week of 3/13/02
 
 
 

Relevance of place names run the gamut
By George Ellison
What’s in a place name? Sometimes a lot ... sometimes not much ... and sometimes a mystery.

One could write an absorbing book about the place names found here in Western North Carolina. All of this region’s chroniclers — John Arthur, Judge Felix Alley, W. Clark Medford, T.W. Reynolds, John Parris, etc. — have been fascinated by the topic. Here are a few place name tidbits culled from various sources.

In the first volume of his The Southern Appalachian Region (1966), Highlands resident T.W. Reynolds noted in passing that “Continuing on from Wayah Bald (in Macon County) towards Nantahala Lake one soon passes Dirty John Creek, where one of this name lived and reputedly never took to the stream or any other water.”

The origin of the creek’s name obviously intrigued Reynolds; so much so, that by the time he got around to compiling his second volume, he was able to file a full report: “The answer, however, lay back in Franklin, where lives Tom Johnson, aged 74, who said that his father had told him that the creek was named for John Johnson, his great grandfather. There wasn’t much soap around in the wilds of those days when John filed a claim near the head of the creek and lived there in a log cabin, so some say he never took a bath despite his waterside domicile unless, by chance, he fell into the creek. However, it was not an uncommon nickname in early days for boys who went untidy. There yet lives in Highlands vicinity of this county a Dirty John and a Dirty Neck.”

Reynolds is correct about the sometimes rather crude and callous nature of nicknames. I am reminded that when I was a boy growing up in Virginia in the very late 1940s, one of my playmates was nicknamed “Nasty” Newby. We nicknamed “Nasty’s” little brother, who always seemed to have a cold and runny nose, “Snotty.”

The Iron Duff township in Haywood County is so-named due to a federal blunder. W. Clark Medford reports in The Middle History of Haywood County (1968) that the township was “erected” from the Crabtree township in 1879. One of its earliest residents was Aaron McDuff, “who came with his family from the hills of Scotland” and was noted as “a scholar among the few settlers.” In other words, McDuff liked to “tell stories and sing songs.” Accordingly, in the formal place name petition “sent to the post office department at Washington, Aaron McDuff (was) the name suggested” for the community. However, “the department name came back ‘Iron Duff,’ and so it was used.”

Medford does not speculate as to the bureaucratic bungling that likely occasioned this turn of events. I envision the federal officer in charge of rural place names dictating one day from a list to his secretary. When he reads out “Aaron McDuff in Haywood County, North Carolina,” she nods her head and writes down “Iron Duff.” The list is, of course, never proofread.

Many of you reading this will have visited at one time or another Andrews Bald in Swain County. It’s a lovely natural grassy bald situated on Forney Ridge just below Clingmans Dome. It should more properly, however, be known as “Andres” Bald since the site is named for one Andres Thompson. Born in 1821, Andres started herding cattle up on the bald in the 1840s. The difficult access up the trail along Forney Ridge was then known as the “Rip Shin” trail. But Andres liked the remote setting so much that he moved his family there in 1850. And when he returned from the Civil War, he moved them back up there once again.

It’s a lovely site, but it must have been very difficult for a family to live at 5,860 feet of elevation during the winter months.

The controversy involving the naming of Cashiers in Jackson County has been raging for well over a century. All of the historians named above have weighed in on the topic, sometimes devoting several pages of heated and often convoluted commentary.

First off, you have to understand that Cashiers is properly pronounced, as John Parris notes, “not like a bank official’s title, but ‘Cash-ers.’” Starting in 1838 it was first known as “Cashers Valley,” but in 1881 that was shortened to the present designation. No one agrees very much about anything else having to do with the name. Here are some of the theories.

In Random Thought and the Musings of a Mountaineer (1941), Judge Felix Alley, who was reared in nearby Whitesides Cove, maintained the valley was named for an early Indian trader. Others related that it was named for an “old hermit” who lived in the valley before anyone else settled there. Then again, there are those who hold that it derived from the local mispronunciation of the name of a pet bull owned by General Wade Hampton. His name was Cassius.

In his chapter “Folklore and Folkways” in The History of Jackson County (1987), John Parris focuses on horses named “Cash” as possible place name sources. One group maintained that the valley was named for a “Cash” owned by John C. Calhoun, the senator from South Carolina. That horse got lost and somehow wound up in North Carolina. Others agreed that it was named for a horse, but contended that the horse in question was owned by the McKinney family, who settled there in the early 1920s. And still others swore the valley was actually named for yet another equine candidate named “Cash” — which, by the way, won his owner a lot of money at the race track — that lived over in the nearby Glenville community. One day he wandered off into the lush grass in the adjacent valley and “wouldn’t stay home.” The present name is theoretically derived from the exclamation “Cash is here!” sounded when he was discovered.

In volume one of his history cited above, the indefatigable T.W. Reynolds followed up on yet another lead provided by a South Carolinian named A.L. Pickens. After much research and map study, Reynolds asserted that Cashiers is named for a river known to the Cherokees as “Keshwee.” That would be, of course, the river now known as the Keowee.

“Now what is the source of the Keowee in the earliest times, but Cashiers vicinity, and what does Keshwhee resemble in pronunciation but Cashiers?” Reynolds proclaims. I, for one, remain thoroughly unconvinced.

What’s in a place name? Sometimes a lot ... sometimes not much ... and sometimes a mystery.

George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C. 28713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com