The origins of the name of the county seat of Gallatin County – Warsaw – have traditionally been attributed to a novel from 1803: Jane Porter’s Thaddeus of Warsaw.  I’ve spent some time recently looking at the origins of the city name, and I have a different theory.  I also want to raise an issue with the origins of “Fredericksburg” as the name of Warsaw, prior to it being Warsaw.

Before the town was named Warsaw, it was named Fredericksburg.  No question about that. 

 But there is a reference (search for "Fredericksburgh, Kentucky" when you get there,  omit the quotes, and choose 12-11-1815) in the Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, 1815-1817 on December 11, 1815 that says “Resolved, That the committee on the Post-Office and post-roads, be instructed to inquire into the expediency of establishing a post-road from Georgetown, Kentucky, by Nathaniel Sanders' mill, Eagle Creek, and by New-Fredericksburgh to Vevay, in the Indiana Territory.”

“New-Fredericksburgh,” it says.  Not only is there an “h” on the end of it, but also there’s a “New” in front of it.  The usual explanation of the origins of “Fredericksburg” is that it’s named after early Gallatin County pioneer Adolphus Frederick, a boat builder originally from Pennsylvania, who had a boat building operation on the down-river side of the ferry landing. 

By 1820, the Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, 1819-1820, on February 24, 1820, has this item (again, search for "Fredericksburgh,  Kentucky"  when you get there, and look for the date), part of which says: “Mr. Brown presented a petition of sundry inhabitants of Fredericksburgh, Gallatin county, state of Kentucky, praying for the establishment of a post route.”  Patera and Gallagher’s Kentucky Post Offices also reports a Fredericksburgh (note again the ending “h,”) post office in Gallatin County from 1816 to 1832. 

Dr. Carl Bogardus has written that the town is named after a boat builder in the county named Alphonse Frederick, whose first boat was called the “Frederick,” and that the town was so named by the town founder, Col. Robert Johnson.  There is an earlier reference to the boat builder in the columns of Gallatin County history written in the 1930’s by Ms. Nancy Gullion for the Gallatin County News, likely the source of Dr. Carl's information.  Ms. Gullion says, in a Gallatin County News article on March 9, 1929, that Frederick’s boat building enterprise was on the northern corner of High Street and Main Cross, and says that as late as 1846, there were “old posts which were where a part of the construction still stood.”  She goes on to say she’s “indebted to Uncle Milton Carver for . . .this information.” 

On the other hand, there is no Adolphus Frederick, or any other Frederick, in either the 1790 or the 1800 census.  In Kentucky, those aren’t true censuses, but each is a reconstructed census, based on taxes paid on real estate.  Wouldn't someone prominent enough to have the town named after him have been a property owner? There’s no Adolphus Frederick in the 1810 or 1820 census, either.  There’s no will that’s been probated in Gallatin County for Frederick between 1799-1838, he’s not listed in any deeds from 1797 to 1808, and he’s not in the marriage records from 1799-1820.  And as Dr. Carl notes, Col. Robert Johnson was from Orange County, Virginia.  Fredericksburg, Virginia, is very, very close to Orange County.  Further, I would note that the corner of High Street and Main Cross, where this boat business supposedly was, is a long way from where the river was in those days.  Shouldn't a boat builder be close to the river?

So was it named for the boat builder, or the town in Virginia, from which a number of early settlers had come?  I’m not satisfied that there’s enough evidence to firmly support either theory, but with the “New Fredericksburgh” reference in early Congressional records, and the circumstantial evidence, I tend to lean toward the town in Virginia.

In either event, the town name had been Fredericksburg or Fredericksburgh or maybe New Fredericksburgh since at least 1816. In the fall of 1831, the town took the step to incorporate as a town, to reflect what must have been it’s growth and development, as it lay on the major transportation venue of the area in those days, the Ohio River.  However, there was a town in Washington County, Kentucky named Fredericktown, and evidently the two similar names were causing too much confusion.  So on 12-12-1831, five days after the town’s name of at least 16 years had been formalized by the Legislature of the State of Kentucky (on 12-7-1831), that the name Fredericksburg was declared unavailable by the Post Office Department.  Patera and Gallagher’s Kentucky Post Offices says Fredericktown had a post office of that name from 1828 to 1911, (there’s a map here). So the citizens were forced to think up new name, without prior warning, between 12-7-1831 and 12-12-1831, on what the new town name would be. All they had to do was look in the newspapers of the day to find a heroic namesake for the town.

The usual story given for the selection of “Warsaw” is that it came from a book called Thaddeus of Warsaw, by Jane Porter, a novel that was popular in the early 19^th century.  It was published in 1803. If you want your own copy, eBay had nine for sale, as of this writing; three for less than $5.  Or, the Gutenberg Project has put the entire book online for your reading pleasure, here.  You may find it just as enriching to your life to only read the synopsis, which is here.  As one recent reader warns, Thaddeus was written in “the days when continual tears, swoons, and faintings were deemed a necessary and desirable accomplishment of heroes and heroines.”  It’s essentially a fictionalized account of Thaddeus Kosciusko, a Polish hero of the American Revolution.

Thaddeus Kosciusko's story, as related in Thaddeus, is from the 18^th century. But in the early 19^th century, when the Fredericksburg citizens were looking for a new town name, another story came out of Poland: the fight for Polish independence.

The Warsaw Independent, on May 15, 1880, has this to say: “The town of Warsaw was once known as the town of Fredericksburg.  At what time it was incorporated, if it ever was, the records do not show.  The county of Washington having at that time a town by the same name, and letters and goods being frequently miscarried because of two towns, in the same State, it was changed December 12^th, 1831, to the name of Warsaw, and this name given in honor of the great struggle for Polish Independence begun in a city of that name in Russian Poland, on the night of November 29^th and 30^th, 1830.”  (The Independent says the confusion was a town of “identical name,” and while it was obviously close enough to be confusing, note they weren’t exact.)

The story on the Polish fight for independence, from Encarta, says

 “In 1815 the Congress of Vienna, which drafted the general European peace settlement after Napoleon’s downfall, created the Kingdom of Poland (also called the Congress Kingdom of Poland), consisting of about three-quarters of the territory of the former duchy of Warsaw, with the Russian emperor as king; established Kraków as a city republic; and distributed the remainder of Poland between Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Alexander I, emperor of Russia, granted the new kingdom a liberal constitution in 1815, but Polish nationalists soon initiated a powerful movement for independence. On November 29, 1830, this movement culminated in the outbreak of armed insurrection. The Poles expelled the imperial authorities and in January 1831 proclaimed their independence. In the ensuing war, the Poles kept the Russians at bay for several months. However, the Russians won an important victory at Ostrołka [sic] in May 1831 and took Warsaw in September [1831].”

Since we’re in pre-telegraph days, there was an issue in my mind about the ability for news in Poland to reach Warsaw, Kentucky in a timely manner, but I find the Cincinnati Enquirer in the late October, early November 1831 issues, are chock full of Polish revolutionary stories.  On September 17^th of that year, before Poland fell, there were three and a half columns, on a five-column-wide front page of the Cincinnati Enquirer about the revolution. So Warsaw folks would have known all about the Polish Revolution as "the" contemporary happening, and would have known that the folks of Warsaw, Poland, were suffering terrible consequences from trying to bravely, heroically, resist the Imperialist Russians.

I have found no original source, no definitive authority, for the origination of the “Thaddeus” version of the naming of Warsaw (if you have one, I’d love to know of it).  Dr. Carl Bogardus is the first person I find that mentions it.  In his 1948 “The Early History of Gallatin County”, he writes: “Warsaw was named by Benjamin Franklin Beall . . .from the book ‘Thaddeus of Warsaw,’ of which he must have been very proud.” He gives no source for the information.

Gypsy Gray’s History of Gallatin County mentions it, and quotes a Nancy Gullion article in the Gallatin County News from March 9, 1929 called “The Early History of Gallatin County,” although Ms. Gullion's article of that date makes no mention of Thaddeus.  Ms. Gray says that "Captain John Blair Summons suggested the name 'Warsaw' because of his fondness for the book titled 'Thaddeus of Warsaw.' "

I have a reference to another  Nancy Gullion article from the Gallatin County News in the late 1920's on the subject, but I am unable to locate a copy.

To further complicate things, Benjamin F. Beall - cited by Bogardus - was born on March 1, 1823, which would have made him 8 years old in 1831, so it stretches credulity to believe he had a favorite novel which was written 20 years before he was born.  Dr. Carl & Ms. Gray both claim that the source of the name was a grandfather of Mrs. R. B. Brown, nee Angelina Beall Summons, but their confusion over which grandfather merely adds to the "old wives tale" aura of this story.

Robert M. Rennick’s wonderful Place Names in Kentucky mentions the Thaddeus version, but he's citing Gray and Bogardus, and qualifies his endorsement by noting that the name "was said to be inspired by" Thaddeus.  Rennick mentions both Fredericksburg, Virginia, and the boat builder Frederick as possible sources for "Fredericksburg."

John Fossee’s notes for a WPA Writers Project history of Gallatin County make no mention of Thaddeus, and those notes would be from the 1930’s.  I have a typescript of Raymond Brock’s History of Gallatin County from the 1930’s, and he, too, does not mention the Thaddeus version.  Neither mentions the origins of the Fredericksburg name.
 

The ultimate source on all things Kentucky History, Lewis Collins, doesn’t mention the origin of either the Fredericksburg or Warsaw town names. The oldest extant source I find concerning the naming is the Warsaw Independent article from 1880.  It’s 49 years after the fact, but 49 years earlier than Mrs. Gullion's first mention of the alternative.

So here’s the question: is it more likely that the good folks in Gallatin County on December 12, 1831 would name their town after the city of heroic, fallen freedom fighters of a major independence movement just weeks earlier, which contemporary newspapers covered in depth, or a cheesy favorite novel of an eight year old boy published 28 years earlier? 

Northern Kentucky Views votes for Polish revolutionaries on Warsaw, and Fredericksburg, Virginia as the source of the name Fredericksburg.  Occam's razor: All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.