Twelve Mile Circle has been on a bit of an odd placenames fixation as of late. I found a few more examples. However, they didn’t have enough of a story behind them to justify an entire article on any one of them. So I figured I’d resurrect an earlier series and title this “Even More Weird Placenames” in continuation of the theme. This will also help me whittle-down my ever persistent list of possible topics I’ve been compiling since I began writing this site.
Knockemstiff
A anonymous 12MC visitor landed onto the site by chance seeking information about Knockemstiff. I didn’t know anything about it and had nothing prepared so they probably left disappointed. Even so, it sounded like a suitable topic and I knew I’d explore it eventually. It took little effort to find Knockemstiff once I got around to it. This is a crossroads in Ohio near another place featured on these pages previously, Chillicothe.
Knockemstiff served as the backdrop for a series of short stories published in 2008 by local writer, Donald Ray Pollock. Obviously he chose the same odd name for his title. One review said Pollock “presents his characters and the sordid goings-on with a stern intelligence, a bracing absence of value judgments, and a refreshingly dark sense of bottom-dog humor.” His literary works received national attention and I’m sure the name of the town helped. The New York Times profiled the settlement of Knockemstiff and attempted to learn the story behind its unusual alias.
“The town’s name is a source of folklore and conjecture… a resident saying that the origins dated far back, perhaps 100 years, to an episode in which a traveling preacher came across two women fighting over a man. The preacher said that he doubted the man was worth the trouble and that someone should ‘knock him stiff.’ But variations on that story exist, as do ones that say the name is associated with moonshine and bar fights.”
That was a long way of saying that no definitive explanation existed. The true story disappeared over time. Nonetheless this brief summary will be waiting here for the next unknown visitor who stumbles upon 12MC searching for Knockemstiff.
Ennis in Ellis
The City of Ennis fell within the confines of Ellis County, Texas. So Ennis derived its name from a railroad official, Cornelius Ennis. Ellis probably referred to Richard Ellis, who headed the commission that declared Texas’ independence. The two men had no connection or relationship that I could discover. However, that was completely irrelevant to this story anyway so let’s move on.
My fascination centered on the peculiar notion that if one replaced the “nn” in Ennis with “ll” it became Ellis. I was unaware of any other town-county combination where someone could make a simple letter substitution in the town’s name to transform it into the county name. Of course I didn’t look too hard trying to find other examples either. I’d like to say that I wanted to reserve that puzzle for the 12MC audience. Naturally my real reason was laziness.
Completely unrelated, the aforementioned Ennis in Ellis “was designated by the 1997 State Legislature as the home of the ‘Official Texas Bluebonnet Trail’ and was designated the ‘Official Bluebonnet City of Texas.‘” That was a pretty big deal considering the prominence of the bluebonnet in Texan culture. The Department of Horticultural Science at Texas A&M University elaborated,
“As historian Jack Maguire so aptly wrote, ‘It’s not only the state flower but also a kind of floral trademark almost as well known to outsiders as cowboy boots and the Stetson hat.’ He goes on to affirm that ‘The bluebonnet is to Texas what the shamrock is to Ireland, the cherry blossom to Japan, the lily to France, the rose to England and the tulip to Holland.’”
During times when bluebonnets weren’t in bloom, no worries, a visitor could always visit Bluebonnet Trail — not the trail itself, rather a street named Bluebonnet Trail — in a local trailer park (map).
Brazil
I’m sure if I thought long and hard enough I could figure out a few similarities between Brazil and Indiana. Nonetheless I still found it strange to see a town named Brazil in Indiana (map). It wasn’t a small place either. It had eight thousand residents and served as the seat of local government in Clay County.
I wished I could have found a decent explanation. Several sources pointed back to the naming of a local farm in the 1840’s. Supposedly they called it Brazil because the nation had been in the news frequently during the era. The town then adopted the name of the nearby farm upon its founding in the 1860’s. So I guess I could accept that even though I couldn’t find any solid attribution. I’ve heard of stranger explanations for town names.
High Point?
I didn’t know what to make of High Point in Palm Beach County, Florida, except that I wished I’d known about it when I wrote High Level some time ago. What point of High Point was actually high? Its total elevation barely broached 20 feet (6 metres). It wasn’t even the highest point in Palm Beach. Two other spots reached spectacular pinnacles of 53 feet (16 metres) according to the County Highpointers Association.
I realize those two co-highpoints didn’t really have magnificent summits either, although 53 feet completely dominated 20 feet. I guess it didn’t matter. High Point and its condominium community were in the process of being annexed into the nearby city of Delray Beach, anyway. The name will probably disappear.
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