Staunton - 1 Jan 1998 - Macoupin County Illinois
Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Project Archives ©1997 Cindy Leonard


How Staunton Got its Name

From the book, Staunton in Illinois, by Dorrell Kilduff. 

Contributed for use by Cindy Leonard

 “Here is the story told me many years ago by an old settler about how Staunton 
got its name. A man named Stanton bought land here, then decided to move on 
and gave the land to the village for a square. There were two Stantons, James 
and Thomas, who bought land here in 1836 so that makes the story believable. At 
the meeting to discuss the post office someone suggested they name the village 
Stanton as a "thank you" to Mr. Stanton. The suggestion was accepted and the 
application for a post office at Stanton went off to Wasington, D.C. There the 
clerk who handled the request must have thought those westerners couldn't spell. 
The grant came back with the name spelled S-t-a-u-n-t-o-n which was the name 
of a town in the Appalachian region of Virginia. It would take time and effort to 
have the error corrected and no one really cared. Anyway, Staunton, Va., was 
and still is pronounced “Stanton". And so it was in Staunton, Illinois for many 
years. Avery Sawyer used to say that people here began saying Staunton as we 
do today only after their throats were so full of coal dirt they could no longer say 
Stanton. Staunton 
was incorporated as a village in 1859. It was incorporated as a city in 1891.”

 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Project Archives by ©1997 Cindy 
Leonard