them at the big pond below the barn and they would go skating. They skated for a while and then some of them had to go home, but the sisters and their partners stayed on, for the girls knew their father wouldn't let them go back when he was at home. They were having fun when the ice broke and Maple fell in. Mary ran for help, and the boys tried to get her out, but they couldn't.
They tried to find the body but could not, for in the middle was a sink hole and it had pulled her under. The body was never recovered. After that the place was called Maple Sink.

 

(Edna Hodge, age 67, Dycusburg, Kentucky, July 19, 1955 told this story to Dorothy Booker. The story was told in that community when Edna moved there thirty-eight years ago." From the book, Place-name stories of Kentucky Waterways and Ponds, by Herbert Halpert)