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History of Orange County
Introduction
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This exercise, therefore, being based upon the requirements of the Association, if not executed by its direct authority, we cherish the consolation that we shall be most manfully backed up by the members, individually and collectively. They share the honors of the achievement, if there be any, and justice and equity demand of them to divide the odium and ill will incurred by the effort. Not only so, but in cases of doubtful interpretation or authority, they are expected to volunteer their own cultivated inquisatorial powers, and freely discuss names of every import and character, though it may subject them to actions for defamation or scandalum magnatum, in favor of the time honored localities and moss-covered names of the county. With this understanding, to be fulfilled in good faith, we enter upon the work of doubt and uncertainty, consoled and cheered as we proceed, by the reflection that the great and controlling influence and authority of this Historical Association will confirm all that is found doubtful in the public mind, and of the least questionable import, while it brings to light, and developes many new and interesting etymologies and historical reminiscences— real tit-bits to the learned in this department.
It is remarkable, as a general rule, how long an original name will be preserved and kept alive. Circumstances may change, improvements may be made, new business may be established and conducted, covering up and wholly obliterating the original reason for the appellation, rendering it inappropriate and unmeaning—still it never changes. It clings to the locality, and haunts it by a daily and yearly renovation, till the place can no more get rid of it, than it can retreat from storm or sunshine. This will be so, irrespective of the fact whether it is good or bad, appropriate or improper, pleasant or disagreeable. This fact is an admonition to all, of having a bad name at any time; for one hundred to one, it will follow us through the remainder of life, and only die, if it ever dies, when we go down to the grave. Its odor so impinges itself upon the owner, and upon the sensitive and predisposed popular mind, that we can no more escape its deadly influence than we can the effects of original sin.
We will give an example of this, and which, at the same tune, will show what a trifling circumstance will bestow a permanent name. One of the colleges at Oxford is called “the Brazen Nose College," and has been known as such since its foundation in 1509—337 years since. The following was the origin of this ludicrous and whimsical name: this college was built upon the foundation of two halls or inns, and on the gate leading to one of them was an iron ring in a nose of brass on the knocker. For a little while before the erection of the college, some of the students had their quarters in the old buildings, and in sport called it the Brazen Nose College, which name attached to the new edifice when erected.
If the future historian of Orange County is expected to inform our descendents, the future public—more anxious than we, we trust, on the subject—of the true meaning of the names of places, rivers, mountains, etc., within her boundaries, or the accidental reason of them, it is full time that some one was busily and astutely engaged in the desired work. For if they are not soon placed upon some durable record, and before the knowledge of the present inhabitants shall slumber with them in the grave, and be lost forever; or before uncertain tradition shall change and mar their meaning by an ever varying and fanciful glossary, the most interesting portion will have passed from our memories, where now alone it is found treasured up and useless.
By this paper—for the purpose effectual as the marble slab or brazen tablet—safely deposited in your archives, we begin the work; and intend as far as gleaning and dragging the county will accomplish it, to garner up our county names from the corroding power of time, and rescue them from oblivian. We intend thus to keep and cherish them, for the pleasure and edification of those who shall come after us, in these fair regions of descending day, this land of milk and honey, of waving corn and lowing herds, of babbling brook and majestic river, of valley, hill and towering mountain.— In general, we are well pleased with the names by which the several features and various localities of out county are known at present, and in the spirit of pure patriotism, for old acquaintance sake, we ardently desire to preserve them, in all their pristine verdure of appropriate and express meaning.
With stealthy steps and maiden weakness, civilization and false refinement may seek to fritter away their strength, or corrupt their meaning, and we wish in time to transfer them to an undying tablet before such event shall come. Already we have Mount Basha corrupted into Mombasha, Duck Cedar into Truxedo, Grey Coat into Grey Court, Carr Pond into Garr Pond, Peakadasank into Pekanosink, Pallapel into Pollopel—with many others. These corruptions slowly and artfully made, will finally change and alter the original meaning, as certainly as moral corruption changes and ruins men, states, and kingdoms.
In some instances, they remind us of the calculating and hardy adventures of our ancestors in leaving the fat lands of Holland, the Emerald fields of Erin, and the still richer glades of Albian, to risk their lives and little all upon a deceitful and trackless ocean, and establish themselves and live upon the borders of a dense and unbroken wilderness, and sleep with wife and children beside the scalping knife and gleaming tomahawk. In other instances, they read us a lesson of rude justice, or of bitter injustice, as the case may be, as we pander sadly and mournfully in the name of some red warrior of his forest home, now gone to his great spirit; or upon some mighty and terrible aboriginal nation, once owners of these lands we celebrate, love and call our own, now swept from the face of the earth; but before departing, baptised us with their own enduring and euphonious names as a portion of their own and our history. What changes are brought about in human affairs in the brief period of a single century! Less than that time has been sufficient to depopulate this county of its Indian inhabitants, where many thousands not long since dwelt and wandered lords of the soil we now tenant; and there is not to-day one living specimen of their race to rehearse the short story of their eventful lives. Nation tramples down nation, as one individual crushes another to the earth, apparently regardless of national rights, and the ever enduring principles of justice and humanity. In the case before us, we wait the unerring judgment of the muse of history, who now, seated aloft beyond the excitements and prejudices of the day, is preparing her deathless record of national injustice and Indian wrong.
As before remarked, a durable and explanatory record of the names of places, &c., such as we propose and now attempt to make, may save our descendents from groping their way in a kind of uncertain twilight, if not in many cases from a fanciful guess-work. Its propriety and literary benefit, as far as entitled to that character, may be rendered somewhat apparent by citing a case from English history.— We name the city of York;—this is said to have been a town before the Roman invasion, if a collection of huts in a spot cleared out of the forest may be called so. It is thought by some, that the place derived its name from the river on the banks of which it stood. This river is now called the Ouse or Oose, anciently called the Oure or Oore, and the sound of York is thought to be present in the Latinised form of the word, Eb-or-acum. The Orac of Eb-or-acum is, therefore, according to English etymology, the origin of the name of modern York!