Arch Merrill published over 20 books of history of western New York. They were collections of his newspaper columns that were originally published in the Democrat & Chronicle. Not all of those columns ended up in his books. So I am going to start to transcribe some of the columns that he did NOT publish later in his books.
This first column is a long list of the names of western NY Towns and Villages that came from European places. It shows that his columns not only were about Rochester but all of western New York.
All the World’s at Rochester’s Doorstep
By Arch Merrill
Originally published: Feb. 3, 1957
YOU can see the sights of Greece, Egypt, Sweden, Warsaw and Naples all in one day. And you won’t need a jet plane for that world tour. Your automobile will suffice — unless Western New York is in the clutch of a blizzard.
For those famous Old World places—and others, too—have their namesakes within a radius of 50 miles from Rochester’s Four Corners.
Just why did Western New York pioneers named frontier settlements after Old World nations, after Italian sea ports, cities on the Polish plains or on the Baltic Sea? Maybe they wanted to show off their knowledge of world geography.
But in the case of Greece, the reason was real enough. When the suburban township was organized in 1822, Old World Greece was in the throes of a revolution and the name was bestowed as a gesture of sympathy for the
rebels. Memories of our own War for Independence had not entirely dimmed in 1822.
Also reminiscent of the glory that was Greece, although the motive back of their naming is obscure, are Macedon, the Wayne County canal town, and Sparta in the of southern Livingston County.
The grandeur that was Rome is represented in the Seneca County communities of Romulus and Ovid. Of
Italian flavor are such names as Naples, in the grape country; Parma on the Ridge; Lodi on Seneca Lake and Italy in Yates County.
WARSAW, THE SHIRE town of Wyoming County, was named for the Polish capital which has been so much in the news lately. Riga and Livonia are names of Baltic cities. Bergen, for no apparent reason, bears the name of a Norwegian port. Odessa, in Schuyler County, is a namesake of a port on the Baltic sea, now part of the Soviet
Union.
Batavia, is the frontier time the seat of the Holland Land Company, aptly bears the name of a Dutch East India colonial city. Waterloo recalls the scene of Napoleon’s defeat and Elba the island of his exile.
Orleans County may have been named after the French city although some historians maintain it honors Andrew Jackson’s victory over the British at New Orleans. Anyhow it was a compromise choice between the names of two political rivals, Jackson and John Quincy Adams. There also is a village named Orleans, in Ontario County.
The name of Lyons is borrowed from a French city. Charles Williamson, the land agent, saw in the Wayne
settlement at the meeting of the Canandaigua Outlet and the Clyde River a resemblance to the setting of the Old World city at the union of the Rhône and Saône Rivers.
Williamson or perhaps some other well-traveled man also named Geneva on Seneca Lake, because of its likeness to the Swiss city on another sparkling lake. Dresden, dreamy village on Seneca Lake, gets its name from the city in Saxony famous for its china.
SOMETIMES the nationality of the settlers1 determined the names of the settlement. Clyde, Dundee and Caledonia call up visions of bagpipers in tartan and stout-hearted Scottish pioneers.
Albion is the ancient name for England and means “white.” There’s an aura of the mother country, too, about
such place names as1 Brighton, Bath, Clifton, Clifton Springs and Leicester, although the last named community was first christened Lester, in honor of Lester Phelps, son of Oliver of Phelps Purchase fame. Leicester for years was Moscow, also the name of a rather well-known Russian community. Avon was named tor a town in Connecticut rather than for the English river known to the Bard.
The land of shamrocks is represented in the Genesee River town of Belfast in Allegany County where many Irish settled and where in the 1880s a celebrated fighting Irishman, John L. Sullivan, had his training camp.
The pioneers also turned to ancient cities of the East for their place names. Palmyra, so the story goes, was named after the Syrian city because a pioneer wanted to impress his school-teacher sweetheart with his knowledge of ancient history.
Medina in Orleans County bears the name of the sacred Arabian city where sleeps Mohammed, the Prophet.
CASTILE CALLS to mind bull fights and tinkling castanets although the Spanish name of the Wyoming
County village is mispronounced hereabouts, as are Riga, and Bergen. Chili—if it was named for the South
American republic—is both misspelled and mispronounced.
Ionia harks back to an ancient region on the west coast of Asia Minor, colonized by the Greeks. Lima was named, not for the Peruvian city, but after Old Lyme in Connecticut whence came many of her settlers.
There seems to be no plausible reason for the name of the Town of Sweden but there is an excellent one for calling the place in the Perinton hills Egypt. In a time of scarcity, the settlers there had the only stock of corn in the area, hence the Biblically inspired name.
In YATES COUNTY there is a town of Jerusalem which goes back to the frontier time when Jemima Wilkinson, the Universal Friend, founded a religious colony which her followers called the “New Jerusalem.”
Also in Western New York, but a little out of our own region, are such Old World places as Cuba, Java, Hamburg, Salamanca, Barcelona, Dunkirk, Attica.
And in Central New York are Ithaca, also the name of one of the Ionian isles and the legendary home of Ulysses; Genoa and Syracuse, names borrowed from Italian ports, and many others.
The pioneers seem to have been world-conscious long before the United Nations was even a dream—at least when they chose the name of their towns.