of the Electors to whom it is submitted will be indicated as M. J. F." on the final ballot and may be admitted to the Hall of Fame by a simple majority of the ballots cast; whereas every name not so indorsed by the division of the Electors to whom it is submitted will not be "more justly famous" at all, and will require two-thirds of the ballots cast to secure admission to the Hall of Fame.

Each Elector is requested to return the preliminary ballot described above to the University Senate by June 1, whereupon he will receive by June 30 the final list of nominations. The Electors must render their final verdict on their ballots on or before October 1. For the next election, in 1915, they are requested to mark not more than twenty-three American men, choosing one at least from each of the eight classes, eight being a majority of fifteen classes of nominations mentioned. They are to designate also not more than five famous American men of foreign birth, and not more than eleven famous (and dead) American women, whether of native or foreign birth.

NAMES OF PLACES.

Names Changed Without Adequate Reason.

In our Sixteenth Annual Report (1911) at pages 88-107 we discussed at some length the principles governing the formation of place-names, and in earlier reports have argued strongly not only for the bestowal of appropriate names upon public thoroughfares, parks, and monumental structures like bridges, but also for the retention of names of long usage. In New York City, there are frequent violations of the canons of nomenclature which we believe should be observed. At the present time, a street plan for the picturesque Inwood Hill district is under consideration, in which one of the principal avenues is named after an enterprising real estate dealer, while personal names long identified with the locality or names readily suggested by the history of Inwood Hill are ignored. Two public squares at intersections of the principal thoroughfare of Manhattan Borough, Broadway, have been named after newspapers, thus fastening upon the nomenclature of the City advertisements of private business in violation of propriety

and in discrimination against other equally deserving business corporations located on the same squares. Within a year, the name of Mulberry Bend Park — a park of two and three-fourths acres on the lower east side, created in pursuance of chapter 320 of the laws of 1887 and named after the bend in Mulberry street referred to on page 120, was changed to Columbus Park.

Blackwell's Island Change of Name Proposed.

During the summer of 1911, it was proposed to change the name of Blackwell's Island to Hospital Island. This island lies in the East River between Fifty-ninth and Eighty-sixth streets and contains the City Hospital, the Metropolitan Hospital, the Home for the Aged, the Penitentiary and the Workhouse. Its Indian name was Minnahannonck (also spelled Minnahanock and otherwise) and means "island place" or "on the island." When the Dutch settled on Manhattan Island the West India Co. purchased Minnahannonck from the Indians and soon it acquired the name of Verken Eylandt, meaning Hog Island, because the neighbors allowed their swine to run there. The Dutch name became corrupted to Ferkins Island (1666) and later was anglicized to Hog Island.

After the capture of New York by the British in 1664, Hog Island was given to Captain John Manning, and was for years known as Manning's Island. Captain Manning was in command of New York at the time of the recapture by the Dutch in 1673, and surrendered the City, for which he was court-martialed. After an exile of a few years, he returned to his island farm where he died, leaving his property to a stepdaughter. The stepdaughter married Robert Blackwell, after whom the island obtained its present name. The island remained in the possession of the Blackwell family for a century or more. The family built the low rambling wooden homestead, which subsequently became the residence of the Warden of the Penitentiary under the City's ownership. In 1823, James Blackwell sold the island to James L. Bell for $30,000 on a mortgage. As Bell was unable to pay the mortgage, Blackwell foreclosed and regained the property. In 1828, Blackwell sold it to the City for $32,000. In 1843, Bell's widow sued to recover her dower

interest which, she claimed, had never been satisfied, and the City had to pay $20,000 more to clear its title.

The advocates of the change of name argued that the name. "Blackwell's Island" had become so associated with the idea of penal and charitable institutions that "Hospital Island” would, to a considerable degree, eliminate the prejudices of the worthy poor from going there. The American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, the New York Historical Society, the American Geographical Society, the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, and other organizations, took formal action opposing the change, on the ground that it was unnecessary; that old established names should not be disturbed; that changes in local place names confused historical and real estate records; and that, by the same argument as that advanced for the proposed change, the name would need to be changed again as soon as it had become sufficiently associated with the uses of the island to acquire the significance ascribed to the present name. As yet, no official action has been taken by the Board of Aldermen on the proposed change.

Classic Place Names in New York State.

There is probably no better illustration of the irrelevancy of certain place names than that afforded by the classic names of many towns, villages and cities in the State of New York. They do not fall into any of the classes of place names derived from logical sources. They are not names of natural physical description, such as are the indigenous place names of aboriginal peoples or the names given by modern peoples according to that same excellent rule. They are not based on local conditions not natural. They are not old local names changed by phonetic decay. They are not loan names, brought hither by natives of the places bearing the original names and used on account of some historical connection or personal association. They are not names expressing relations of time or order. They are not names derived from the use to which the lands bearing those names are put. They are not names commemorative of men or events connected with the modern places to which the names are attached. Nor are they names of imagination or fancy stimulated by local surroundings. They are names arbitrarily taken

from Italy and Greece or some poetic source and fastened upon new places without any logical connection or any excuse except that they were classic or poetical names, and had their place in old world history and literature. By way of illustration, the following names from the single County of Cayuga may be mentioned: Auburn, Aurelius, Brutus, Cato, Conquest, Genoa, Mentz, Scipio, Sempronius and Venice In Onondaga County are Apulia, Camillus, Cicero, Delphi, Euclid, Fabius, Manlius, Marcellus, Memphis, Mycenae, Pompey, and the large city of Syracuse. In Seneca County are names like Junius, Ovid and Romulus. Other large cities in other parts of the State are named Rome, Utica and Troy. The story of the origin of the classical place names in central and western New York is interesting and little known. Upon this subject, the Hon. Victor H. Paltsits, lately State Historian of the State of New York, permits us to quote him as follows:

*

"The award of bounty lands to officers and privates enlisted in the army (line regiments) of the United States, during the American Revolution, had its inception in a resolve of the Continental Congress, dated September 16, 1776. The Legislature of New York, on March 20, 1781, passed An Act for raising two regiments for the defence of this State on bounties of unappropriated lands,' and, on March 23, 1782, An Act for raising troops to complete the line of this State in the service of the United States, and the two regiments to be raised on bounties of unappropriated lands and for the further defence of the frontiers of this State.' These acts were interpreted and made effective by 'An Act for granting certain lands promised to be given as bounty lands, by laws of this State, and for other purposes therein mentioned,' passed May 11, 1784. This act directed the SurveyorGeneral of the State to lay out the same in townships of twentyfour thousand acres, and in square form, or as near to a square as circumstances will permit; and shall also subdivide such townships into lots of two hundred acres each, on a map or maps,' (etc.) The settlement of the unappropriated lands, under preceding acts, proved embarrassing and inconvenient, hence the Legislature, on May 5, 1786, extended the authority of the Commissioners of the Land Office (consisting of the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Speaker of the Assembly, Secretary of State, Attorney-General, Treasurer and Auditor the Secretary acting ex-officio Secretary to the board). This act changed

as

* From the Magazine of History for May, 1911.

the area of townships to sixty-four thousand acres each. It authorized the Commissioners to designate every township to be laid out by virtue of this act, or which is already laid out, by such name as they shall deem proper, and such name shall respectively be mentioned in the letters patent for granting a township or part of a township.' The powers of the Commissioners were extended further by the act of March 20, 1788. In the fourth paragraph of this act, it was stipulated that all persons having military certificates on bounties of unappropriated lands' should make out their respective locations before July 1, 1789. It also provided for the extinguishment of Indian land rights, among them those of the Onondagas and Cayugas. Certain of the lands of these Indians were purchased by the Commissioners who were appointed to hold treaties with the Indians in the State, under authority of the act of March 1, 1788.

6

"We have now reached the point which takes us into the country of the Onondagas and the Cayugas, in whose domain the townships with Romanized and Greecized names were soon after laid out. The act authorizing the laying out of these Indian lands into townships was passed February 28, 1789. The townships were to contain sixty thousand acres each, approximately, and each township was to be subdivided on a map of the Surveyor-General into one hundred lots, as nearly square as may be,' and each lot was to contain six hundred acres, approximately. The Commissioners of the Land Office were instructed by the act, among other things, to 'designate every township by such name as they shall deem proper,' after the township had been laid out and numbered from number one progressively.' The Commissioners, at a meeting on April 22, 1789, Resolved, That the Surveyor-General lay out from actual survey twenty-five townships' in accordance with the act of Legislature, passed the preceding February. As the Surveyor-General had not completed his work by the next year, the Legislature, to remedy the delay, passed a kind of omnibus bill, on April 6, 1790, 'to carry into effect the concurrent resolutions and acts of the Legislature' formerly written into the laws. On April 16, the Commissioners of the Land Office met and directed the Secretary, Lewis A. Scott, to advertise for six weeks in the official State newspaper in New York City, and also in one Albany newspaper, requiring all persons entitled to bounty lands to exhibit their claims (if they had not done so formerly), at the office of the Secretary, in New York City, and before July 1, following. On Saturday, July 3, the Commissioners of the Land Office held a meeting at the Secretary's office in New York City. There were present, George Clinton, Governor; Lewis A. Scott, Secretary; Gerard Bancker, Treasurer; and Peter T. Curtenius, Auditor. The