Are We Celebrating Murder?

We refer to physical object or location by some sort of name.  Whether it is a “table” or “Houston,” using the name invokes a vision in our mind.  Acceptance of a particular name for especially a place changes with the times.  Today, I was reminded how absolutely delicious our naming things for people has evoked when we now know that their behavior was questionable.   We name all sorts of places “Columbus” or “Columbia.”  In very recent years, outraged people have destroyed or removed statues of Christopher Columbus.  Yet several towns, cities, one country and our national capital use Columbus or Columbia.  Are we still honoring Christopher Columbus, notwithstanding what he did?

Oh, a point:  Columbus (the guy, not a town) thought he was doing the work of the Lord.  He also did not know that he was bringing disease to the West.  The germ theory was centuries in the future.

By the way, this post is not about Columbus.  Read on.

Some – ok, many – people who rend their garments and gnash their teeth over names are totally or partially ignorant of history.  Among the statues and images attacked were of Lincoln (remember the 13^th Amendment?), Grant (remember the 360K killed in the Army of the Potomac let alone the 260K Confederate killed?) and even Albert Pike, whose true “fame,” if you call it that, is known to substantially less than 1% of the population.

So, let me ask:  When does a name cease to represent or memorialize a person and become nothing more than the symbol for the place or object?  Maybe St. James did some shady deals.  (Probably not.)  If so, I haven’t heard of a movement to change the name of San Diego.

In the history of the “Border Lands” of America – that’s the Ohio Valley, the entire Ohio watershed and the “Ohio Country” during the 18^th Century, one of the prominent bad deeds was the killing of the family of Tah-gah-jute, a Mingo chief.  (The Mingo’s were a recent amalgamation of the Lenni Lenape, Seneca, Cayuga and other groups.)  He was also known as Chief Logan, which was the name of a Virginia friend.  By the way, we have at least one county and one city named “Logan” in West Virginia.  In the recent past, Logan County has been known as an unsavory pit of political corruption which, of course, had nothing to do with Chief Logan 

The murders of Chief Logan’s family were sudden, violent, and were I to try to describe their cruelty in detail, some online provider would quickly censor it.  The murders were publicly condemned by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson (!), Charles Lee and Lord Dunmore, the governor of Virginia.  The governor called an emergency session of the Burgesses and presented them with a suspiciously complete plan for going to war with the Indians in the Border Lands.  That was “Dunmore’s War,” and killed hundreds before it was over. 

Part of the Cresap-Greathouse party who took an active part was an early settler.  Let’s call him “Joe Blow,” for he might still have descendants around who might be distressed by this bit of history.  A street in one of the towns we serve was named “Blow Street.”  I passed by it as I was passing the county courthouse which got me thinking about this. 

So now we come to my question:

Now that we know that Joe Blow was part of a foul murder 250 years ago – even though we know only his name and very little else – are we honoring the foul murder of Logan’s family by calling a street “Blow Street”?

Or is it just the name of the place?

Are we just waving a bloody shirt?

Mizpah!