By Bill Burk
Chautauqua county has twenty-seven towns (fifteen villages and eighteen school districts for what it’s worth). That’s a lot of governing done by a lot of people; tax assessments, elections, sewer districts, utilities, police, fire, and transportation department management, more taxes. Each entity carving out a distinction, an image for the world to see, maybe make a case for visitors to stop in and spend some money, or people to make their home.
And, they all had to be named (the study of names is onomastics for you lexicologists).
The name Chautauqua is native American, derived from a lost language of the Erie tribe. The lake, town, and institution of Chautauqua share the name. A Seneca Indian tribe inhabited the land back then as well and contributed names from their language to Cassadaga (the word meaning “water under the rocks”), and Kiantone, from the Seneca word kyenthone, meaning “a level place for growing corn”. Not wildly exciting or mysterious original descriptions, but more singular than pointing and describing what you see, like Lakewood (lake and woods), Westfield originated in a field west of Ripley, Silver Creek (water that looks silver), Forestville (a ville next to a forest), Lily Dale (a dale full of lilies), or Cherry Creek (see Silver Creek).
Many were named after the man who first set down roots in a spot: Busti after Paul Busti, Ellicott after Joseph Ellicott, Bemus after William Bemus. These three in particular procured their property from the Holland Land Company and successfully petitioned to have it named for them.
Jamestown is named after James Prendergast, an early Chautauqua County settler.
The county seat, Mayville, was named by the Holland Land Company, when Paul Busti successfully petitioned Joseph Ellicott for permission to name the village after Busti’s wife under her maiden name of May. Elizabeth May was from a prominent English family and married Paul Busti. The couple had no children and she never visited western New York.
Not a town, but the hamlet of Ripley was titled for Eleazer Wheelock Ripley, a general in the War of 1812. Sinclairville was founded in 1809 and named for the American Revolutionary War Major Samuel Sinclear. Celoron is named for Pierre Joseph Céloron de Blainville, a French officer and explorer of Ohio. Sheridan was named by John Loucks for the Civil War Union general Phil Sheridan. During the 1870s Patrick Falconer donated a bunch of land to the Dunkirk Allegheny Valley and Pittsburg Railroad using his name for the depot in a place called Worksburg, later named after the landowner.
At least four are looked-like places. Randolph was named in honor of Randolph, Vermont by its early settlers. Poland for…well, Poland. Dunkirk was called Chadwick Bay in 1805 and renamed because its harbor reminded people of Dunkirk (Dunkerque), France. Panama was named after its rocks, which were named after the Isthmus of Panama by a man called Panama Joe.
The county is big on memorializing signers of the Declaration of Independence, even if these namesakes, like Elizabeth May, never set foot here. William Ellery, George Clymer, Roger Sherman, and Richard Stockton all signed; all have towns in Chautauqua named after them.
Clymer was a Pennsylvanian, first president of Philadelphia Bank, first president of the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, and vice-president of the Philadelphia Agricultural Society.
Roger Sherman is the only person to have signed all four of the most significant documents in our nation’s early history: the Continental Association from the first Continental Congress, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution. He was a favorite son of Connecticut.
Richard Stockton was one of five New Jersey signees.
The Town of Gerry was named after Elbridge Gerry, Vice President of the United States in 1812 and also a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
William Ellery also signed. He was a supreme court judge in Rhode Island.
For some of the “F” towns; Findlay Lake was named in 1815 for the man who built the dam that powered his mills and created the lake, Alexander Findlay.
The first European family who settled in the area were purportedly the Frews in 1807. Tack on the burgh and you have Frewsburg.
French Creek is named for a fort the French used near Erie. Legend has it George Washington traveled the creek to ask the French to abandon their Pennsylvania stronghold.
And finally, Fredonia is derived from the English word “freedom” with a Latin ending. The creator of the name, Samuel Latham Mitchill, proposed it as an alternative to using The United States for our country.
Imagine the implications.
Large Caption: Many were named after the man who first set down roots in a spot: Busti after Paul Busti, Ellicott after Joseph Ellicott, Bemus after William Bemus. These three in particular procured their property from the Holland Land Company and successfully petitioned to have it named for them.