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Founding fathers play name game
Published November 13, 2009
AUSTIN — This town initially was called Waterloo. The named was changed in 1839 when President Mirabeau Lamar thought the capital should be more centrally located and moved it here from Houston. We lucked out in naming it for the Father of Texas, Stephen F. Austin. We had the same fortune in naming a mosquito infested swamp for the first president of the Republic, Sam Houston.
So we got both our capital and largest city properly named for important Texans. Then the name game went off track. Fort Worth was an army fort named for Gen. William Worth, who contracted cholera from his troops and died in San Antonio, probably wishing he’d never heard of Texas. Dallas is named either for U.S. Vice President George M. Dallas, his brother or a local resident. None of them made any difference to Texas. If Big D was going to become a major city, it should have been named after one of our heroes. No Dallas Cowboys. We could cheer for the Bowie Knives or the Crockett Coonskin Caps.
Dallas is in Dallas County, but Houston is in Harris County. The town of Harris is in Hudspeth County. Houston County contains the town of Crockett, so what’s in Crockett County? Ozona. Austin is not in Austin County. It is in Travis County. Austin County is home to Bellville, which should be in Bell County but isn’t. As for the town of Travis, it is in Falls County, and was named for Travis Jones, who surveyed the site for a town.
There are two towns named after President Lamar, neither is in Lamar County. Thomas Jefferson Rusk, another Founding Father, has a city and a county named for him. They are not in the same place. In some cases we used both first and last names for counties. Deaf Smith, Jeff Davis, Jim Hogg and Tom Green. In other instances, the county seat was named for someone’s first name and the county for his last name. That’s why, in honor of Anson Jones, we have Anson in Jones County. Then there is just the opposite: in honor of Collin McKinney we have McKinney in Collin County.
None of which explains why the city of Bowie is not in Bowie County, nor why the city of Sherman is not in Sherman County. There is a city of Pecos and a Pecos County. Not in the same place. Neither are the two Camerons. In Cameron County is Brownsville, which was once named Fort Texas, but was renamed Fort Brown for Maj. Jacob Brown, who died during a Mexican attack. I still prefer Fort Texas.
How could our ancestors have been so haphazard about place names when those same people created the perfect legislature? They stood around a big map of Texas, casually writing their names in the blanks. Houston studied the map carefully then said, “We got everybody covered. Rusk, Wharton and Navarro and Zavala. Wait a minute. Who the hell is Dallas?”
Lynn Ashby is a Houston-based columnist. Contact him at ashby2(at)comcast.net.
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