Dane County Place-Names

FOREWORD TO THE 2009 EDITION

FOREWORD TO THE 2009 EDITION David Medaris Sometime in the early 1990s, an envelope landed on the desk of a columnist for Isthmus, the Madison, Wisconsin, weekly. It contained an inquiry regarding the proper name for a flowage extending from Lake Wingra to Lake Monona. The correspondent had heard it called Wingra Creek, but also Murphy’s Creek. Which was correct? Intrigued, the columnist went looking for the answer. The usual resources of the day turned up no definitive leads. Before making the trip down State Street to the Wisconsin Historical Society, he strolled into Isthmus editor Marc Eisen’s office to ask whether he might have any leads. Eisen thought for a few seconds, turned to scan his bookshelves, then reached out, retrieved a tidy little volume and handed it to the columnist. I was that columnist, and thus began my affection for Dane County Place-Names. Frederic G. Cassidy’s localized dictionary of geographical etymologies did indeed contain the answer to the question about Murphy’s and Wingra creeks. But it was also a vast trove of delights and revelations. Here were hundreds of entries for Dane County’s named places, some amounting to narratives as exquisite as they were concise, many dispelling myths or misconceptions, others clarifying a nomenclature with the authority of Cassidy’s exhaustive research, some resisting his consultation of maps and historical records but yielding to his capacity for critical thought. I sought a copy of Dane ix x County Place-Names for myself, soon found one at Paul’s Book Store, then set about seeking other copies to give to friends. As the years passed, affordable used copies became ever more difficult to find. At some point, the time I spent extolling its many virtues overtook the rate of success at finding yet more copies to give as gifts. You can imagine my excitement at the news that the University of Wisconsin Press would be bringing Dane County Place-Names back into print. Now, I can return to buying copies to give as gifts to friends, while continuing to extol its virtues. And its virtues are many. To the x and y axes of the Dane County map, Dane County Place-Names adds a z axis—a third dimension of historical topography . The time and effort Cassidy invested in researching maps, plat books and other resources—digging down through their documentary layers to mine their ores—continues to pay dividends. The names of many of the places here may have been rendered obvious by their pervasive contemporary use. Cassidy nevertheless provides insights into our most common placenames that may surprise even lifelong Dane County residents. And there are a good many political, social, and natural features whose names Cassidy helps rescue from obscurity and the passage of time, if not extinction—place-names that, while they remain inscribed on nineteenth-century Dane County maps, have fallen out of currency. Place-names are, after all, as mutable as maps themselves. The ground shifts underfoot. Glaciers reshape the landscape, leaving moraines and kamens to await christening. Rivers and creeks alter course. Catastrophic floods overwhelm a levee and a lake empties. Developers transform farmsteads into new subdivisions . Towns mature into cities and annex other municipalities . Small settlements are abandoned and their buildings toppled. Grand schemes for new plats go unrealized or unfinished . A new donor’s generosity overwrites the name of a philanthropist from an earlier generation. xi Cassidy’s efforts first preserved Dane County’s place-names as they had been mapped and recorded up to 1947, when an early version of this work was published by the American Dialect Society. When the University of Wisconsin Press published Dane County Place-Names in 1968, the names of presidents, early settlers, developers, prominent local figures, evocative pronouns and adjectives were once again affixed at that point in time to our schools and taverns, townships and villages, post offices and crossings, creeks and marshes, heights and hollows, lakes and landings, rivers and fords, railroads and highways, bluffs and valleys, and dozens of other features we are predisposed to single out with specific names. Cassidy’s appetite for such an undertaking was enormous. He would go on to launch and shepherd the seminal Dictionary of American Regional English project. Even in his nineties, as he was bequeathing DARE’s editorial stewardship to his successor , Joan Houston Hall, Cassidy was imbued with the aura of a Great...