Where In Ohio Is Stringtown? Written March 16, 2004   It's a simple question.  Somebody claims to come from a very small place.  He says it's a hamlet with only a few houses, and it's called Stringtown, Ohio.  So you ask your Midwestern geography expert, "Where in Ohio is Stringtown?" Unlikely as it may seem, there's no easy answer to that question, because there's more than one Stringtown, Ohio.  In fact, there are ten of them scattered across the map! Here are their locations.  The northernmost is near the town of Shreve, the southernmost outside the town of Ripley, and the westernmost in the suburbs of Dayton. How can this be?  How can a single state have multiple places with the same name?  And how are we supposed to tell them apart? I didn't become aware of the problem until I moved out of state and had to make the drive to Pennsylvania.  Just 12 miles east of my old hometown, I turned at a familiar crossroads called Norton.  But then a hundred miles later, near Akron, I passed the exit for a city also called Norton.  Apparently there's one Norton, Ohio, in Delaware County and a larger one in Stark County. I next encountered the phenomenon in 1990, when Nat Brandt published The Town that Started the Civil War.  This book recalls the abolitionist history of Oberlin, Ohio, where I went to college.  Oberlin was a center for the Underground Railroad, an informal organization that helped escaped slaves reach safety in Canada.  Nowadays, the town's role is memorialized by this sculpture on South Professor Street. Click here for another angle and another memorial. Relating an 1859 incident, Brandt wrote, “. . . Anson Dayton intercepted the two Kentuckians on their way to Cleveland at a train stop outside the city and took them into custody on the basis of the federal warrant . . . .”  But in a note he observed, “In an odd mistake, Dayton noted that Jennings and Mitchell were served the warrant ‘at the Rail-Road Station of Orange, on the C.C. and C. Rail-Road in the County of Delaware in the Northern District of Ohio.’  Orange is in Cuyahoga County, but Delaware County is north of Columbus in Central Ohio.” Obviously Brandt wasn't aware that there were Oranges in both Cuyahoga and Delaware Counties.  His source was likely correct.  The warrant was served at Orange in southern Delaware County, nine miles north of the state capitol, where Orange Road crosses the tracks opened in 1851 as the C., C. & C. (for Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati).  My father and I found the spot.  Trains still go through, but there's no railroad station there now, and no town. Nor is there much of a town at a place about three miles away called Africa.  Writing in the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1996, John Switzer noted that Africa was mentioned in a new book called Ohio Place Names.  “What's left of it is near Alum Creek Dam.  The settlement was first known as East Orange.  ‘During the Civil War, the hamlet played a role in the Underground Railroad, since most residents were abolitionists and offered refuge to freed slaves, many of whom took up residence there,’ the book says.  ‘An anti-abolitionist derisively referred to the community as Africa because of the many blacks there, and the label caught on.’” Then a few years ago, while driving through northeast Ohio, I heard a Chagrin Falls radio station identify its location as Bainbridge-Cleveland.  Bainbridge?  I know where that is.  That was the hometown of Sally Flowers.  It's in southern Ohio, 60 miles east of Cincinnati.  How could a radio station serve both Bainbridge and Cleveland, on opposite ends of the state?  Is there another Bainbridge near Chagrin Falls?  So I got out the 1987 edition of the DeLorme Mapping Company's Ohio Atlas & Gazetteer.  This book has 64 pages of highly detailed maps at a scale of 1:150,000, or less than 2.4 miles to the inch, and it also has an index. I was amazed to discover that not only are there two Nortons, two Bainbridges, and three Oranges, but the state has a total of 295 duplicate place names that are used by 701 different locations! Here are the 232 names that appear twice.  Ready? Adamsville Alexis Allentown Amanda Amsterdam Antioch Auburn Center Bainbridge Bay View Beechwood Belfast Bellevue Benton Bethel Birmingham Bloom Center Booth Brentwood Brighton Bristol Brookside Brookville Brownstown Brownsville Buffalo Burlington Cairo Camden Carey Carlisle Centerpoint Chase Chatham Cherry Valley Cheshire Claridon Clark Clarksville Clover Hill Cloverdale Columbia Columbia Center Comet Crabapple Crawford Cuba Darlington Dublin Dungannon Durbin Duvall Eagleville East Union Easton Eckley Edgefield Egypt Elizabethtown Enterprise Etna Eureka Evanston Fairfax Fairfield Fairplay Farmington Five Forks Forest Park Forestdale Frankfort Frederick Fredericksburg Fredericktown Frenchtown Fryburg  Garden Garfield Geneva Genoa Gettysburg Glasgow Glendale Glenwood Goodwin Goshen Gould Grandview Heights Greenbush Greentown Hamburg Hamer Hamilton Hanover Hardscrabble Harper      Hartford Hopewell Horton Huntsville Independence Jackson Jacobsburg Jimtown Johnston Jonesboro Jonestown Kansas Corners Kenwood Kerr Kinsman Knox Lakeland Lakeside Lakeview Lebanon Leesville Lexington Lima Linnville Lisbon London Londonderry Louisville Lowell Luray Lynchburg Macedonia Manchester Mantua Martinsville McDonald Mechanicsville Meeker Meigs Middleton Millers Corners Millport Mills Millville Monroeville Monterey Morgan Center Morgantown Morristown Mount Carmel Mount Holly Mount Sterling Needmore New Albany New Baltimore New Burlington New Castle New Haven New Hope New Lexington New Pittsburg New Rochester Newtown Northridge Northwood Norton Norwood Oak Hill Oakfield Olive Green Oneida Otsego Otterbein Owensville Palmyra Peoria Perrysville Petersburg Pine Grove Pinhook Pleasant Hill Pleasant View Plymouth Pricetown Rathbone Rays Corners Reading Reynolds Ringgold Riverside Rochester Rock Camp Rosedale Rossburg Rushville Russell Salem Saltillo Sand Hill Shannon Sharon Sharpsburg Shawnee Hills Shawtown Sheffield Smithville Springville St. Johns St. Joseph Staunton Stony Ridge Sulphur Springs Sunbury Sundale Sycamore Taylorsville Taylortown Uniontown Unity Utica Vinton Wainwright Wakefield Walhonding Walnut Grove Waterford Wayne Waynesburg West Chester West Jefferson West Point Westville Westwood Winchester Woodville Yale Zoar   The following 40 names appear three times each. Amity Arlington Berlin Bridgeport Buena Vista Bunker Hill Clayton Clifton Clinton College Hill Danville East Liberty Germantown Harrisburg Jacksonville Jefferson Jericho Lafayette Lincoln Heights Locust Grove Maple Grove Mechanicsburg Middleburg Middletown Monroe Nashville Oakland Oakwood Orange Pekin Pleasant Grove Pleasant Valley Riverview Six Corners Waterloo West Liberty White Oak Williamsport Windsor Yankeetown   There are 14 that appear four times. Boston Center Concord Florence Hillcrest Maysville Mount Pleasant Newport Shiloh Smith Corners Spring Valley Sugar Grove Unionville Valley View   Two names appear five times. Bloomfield Rome   Four names appear six times. Avondale Fairview Georgetown Midway   One name appears seven times. Centerville   And the co-champions are two names that each appear ten times. Five Points Stringtown   Now I'm not claiming that all of these are major cities.  At some time in the past, they acquired place names which have been passed on to DeLorme's cartographers, but no more than one of the duplicates has been incorporated as an official city or village.  Any other places that share the name do so unofficially, because they aren't incorporated. Comparing DeLorme's list to the census data of Ohio municipalities, I find that about a third of the shared names belong to one official municipality plus one or more unincorporated places.  The other two-thirds are not listed in the census, as they are used only by unincorporated places. I remember driving through one of the six Midways, the one in southern Madison County, and seeing the sign "Midway (Sedalia P.O.)."  Apparently to avoid postal confusion, those Midwayians have to use the address Sedalia, OH 43151.  Not all of the names that I found may be in current use.  The map shows these six other places within 5½ miles of the village of Richwood, where I grew up: Centerville Claibourne Essex Gast Corner Kerr Corner Woodland When I lived there, I could have told you where Claibourne and Essex were, but not the others.  Four of them are, at best, crossroads.  Only Centerville and Essex actually have an additional street. In more remote areas, many locations named on the map are even less than crossroads.  They're what my mother used to call “a wide spot in the road.” But at one time each of them must have had at least a couple of houses, or a one-room schoolhouse, or a general store — something that led the local folks to bestow a name.  And not infrequently, it was a name that had already been used by some other folks a few counties over.