The Name Says it All

I started with Laurens County in the Piedmont because of family roots. Six towns made my list of unusual names: Waterloo, Cross Hill, Beaver Dam, Hickory Tavern, Round Jacket, and Green Pond.

According to local legend, WATERLOO was so named because a traveler stopped at a well in the area, and inquired if he might water his horse. Now, the horse whose name was Loo spent some time enjoying the cool, clear water. The combination of water and Loo appealed to some of the residents, hence they adopted the name WATERLOO for their small community which theretofore had been nameless. Another more historically correct possibility is that local Huguenot families named it WATERLOO, after the defeat of Napoleon, but therein lies legend, too.

CROSS HILL received its name because of location between the crossing of a foot trail and a wagon road at the top of a hill. This little town was eventually moved from the crossroad, to its present site. Little remains of the early village a mile to the north of present day CROSS HILL. There is only one block of stores, all on one side, with the sidewalk elevated high above the street. Steps lead to the sidewalk from the road. Here, my Grandfather Red owned a typical mercantile store with its ubiquitous pickle barrel topped by a checker board and sided by two chairs. Even today, there remains only one block of stores, and a gas station. As in the past, if one requires medical care he goes elsewhere.

A hop, skip, and jump down the road is BEAVER DAM, so named because of, yes, you are correct--the proliferation of beaver dams built on the numerous rivers and streams in the area. In the 60's, the United States Post Office reportedly set out to change the name of the community, but some things never change in the rural South, as the Post Office learned.

According to some folk, tobacco spitting is an art, and some country folk who can spit farther than others sometimes use this method to indicate direction. HICKORY TAVERN is that-a-way, as far as the brown liquid flies! One knows when he has arrived because a tavern/gas station/mercantile store, lazily stands, seemingly in the middle of a field, bisecting the intersection, and surround by a thick grove of Hickory Trees. If this sentence sounds interminable, it would be best to avoid HICKORY TAVERN.

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