Someone on the OPD list asked the question as to how the Old 96 District became so named and I thought some of you may be interesting in this: According to legends this is how the 96 District was so named. At the hub of the district was the South Carolina outpost of Ninety-Six. How Ninety-Six got its name is the stuff of fantasy and legend. Ninety-Six claim two legends. An Indian maiden and a Surveyor General are the major participants in these legends. One story is certainly more romantic than the other one! The naming of Ninety Six is credited in one legend to the Cherokee Indian maiden, Cateechee, in a story and to a Choctaw maiden named Isaqueena in a poem. Her name was supposed to mean "Deer's Head". Cateechee (the preferred name) fell in love with a young man named Allen Francis. He visited her village of Keowee in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains to exchange guns and calico cloth for deerskins. Francis lived in a small trading post on the Cherokee Path. One night in 1760, Cateechee overheard the Cherokee warriors plotting to wipe out that trading post. Swiftly, she mounted her pony and galloped away through the forests. She arrived at the post with its log stockade in time for the settlers to be prepared and repel the Indian attack. She traveled ninety six miles and because she saved the settlement, her mileage was made its name. Thirty years earlier, in 1730, Surveyor General of the Province George Hunter plotted the Cherokee Path which connected Echota (an Overhill Town in the Cherokee Nation) to Charles Town. He scrawled "96" on his map at the point where a fork in the path led southward to Savannah. By counting the paces of his jogging horse, he estimated the point to be 96 miles from the Lower Town of Keowee. The site - high, level and dry - was popular as a campground and soon became known as Ninety Six. The Cherokee Path began as a trail for Indian warriors and hunters and turned into a route for traders and later, settlers. Eldon mailto:ewade@cfl.rr.com List admin for SC-Old96 Researching: WADE, HAMES