Question of the Week: Have any of your ancestors had something named after them?

Question

This week WikiTreer Kitty Smith got a beautiful Celtic harp, which she named Eowyn! 

Otherwise, I don't know of any ancestors who had things named after them, though several had generations of descendants named after them.

How about you? Have any of your ancestors had something named after them?

Comments

Riggsville MI is named after family the only problem is it no longer is a town/

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My Hubbell ancestors were early settlers in the Catskill Mountains of NY.  Hubbell Corners and Hubbell Hill along with East and West Hubbell Hill Roads bear their name.

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My ancestor, Francois Valle, was one of the original settlers of Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, which is the oldest town west of the Mississippi.  Pretty much everything in Ste. Genevieve County has the Valle named attached. streets, the school districts (both the public and private Catholic schools), and several historic buildings.

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John Melton was my 4th g. grandfather who originally owned Melton's Bluff and later purchased by Andrew (Old Hickory) Jackson in @1815 who worked the plantation with about 40/60 slaves.  Melton an Irishman by birth married a Cherokee woman who was the sister of the most powerful Chickamauga Cherokee of the Great Bend. (Doublehead).  Melton's Bluff was selected as the seat of the county government.  The town was named in honor of John Melton.  A plaque was installed and I believe it still stands,  but now the site is below the waters of the Tennessee River.  The town was renamed "Marathon".

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Emerson Palmer Elementary School in fairborn Ohio was named after my dad.

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My GG Grand Father was George Washington Evans  The town of Evans Georgia was named after him, infant if you go into the majors office you will still see his photo hanging on the wall.

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Yes, Budd Lake, Harrison, Michigan.

The story goes that Budd Lake was named after my great-great-grandfather's brother, Richard Budd, who discovered the lake while getting lost.  He climbed a tree and found the lake.

Considering the county had been surveyed, the area was inhabited by native Americans, and the French fur traders routinely traversed the state, it's unlikely it wasn't discovered prior.  Just our family was one of the first to settle the area and thus named it.

Richard Budd also was the founder of Greenwood Township in Clare County, along with my great-great-grandfather Thomas Budd.

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The tiny, and unincorporated town of Hulsey, Missouri is named after an ancestor.  Which one is up for debate because Hulseys were and still are, legion in the area.  Wikipedia tells me the post office was established in 1890.  It's in Washington County.

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My g-g-g-grandfather William Cody Richmond was a pioneer in southern WV and in early 1800s established Richmond's Ferry on the New River which operated until the 1970s. The settlement was known previously as New Richmond but now known as Sandstone. The name lives on today as the Richmond District of Raleigh County

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My mother's maiden name is Emig. Her family came from Germany in the mid 1800's. They went to Emigsville, PA to meet their Emig cousins, who built the town. Our branch of the Emig family also met the Eisenhower family there and moved to the mid west. One of the Eisenhower became President Eisenhower. Can someone tell me When Emigsville was built., and when the Eisenhower family moved to the mid west?

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The county in which Emigsville is located was established in 1783.  It was then York Co. and is and now in Lancaster Co.  There is an email address on this site:  http://www.mantwp.com/h_main.asp for contact with Manchester township in which Emigsville is located. Contacting that person may give you the answer.  

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According to the Whitehouse papers https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-eisenhower-family-home-in-abilene-kansas the Eisenhauer family migrated from Lancasster Pa to Kansas in 1878.  See https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-eisenhower-family-home-in-abilene-kansas  where several sources are listed.  

Answer 1

What great stories! My 13th great grandfather, Antonio Núñez de Fonseca (abt. 1526-1596), was one of the men who arrived from Spain and Portugal in Chile, to begin enterprises and manage (appropriate) lands. He had mines and a shipyard and built large apple orchards. His name was given to the port city of San Antonio, which he named for his own Saint's name. But the region itself continues to be Maule (Mau-lé), from the original Mapuche name. He married Juana de Silva, the daughter of a Chilean indigenous woman whose name was not recorded, and Amador de Silva. The source for this is the genealogical study done by José Merino de la Cerda on the history of the Loyola family in Chile. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/N%C3%BA%C3%B1ez_de_Fonseca-1

The interesting thing is that Antonio and Juana's son, Luis Núñez de Silva, married Ana María Loyola de Sedeño, and from then on it was the surname of Loyola that was maintained, all the way down to my paternal grandmother, who was Elena Díaz Loyola.

Now that there is greater consciousness about Chilean indigenous heritage, the Mapuche, people are reviewing historical records for omissions and erasures. Thanks for this question!

Answer 2

Allyn's Point in Connecticut is named for my 8th great grandfather Robert Allyn who settled in that area in the mid 1600's.   Dow Chemical now owns that land but the family graveyard is right in the middle of the complex.

Answer 3

Hetty Jane Dunaway Gardens was designed and built by My Great Aunt Hetty Jane Dunaway Sewell around 1920. It is a public garden and wedding venue located in Roscoe, near Newnan, Georgia, 30110.  It still carries her name.

Answer 4

Robert Elkin and family helped "settle" the  Ft. Boonesboro, KY area ca. 1780. There's a dangerous railroad crossing in Winchester named Elkin KY. There's an autosound store.

Robert Elkin was my great great great great grandfather. His son Zechariah Elkin also lived there. There are many cousins.

Elkin-321

Answer 5

My family has ties to Newport, Rhode Island, which has Hazard Road, Hazard Street, Hazard Avenue, and Hazard Beach.  Not sure whether they're named for one of my direct ancestors or a cousin.

Answer 6

My Great Uncle Clayton had a building named after him. His Alma Mater, Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) opened a new building and they named it The Clayton Carroll Automotive Centre. 

Answer 7

My great uncle E. O. Orpet has a park in Santa Barbara named for him, Orpet Park. He was director of parks there in the 1920s and is responsible for much of the planting in the town,some of which still survives. He was a horticulturalist and has some plant species named after him, including the orchid SL Orpetii.

The town of Bourne MA is named after Jonathan Bourne, a descendant of Richard Bourne, an original settler there and benefactor of the Mashpee Tribe who lived there before contact. Richard is my 8th g-grandfather.

Answer 8

My ancestor, Major Samuel McColloch, famous in the Fort Henry (now Wheeling, WV) area for his famous "leap" to escape pursuing Indians, was my 1st cousin, 6 times removed.  Amazing story.  He and his horse survived the leap, the Indians thought he must be some sort of god so, later, when he WAS captured and killed by Indians, they all shared in consuming his heart so that they might gain some of his courage.

McColloch's Leap

Answer 9

My 4th great grandfathers, brothers Ebenezer and Jonathan Zane, have had several places named after them. Zanesville and Zanefield in Ohio, Zane Twp., Logan Co. Ohio, Zane Shawnee caverns, Zane State College, Zane's Trace National Road and the list goes on.

Answer 10

My 2nd great grandfather had the road he lived on in Elwood City, Pennsylvania named Jockey Moore Road after him. His name was James Franklin Moore, but he got the nickname "Jockey" from an incident that happened one day when he was way out in a neighbor's field. Word came from town that he was needed immediately, and the farmer told him to take one of the horses and ride it to the barn. James Franklin had the bad luck to pick the Thoroughbred mare that had been a racehorse! He was very happy to be on the ground again after that wild ride, and was called Jockey ever since. He had 10 daughters and one son, and seven of his daughters became schoolteachers. Everyone in the area with children knew the father of the "Miss Moores".

Answer 11

Brig  Gen Francis Nash (great uncle), has Nashville, Tennessee, Nashville N.Carolina and Nash Co., NC named for him.

Answer 12

HOW ABOUT A BRIDGE? Here's a picture of The Carpenter Bridge in the Philippines, named for the first Civilian Governor, Frank Watson Carpenter (b. 1871 - d. 1945). https://www.wikitree.com/photo.php/b/bf/Carpenter-15452.jpg

Answer 13

Well, I have Rittenhouse ancestors and I guess a lot of stuff in and around Philly was named for them. Rittenhouse Square was named for David Rittenhouse, my 2nd cousin 8 times removed.

I've been working on my son-in-law's tree and it seems Cobb County, GA was named for his family, and Robeson County, NC for Col. Thomas Robeson, Jr. who fought in the Revolution and was state senator.

Answer 14

My mother's maiden name is Knickerbocker. The early Dutch settlers of New York used patronymic names, which drove the English crazy after they took over the region. Supposedly the English ordered the Dutch to pick a last name and stick with it. So my ancestor picked Knickerbocker. The name does not exist in the Netherlands. Knowing the family, it was a joke. Here are just a few things named after the Knickerbockers:

The New York Knicks (NBA Team), Knickerbockers (baggy golf pants for men), Knickers (women's underwear), and from Wikipedia:

Buildings and infrastructure

New York

• Knickerbocker Avenue (BMT Myrtle Avenue Line), a New York City subway station
• Knickerbocker Field Club, an historic tennis clubhouse located in Flatbush, Brooklyn
• Knickerbocker and Arnink Garages, two attached stone buildings on Hudson Avenue in central Albany, New York
• Knickerbocker Mansion, Schaghticoke, Rensselaer County, New York
• Knickerbocker Theatre (Broadway)
• Knickerbocker Hospital, Harlem, New York, closed in 1979
• The Knickerbocker Hotel (Manhattan), New York City
• Knickerbocker Village, a housing project in New York City
• United States Post Office–Knickerbocker Station, a historic post office in New York City
• Times Union Center, formerly the Knickerbocker Arena, Albany, New York

Elsewhere

• Knickerbocker (Spokane, Washington), a building listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places
• Knickerbocker Bicycle Bridge, a bridge across the Willamette River in Eugene, Oregon
• Knickerbocker Theatre (Washington, D.C.), demolished by the Knickerbocker Storm
• Knickerbocker Hotel (Los Angeles), now Hollywood Knickerbocker Apartments
• Knickerbocker Hotel (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), also known as Knickerbocker on the Lake

FYI, I don't feel any more proud of my Knickerbocker heritage than I do of any of my other family lines. One of my distant cousins became famous, but that's not terribly interesting to me!

Brian Palmer

Arvada, Colorado

Answer 15

Well, it goes both ways.  The name Leet3, where I am using the 3 to indicate it can be spelled Leet, Leete, Lett, is the name of the manoral court system in England (Leet Court) and it is likely that my family, which has been in the legal or priestly professions since the Danish invasions of England, was named after them, or visa versa.  Scholars debate this.  There are a couple of campus buildings in the east- I'm thinking of Leet Oliver Memorial Hall at Yale, for example, that are named after the family.  Leetsdale street in Denver is named after a Leet real estate tycoon.  It is interesting that these two example that I recall on the spur of the moment are actually from the same family branch!  Quite a few characters in that branch.  If you are from the Pittsburgh area, then maybe you have heard of Leetsdale, north of the city on the Ohio River- that's the branch of the family.

Answer 16

The Eddy family came over from England to settle in New England in the 1600s.  Some stayed in Massachusetts and some went with Roger Williams to Providence, Rhode Island.  Rhode Island was the only colony, except for Pennsylvania, which allowed freedom of religion.  There are thousands of the descendants of the Eddys.  Streets are named after them in Providence, Boston, Chicago, South Bend, San Francisco, Canton, NY, Ithaca, NY.  There is also an Eddington, Maine, which is named for Jonathan Eddy.

Answer 17

In   Dallas County in Southwest to Missouri there is a town named Coatney springs There is a Coatney  Hollow And a Coatney road. I have a picture of my aunt Evelyn dedicating the   Coatney road.

Answer 18

My grandfather, Peter Stoner, taught mathematics and astronomy, and was the head of the Physical Sciences Dept. at Pasadena City College. After he retired, he was asked by the dean of the new Westmont College in Santa Barbara, Calif., to develop their math and sciences departments. He agreed, and taught there for a number of years. He built their observatory. It was later named after him: The Stoner Observatory.

Answer 19

In Linn County, Oregon, Robe Hill (elevation 1650 feet) and Robe Street in Brownsville are named after my ggf Robert Robe [[Robe-84]]  There's also a Kirk street in Brownsville named for Alexander Kirk.  Interestingly, my great-aunt Effie Kirk lived on Robe Street (she was Rev. Robert Robe's daughter-in-law's sister) 

Near Berea, Madison, Kentucky is Robe Mountain.  An heirloom string bean called the Robe Mountain bean was named by Bill Best after the mountain behind his house.  The story is at www.heirlooms.org/store/p67/Robe_Mountain_Bean.html

Apparently string beans and other legumes mutate fairly quickly (ask Gregor Mendel) so it's not as uncommon as you might think to have a bean named after you.  Bill Best didn't want to name the bean after himself, though.  I grew some beans that my late cousin Anna Lee Robe-Terry developed in West Virginia.  (Her profile is not up yet).   

The string bean and the mountain are named after William Hanna Robe [[Robe-21]] of Berea, Kentucky.

And, in my own backyard, is the town of Robe, Washington in Snohomish County, named for my 3rd cousin 1 time removed, Truitt Kendall Robe.  I am working on his profile at present.  For now, see the profile of his father, William Ristine Robe [[Robe-95]] brought that branch of the family into the county. 

  

Answer 20

My Long Island ancestors (Hulse, Halsey, Terry, Raynor, Aldrich, arrived in the mid-1600s, landing in Southold LI.  Today, you can't visit an Eastern Long Island town without seeing a Street, Road, or Lane named for most of them.  They populated the area with massive numbers of offspring and moved north, south, east and west from their original landing spot.