Cal, I also found it somewhat curious that whoever named Sheridan, Ark decided to name it after a Union general. The town was named in 1887, and at that time, Phil Sheridan was the commanding general of the US Army. As you pointed out, reconstruction has long since been bargained away by then. Given the scorched earth policy he had employed during the campaign in the Shenandoah Valley in 1864, he was hated in the South as much as Sherman. After he completed that campaign, it was said that "if a crow wanted to fly down the length of the Shenandoah Valley, it would need to carry its own food."
An interesting sidebar to Sheridan is that when Chicago's Washington Park Race Track organized the American Derby in 1883, he served as the track's first president.
By the way, I share part of your connection to Texas - my Mother was also born there, in the small town of Clifton. The town attracted a large number of German speakers from both Germany and Switzerland, including her parents, and she told me that as a young girl she mostly spoke German until it became inappropriate to do so shortly after the Lusitania was torpedoed.
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06-14-2020, 03:04 PM
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