Does each town really has a “founder” ? And if yes, how well are them known ?

28 comments

  1. Well not every town, but many do. In my town we have a mansion opened for tours of our towns founder, he also made the biggest park in our town. Has a giant monument at the cemetery and his mansion is supposedly haunted.

  2. The only person I remember off the top of my head that founded a city I lived in was Andrew Jackson with two other dudes for Memphis. Every other city was probably founded by a dude named “John [whatever the curvy name is]”.

  3. some do and some don’t, i assume this is mostly true in places that were settled in a “manifest destiny” style such as in the plains and the states along the west coast. the only towns i’ve been to where people were aware of the town’s founder were tourist-fed rural highway towns with nothing going on

  4. I don’t know about “each” town, but lots of towns, sure. A lot of them have somewhat uncreative names, like “Smithville.” Guess who founded that lol

    Then again, that’s a long tradition going back thousands of years. After all, Alexander spent years carpet bombing the world with Alexandrias.

  7. Many do, but they usually aren’t particularly well known. There are some famous founders, though. My hometown doesn’t have a well known one.

  9. I mean… Someone had to file the paperwork. It’s not like towns just spring out of the ground.

  10. Yes and no. A lot of towns were created in the last 400 years, by people who kept records. So, we know who did so, and who you might say was in charge of them. So, by that definition, yes.

    On the other hand, the “founding” might not be a super-dynamic story. This clip from the 90s run of *Roseanne* (https://www.tiktok.com/@ladysoundpants/video/7230099683757280558) is kinda accurate for a lot of cases.

    I don’t know about now, but when I was a kid we had a whole unit in History class about local history and it was pretty well covered. How well people *remember* that varies, and not every area is going to have a Historical Society to, say, commission plaques or statues.

    Was there a specific town or city you were interested in?

  12. Generally yeah. If it wasn’t one specific guy then it was like a family or a general store’s location or something

  13. Most Americans live in fairly genertic suburbs that were built all in one go by a development company. Hollywood storytellers like to use the “town founder myth” to make these places seem like they have more history and character than they actually do.

  15. The founder might have been a group or company instead of an individual. Many cities probably had a founder but sometimes maybe just grew out of a fort or trading center.

    My current city was purposefully founded as a town by 3 people in 1857. I don’t know much about them.

    The city I grew up in had several groups living on the spot before it became a city. First there were Native Americans, then there was a Jesuit mission and later Mormons. When the Mormon’s moved on there were new immigrants to take their place. In 1853 the city got its current name and became a hub for wagon trains and the railroad. There were prominant early citizens that I know about but not really a founder.

  16. Sometimes, but some of our towns and cities were centrally planned rather than organically founded and grew. Indianapolis was platted by the Indiana General Assembly and established specifically to be the new state capitol due to its central location

    We also have some founded as company towns. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town

  17. Older or more isolated towns often do. Suburbs that are outgrowths of cities, less so. But it’s typically not a huge deal. My hometown has an old house, built by the guy the town is named after, that they use as a museum for the town’s history.

    My current town actually does care a decent bit about its founder, a real estate developer who planned it out in the 60s. That’s because people think he did a good job and support his vision for the town. It’s a Reston, VA a suburb of Washington, DC.

  18. My town was actually established by the church. It was overflow from Plymouth and the residents got tired of the long trip back and forth to church. They petitioned to build their church and that’s how it started, so it was more of a committee.

  19. EVERY town? No. Many do.

    They’re not usually very well known outside of history buffs and whatnot.

    Technically my town had a founder. He was just the white guy who got there first and said “I live here now”. (As opposed to the Penobscot peoples who were already here). The vast majority of folks don’t know who he was. Nor should they necessarily. He’s unremarkable in the grand scheme of things.

  20. As others have said, some do and some don’t. Most people have no idea who their town or city founder was.

    In the US, sometimes settlement just happened for places where people landed in the “new world” especially on the east coast.

    Sometimes we know that some explorer / whatever representative who was on a campaign funded by a european power set out to expand an empire and found places purposefully for trade routes or cultural expansion.

    In many cases, in the 19th century as rail travel moved further west, land speculators would buy up large tracts of land, build little downtowns throughout the country (especially on rail lines), subdivide the residential land into smaller lots and market them to people. As the industrial revolution was intensifying it got easier to talk to people in big cities and say “do you want to get away from all the pollution, the sin, the hustle and bustle of the city? Come raise your kids in a calm safe place like Pennsylvania or Indiana where people have morals and you can live an honest, clean life”. Those land speculators would love to toot their own horn, name towns after themselves as well as streets and town squares. In these cases founders may have been very well known.

    Many places do not have a founder and were created by an act of government. For example, townships are often subdivided unincorporated land split up by the state so that there can be some form of “local government” even if there isn’t really a downtown or town center to speak of.

  21. Not really. It is most common when a factory or company was the basis for the town. Remember, the beginnings of these towns are not lost to history as they mostly happened within the last 200 or so years. MANY of them during the industrial revolution.

  22. Some do, and some are rather well known locally. Sometimes it’s that a scouting/surveying party was sent out specifically to create a new town, so there’s not really a “founder”, so much as a combination of the government authority which directed the town to be created.

    I think, especially in the east, people are more familiar with the foundation and founders of their state.

  23. I know the name of the founder of the town I grew up in and her house is preserved (but you can’t enter it) but nothing else.
    Currently St. Louis has a more well known story being founded by the French fur traders Pierre Laclède and Auguste Chouteau.
    I forgot which arrived first but the little known story is he claimed loudly on this spot would be one of the worlds great cities.

  24. Technically every town has a founder.

    Sometimes they are a famous individual like Daniel Boone’s Boonesborough

    Sometimes a famous group of families like the Puritans at Plymouth

    Sometimes it’s just a group of randoms with no significant history. My town was founded by a group of Quaker’s who bought land rights off of William Penn – I couldn’t even tell you if I ever met a Quaker.

  25. My hometown and the city I live in now are both named after two men I know almost nothing about. Well I’m sure they were farmers or something related to that.

  26. My town incorporated in the 90s and I married into one of the families that did it. This is the only time I’ve ever known who my town founders are.

  27. “FRANKLIN”

    “Settled, 1769. Named for it’s
    founder, Francis Evick. John
    Van Meter first reached the
    South Branch, 1725. Roger Dyer
    and others came about 1745.
    Site of Federal camp of Gen.
    John C. Freemont, 1862, on way
    to attack “Stonewall” Jackson.

    That’s the historical sign in front of the courthouse, in the town I work in.

  28. Some do. A lot of older towns do because plenty of them started as farmland or plantations. You’ll find quite a lot of that here in Virginia. Then again, some don’t. Richmond was a Native American village at its start.

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