Plainsville, OH might be Painesville, Lake Co. (earlier Gaeuga Co.), OH Esther Whitney Mott

On Aug 13, 2007, at 11:33 AM, Esther Mott wrote: > Plainsville, OH might be Painesville, Lake Co. (earlier Gaeuga Co.), OH > Esther has a good source backing her up on this one, my Rand McNally "Commercial Atlas & Marketing Guide 2001", which lists every modern flyspeck in its gazetteer, if not always on its maps. In Ohio, there are four townships called merely "Plain", in Franklin, Stark, Wayne and Wood counties. There are Plainfield in Coshocton Co. and Plain View in Monroe. And there is Plain City, which straddles Union and Madison Counties (not to be confused with Union City, which straddles Ohio and Indiana, physically if not legally). But there is no "Plainsville". If you're looking for an exhaustive source of minuscule settlements, at least ones that still exist independently, the "Commercial Atlas" is a great place to look. I can only vouch for the older, single-volume atlas, though; recent editions appear in multiple volumes which may or may not be as thorough. (Considering the median age of genealogists, some are sure to appreciate the newer ones' being significantly lighter!) And, as Gerry pointed out, the DeLorme atlases are also pretty thorough, though, again, for modern-day names only. If you're lucky to live near a university with a good geography department, they should have a healthy map library along with several shelves of state gazetteers. (I go to the Borchert Map Library at the U. of Minnesota all the time.) The gazetteers will usually only give the place name, county and subdivision, coordinates, and perhaps modern or former names, but some states are lucky to have place-name dictionaries which give the meaning and origin of the name, and why it was given. Among the best are "Pennsylvania Place Names", by A(braham) Howry Espenshade (a very Pennsylvanian name!) and Larry L Miller's "Ohio Place Names". William R Farrell, a retired Latin teacher in Syracuse who wrote "Classical Place Names in New York State" (which I highly recommend), was working on one for all the state's toponyms, but I don't know how far along that project is, if it's indeed still going. Cheers, Ron Kyser