I'm sure everyone who's done online research knows the pain of chasing down wild geese that happen to have the same name as your own goose. There are towns in Iowa and Nebraska called Ainsworth, and both of them still exist, unlike this little Ainsworth of mine, and they clog up my search results. And in looking for Hobart, Indiana, I keep turning up things about towns in Tasmania, New York, Oklahoma, and Washington. The good thing about Merrillville is that there's only one … or so I thought, until I saw the first item in this "South of Deepriver" column:
(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart News, Aug. 9, 1923.
Internet research fails to turn up the location of this town in Missouri. It does turn up references from the 19th century to a town called
Merrellsville, but no one seems to know exactly where that town was. Google Maps, which identify such obscure places as my Ainsworth, don't acknowledge the existence of any Merrillville or Merrellsville in Missouri.
So if there is a Merrillville in Missouri, it keeps quiet. Very quiet.
Beyond that, the news south of Deepriver is not very thrilling.
2 comments:
I looked around and there's a "Maryville" Missouri. There seems to be a college around there too. So maybe the person misheard and wrote Merrillville or just turned it into a familiar sounding name?
That's quite possible!
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