Some folks from our region have really made a mark in the big wide world… enough so that their names are on the map. With some digging I created an impressive list – looking just at places NOT in the person’s immediate home area!
*The first was probably Williamsburg, which promoter Charles Williamson of Bath named after himself in the 1790s. Sadly the community faded away… it’s the empty hilltop behind the northbound rest stop at the Geneseo/Mount Morris exit on I-390, now denoted only by a state historic marker.
*Magee Street in Watkins Glen memorializes the Bath man who built Steuben County Historical Society’s Magee House in Bath, and later a second mansion (now gone) in Watkins. There’s also a Magee Street in Wellsboro, PA, which was served by John Magee’s Fall Brook Railroad. At least three of the Magees were active in Wellsboro… John, John Junior, and Duncan, for whom Duncan Township (also in Tioga County, PA) was named.
*Once upon a time, the map was sprinkled with Curtiss Fields, now gone, renamed, or absorbed. But there is a Glenn Hammond Curtiss Middle School in Carson, CA, and a Glenn Curtiss Street nearby (Glenn flew there in 1910); a Glenn H. Curtiss Road in San Diego, CA (where he invented the seaplane); a Glenn Curtiss Boulevard in East Meadow/Uniondale, NY (where he ran the Curtiss Engineering Corporation); a Glenn Curtiss Drive in Addison, TX; and a Curtiss Parkway in Miami Springs, FL (which he developed).
*Curtiss Park in Buffalo is on the site of the old Curtiss aerodrome. Curtis Parkway leads to Curtiss Park, and despite the single-s spelling, the original idea was to name the street for Glenn.
*Who is ALSO remembered in the Glenn H. Curtiss Mansion and Gardens at Miami Springs, a popular event venue, and the only surviving home in which Glenn lived.
*Of course, the Curtiss name is also preserved in 141 Curtiss-Wright facilities, all around the globe!
*Glenn also developed Hialeah, which for many years has enjoyed the Lua A. Curtiss Branch Library, now renamed Curtiss E-Library. Lua was Glenn’s mother, and they were both from Hammondsport (she started out in Jasper).
*Spalding, ID was named for the Reverend Henry Spalding of Prattsburgh, an associate of Marcus and Narcissa (Prentiss) Whitman. Spalding worked in that area, teaching irrigation and potato cultivation to the Nez Perce. Whitman College, in Walla Walla, WA, honors Dr. Whitman’s memory – as do Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, Whitman Glacier, and Whitman Mission National Historic Site. Also in Walla Walla is the Marcus Whitman Hotel & Conference Center.
*The names are not used much nowadays, but 90 years ago the road from Penn Yan to Rushville was named the Marcus Whitman Highway, while the road from Prattsburgh to Naples was named Narcissa Prentiss Highway.
*Ingersoll, Texas once honored famed freethinker Robert G. Ingersoll, but they changed the name to Redwater after a religious revival. Colonel Bob Mountain in Washington still remembers the Dresden boy, along with his Civil War service.
*Seneca chief Red Jacket spent time in the Branchport area, and maybe grew up there, although that’s still uncertain. (His mother was buried nearby.) He’s remembered in a dorm complex, a commercial building, and a peninsula in Buffalo; a dining hall at SUNY Geneseo; a school district in Ontario County; a fire company in Seneca Falls; a yacht club on Cayuga Lake; and a census-designated place in West Virginia.
*Maybe someone should try to visit all these places – they have my permission to skip the Curtiss-Wright sites!