Tag: local history

I am enjoying the discussion of how the City of Solon came to be named. Both versions—the newspaper’s “after the famous, ancient Athenian lawmaker and poet,” and Antonia Russo’s “Solon Langworthy, one of Dubuque’s Langworthy brothers”—have something to offer, even if neither considers the account mentioned by Harold Dilts in From Ackley to Zwingle: The Origins of Iowa Place Names, which says, “Solon…was named in memory of one of P.B. Anders’ sons. Anders and a Mr. Kerr founded and platted the town.”

The 1850 U.S. Census makes clear the P.B. Anders family was well established in Big Grove Township. Later accounts say the town was named in memory of his son, but no such child appears in the census, and no burial evidence in township cemeteries has been found.

As with many stories about the pioneering days of Big Grove Township and later Solon, there is no single “right version” of how the city was named. It is lost in history. Russo is right to tie the naming to Dillon’s Furrow, reflecting the networks through which people traveled and settled. That there are both a Solon in Johnson County and a Langworthy in Jones County is no coincidence. These names were part of a shared world, shaped by the same influences and carried along the same paths.

Why did 19th-century folk name people and places after an ancient Athenian? It reflected how Americans understood themselves and what they hoped their communities would become.

~ Submitted as a letter to the editor of the Solon Economist.