So, a few weeks ago, I was browsing the Handbook of Texas Online. It’s something I do. Browse resource materials. It’s similar to my love of the technical manual.
Anyway, as I was browsing The Handbook, I came across an interesting entry. Or more precisely, I came across sixteen identically titled entries. All for places named Shiloh, Texas.
Most Southerners think of The Battle of Shiloh, in Tennessee. Memorialized with a national park.
This, and many other towns came to the name from a common Bible reference, to a town that was known as a place of rest.
To find out whether later US towns were named for the battle field or the Biblical reference, you’d have to dig through some local history.
When I think of Shiloh, I think of the dive-bar just up the street from me at 13th & Studewood in the Heights. An,… interesting place,… to be diplomatic.
In The Handbook there are 16 places, all with references, that claim to have called themselves Shiloh, Texas at one time. I got an odd idea to try to visit all the places described in the entries.
So, tomorrow on my way to Austin, I will try to find the Shilohs in the following counties…
Burleson
Waller
Should be interesting.
I’ll need to get outta here reasonably early. I wanna be in Austin in time for a 4pm perfomance by Nellie McKay.
-b
