It's all getting very dull, isn't it? Its all these small towns with no bars. And today is courthouse day, so I'll be trekking through reams of hundred-year-old papers.
Well, after I'd been to court, since this is also the state capital, I thought I'd trot over to the Capital, have a word with the Secretary of State, see if she could tell me anything about the incorporation of the Glasgow Development Corporation: which she could.
And as I was wandering out through the magnificent marble halls, idly eyeing the portraits of past governors, a name caught my eye: William Ellsworth Glasscock, Governor from 1909-13, the very years I'm interested in. The name caught my eye because it was the one next to "Glasgow" in the Deed Book index for those very years at the county courthouse. He'd been pretty active in the property market around that time. He had also, the little bio by the portrait told me, declared martial law and sent in the troops in his last year of office.
But what really caught my eye in the bio was the statement that he had "risen quickly in the Republican Party as attorney of US Senator Stephen B Elkins". Because the Glasgow Development Company acquired its land from its president, George E Thomas, who had, in turn got it from a special commissioner on the order of a chancery court judge acting in the cause of D B Elkins against H P Thomkins. The Thomkins are the original landowners from way back in 1815 (a date every British schoolboy knows!). H P Thompkins is the Secretary of the Glasgow Development Company, according to the signatures on the plat map, but not listed as a stockholder.
Now, I don't know if these Elkins are related (when I went to the Chancery court and asked to see the order book for April 5th 1913, they took my details and said they'd get back to me). And I don't know if Governor Glasscock was buying land in any close proximity to where he was sending troops. But it makes for a thickish plot, wouldn't you say?
And to cap it all, after the town is incorporated (in 1920), the President (Thomas) closes down the company (in 1922) and buys back all the remaining assets.
The first map they submitted, in 1911, had the name as "Glas=gow" (a large 'equals' sign in the middle), both in its title and the company name, but that was the only time it appeared in that form. Everywhere else, it's simply "Glasgow".
The attorney who acted for the company in its formation, and who was an equal stockholder (there were five), was called Donald O Blagg. In the midst of this thickish plot, I'm not sure what a Londoner would make of his second name, but his first name certainly marks him for some Scottish ancestry.
So let's get to the point. It seems likely the name is a corruption of "Glass Company", because this part of the world was littered with Glass Companies, two of them figuring in the plat maps of Glasgow, one of them appearing to predate anything else there.
But my thesis is that someone, with Scottish ancestry, said "OK, let's call it "Glassco", but let's at least spell it properly". So, in that sense, it really was named after Glasgow Scotland.
Later that night, I saw an advert for Yeungling Lager, "America's Oldest Brewery - since 1829". Now I'm sure you're as familiar with human nature as I am: the oldest American Brewery must have been about 1492, mustn't it? And that's only thinking of European breweries.
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