Toledo brothers named One & Two

Headstone of Two Stickney (1810-1862)
Two Stickney’s headstone

In the mid-1830s, the state of Ohio and the territory of Michigan fought over a 468-square-mile strip of land containing Toledo. Their border dispute became known as the Toledo War.

During that period, tensions between the two regions ran high. At one point, for instance, the sheriff of Michigan’s Monroe County took to arresting “anyone in the Ohio strip who was promoting Toledo going to Ohio.”

Map of the disputed strip of land between Michigan and Ohio.
The disputed strip of land between Michigan and Ohio

His arrests included “one of Toledo’s founding fathers,” Benjamin Franklin Stickney. Originally from New England — and named after his mother’s uncle, the actual Benjamin Franklin — Stickney had moved his family westward in 1812 after being appointed as an Indian Agent at Fort Wayne.

By the time he arrived in Fort Wayne, Mr. Stickney already had fostered a reputation as an odd personality and independent thinker. The eccentric rap came largely from Mr. Stickney’s decision to name his sons One and Two.

His apparent reasoning, according to legend, was that the boys could name themselves when they grew older, but they never did. Mr. Stickney had wanted to name his three daughters after states, but his wife forbid it for the first two. He won out after the birth of his last child, born at Fort Wayne in 1817. He called her Indiana.

(One Stickney was born in 1803. Two Stickney was born in 1810. Between them were two daughters named Louisa and Mary. The fifth baby was indeed named after the state of Indiana, but her name was spelled “Indianna.”)

Stickney’s arrest angered his son Two, who ended up stabbing the Monroe County sheriff in the side with a pen knife in July of 1835. This non-fatal injury was the only casualty in the nearly-bloodless Toledo War.

The conflict finally ended in mid-1836, when the U.S. Congress proposed a compromise. Ohio would be given the disputed strip of land (and the city of Toledo), while Michigan would be given statehood and the remainder of the Upper Peninsula.

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Image (2nd one): Adapted from Disputed Toledo Strip by Drdpw under CC BY-SA 3.0.

P.S. Other families with number-names include the Rosado family of Brazil and Ten & Decillian Million of Washington state.

Baby born aboard steamship Aorangi, named Aorangi

MV Aorangi
MV Aorangi

The MV Aorangi was a passenger ship that regularly traveled back and forth between Sydney, Australia, and Vancouver, Canada, from the 1920s to the 1950s.

In July of 1934, while the ship was en route to Canada, the wife of passenger William “Billy” Townsend (a Canadian professional boxer) gave birth to a baby girl.

The baby was named Aorangi, after the ship.

(The ship was named after New Zealand’s highest peak, called “Aoraki” by South Island Maori and “Aorangi” by North Island Maori.)

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Another tennis player named after Martina Navratilova

Tennis player Martina Navratilova (in 1980)
Martina Navratilova

About a decade ago, I wrote a post about how tennis great Martina Hingis (b. 1980) was named after tennis legend Martina Navratilova (b. 1956).

Recently, I learned that yet another professional tennis player — Martina Trevisan, who was born in Italy in 1993 — was also named for Navratilova.

At a post-match press conference held during the French Open a couple of months ago, Martina Trevisan was asked about her name. She responded (about a third of the way though this video):

“My mom gave me that name and for sure it’s for Navratilova. And I’m not feeling pressure for the name. I mean, I like [it] also.”

Currently, Trevisan is ranked #1 in Italy and #24 in the world according to the WTA (Women’s Tennis Association).

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Martina Navratilova photo by Hans van Dijk via Nationaal Archief under CC0.

Baby name story: Poppet

Portrait of Poppet (cropped), painted circa 1935 by Augustus John.
Poppet John

Welsh painter Augustus John and his second wife, Dorothy (called “Dorelia”), welcomed a daughter in 1912.

They’d planned to name the baby Elizabeth Anne, but they ended up calling her Poppet. (The British English term poppet is used to refer to “a person, especially a child, that you like or love.”)

Here’s how Poppet’s older bother Romilly (b. 1906) recalled the naming process:

I remember a grand discussion in the walled-in summer-house about what she should be called — a discussion which has been going on ever since. Elizabeth Anne was the provisional choice on that occasion, but it satisfied nobody, and the baby was finally registered as ‘one female child’, pending the discovery of the ideal name. Meanwhile [half-brother] Caspar, contemplating her one day, chanced to remark: ‘What a little poppet it is!’ — and Poppet she was called from that day forward. A real name was still intended to be found for her, but we had not reckoned with the force of habit, and, in spite of intermittent consultation, and at least one attempt to revert to the original suggestion, Anne, she has continued [to be called] Poppet to this day.

I can’t find Poppet’s birth registration online, but “Poppet” is indeed the name used legally in the Marriage Registration Index (three times: 1931, 1940, and 1952) and the the Death Registration Index (1997).

Poppet’s third and final marriage was to dutch artist Willem Pol, making fashion model Talitha Pol her step-daughter. After Talitha’s death in 1971, Poppet and Willem raised Talita’s son Tara at their home in the south of France.

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P.S. Caspar John (b. 1903) ended up becoming the head of the Royal Navy in the early 1960s.