While some early East Texans named their towns for families, their hometowns or landmarks, others were a tad more creative.

That brings us to Tadmor in Houston County. Most folks think the name comes from the expression “let me have a tad more of that.”

Actually, the name comes from the Bible, where it describes a city built by Solomon “in the wilderness” or somewhere on the southern border of Palestine.

In Rusk County about 1901, a group of young boys decided to go hunting one autumn night but failed to bag any game.

Late in the night, feeling hungry, they swiped a couple of chickens from a farmer, built a fire behind New Hope Church, roasted the chickens and satisfied their hunger.

To hide the evidence of their theft, they tossed the chicken feathers and viscera into a water well from which churchgoers and school children drew their water each day.

Contaminated with the chickens’ remains, the well had to be cleaned out and salted to restore the water to drinkable quality.

Thereafter, New Hope was better known as Chicken Feather.

Magnolia Springs, a scattered community in Jasper County, once was known as Pinetucky.

While the exact origin of the name has been lost, it probably came from the vast stands of virgin pine trees that covered the area with the addition of “tucky,” which in the language of the Old South meant “land” or “territory.”

When a rural community in northwest Anderson County sent in a list of potential names for its new post office, a storekeeper accidentally included a customer’s request for a yard of cloth. The government named the post office Yard.

In Delta County, Mary (Grannie) Sinclair, the matriarch of her family, raised goats on a three-mile neck of land that jutted into the South Sulphur River.

The community soon was dubbed Grannie’s Neck.

Lick Skillet is a name that courses through the history of rural East Texas. For more than 100 years or so, it has been attached to communities, creeks, roads and anything else where people have a sense of humor.

The name supposedly came about when newcomers arrived late for a community dinner and found that all of the food had been consumed, leading someone to admonish them to “lick the skillet.”

Located five miles west of Alto in Cherokee County, Weeping Mary was first settled after the Civil War by freed slaves from neighboring plantations.

Its name reportedly came from the 20th chapter of the book of John, where Mary goes to the tomb of Jesus after he was crucifi ed: “And when she had thus said, she turned herself back and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus saith unto her, ‘Woman why weepest thou?’”

Cut Hand and a nearby creek in Red River County got its names from a Delaware Indian chief who was instrumental in arranging a treaty with unfriendly Indian tribes.

The chief had lost three fingers from a sabre’s slash in his younger days and because of his disfigurement, he was thereafter known as Cut Hand.

Bowman is the author of more than 40 books about East Texas. He can be reached at bob-bowman. com.