What's in a Name - Lanexa

 The second in what will be a continuing series . . .

The name of Lanexa has always perplexed me. Originating in 1882 as the name of a train stop on the just completed Peninsula Extension railroad it bears a striking resemblance to only one other location that I know of in the United States. That is Lenexa Kansas, founded in 1869 in the vicinity of Kansas City. That name is said to originate in the name of the wife of the local Shawnee Chief Blackhoof spelled a variety of ways including  "Na Nex Se" or "Len Ag See."

But what does that have to do with Tidewater Virginia?  

Well there may be a clue.        

The Virginia Gazette of  October 10, 2022 included an article titled The Rise and Fall and Rise Again of Toano by Frank Statz. In it I found this . ..  

In 1881 the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway expanded and laid track through the center of Burnt Ordinary. The crew that had been working on the Union & Pacific Railroad in the Sierra Nevada Mountains before coming to this area. They notice that the land ran uphill from Windsor Shades to to Burnt Ordinary.

In 1883, the village was renamed Toano, named for the Paiute Indian word meaning "high ground.

So we have a Western Indian name being used for a stop on the railroad in 1881. Could Lanexa have also originated from the mind of a railway-man just back from the West?

 

County Directory 1882 Edition

- The Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Directory, Containing an Illustrated History and Description of the Road ...
Compiled by J. Henry Chataigne  1882

George and the Giant Peach

Mr. George Ives brought to Richmond a day or two ago a peach which weighs eleven ounces and a half. It was pulled from a tree on the premises owned by the Richmond Shooting Club, known at Libby Point, and is one of a number of the same sort seen there. The variety is unknown. 

-Richmond Dispatch, 5 September 1882



It is interesting that they use "Libby Point" rather than "Lilly Point."

Manufacturing at Early Providence Forge

Iron-Manufacturing in the Colony of Virginia.

To the Editor of the Dispatch:

My attention was directed a few days since to a crude memorial of iron-manufacture in the Colony of Virginia, a rude and irregularly cast specimen of pig-iron about two feet in length and weighing probably  about one hundred pounds- now on exhibition at the door of Kelly's Junk-shop, on Nineteenth Street. Its origin is denoted in raised letters as follows: "B. Grimes [some vague lettering: probably & Co. Va.], 1758."

About June 1, 1870, a freshet, induced by heavy rains, overflowed and cut the dam of the "Old forge," on the Jones branch of the Chickahominy river in New Kent county, uncovering what was once a "forge or smelting furnace," which, according to tradition, had been burned, and the site covered with earth on the approach of British soldiery during the Revolution. Among the debris were found six pigs of iron, one of which, having been brought to Richmond, was inspected by me. It was marked " B. G.: 1741," and may have been from the same furnace as the pig mentioned above. The forge in New Kent county now known as Providence Forge appears on Fry & Jefferson's map of Virginia as "Holt's Forge." Tradition assigns to Colonel William Byrd (the second of the name in Virginia) the credit of erecting and first operating the furnace at Providence Forge.

The name Grymes is one of early seating and much prominence in Middlesex county. Who among the readers of the dispatch knows aught of the furnace of B. Grymes, when erected and where, how long operated, and from whence it supplies of iron ore were obtained .

Faithfully yours. R. A. B.

RICHMOND, July 19, 1882

- The Daily Dispatch. (Richmond, Va.)July 20, 1882

New Kent in 1882

- from The Chesapeake & Ohio Railway directory, containing an illustrated history and description of the road ...1882