In 1912, the Valdosta Times ran a pair of articles about the naming of the city of Valdosta. It is said that the town was named by Col. Lenoreon D. DeLyon, editor of the South Georgia Watchman, which was published at Troupville and later at Valdosta, GA. According to Yesterday & Today, newsletter of the Lowndes Historical Society, Leonoran DeLyon, as editor, and [half] brother Isaac Mordecai DeLyon, as publisher, purchased the Georgia Watchman [Thomasville] newspaper very early in 1858 and moved it to Troupville. They were sons of Judge Levi S. D’Lyon, of Savannah, GA, whose Chatham county property would be the site of an encampment of the Berrien Minute Men and the 29th Georgia Regiment in the early stages of the Civil War.
Valdosta Times
February 18, 1912The Name of Valdosta and Who Bestowed It
Valdosta is not so old that knowledge of the man who gave it its name, or the origin of its unduplicated appellation, should be lost in the mists of antiquity, but nevertheless there are all sorts of answers to the question who named the town and where the name came from.
The most generally accepted statement is that is was called after Governor Troup‘s old home in Laurens county. Another theory is that when the founders of the village that was to become the capital of Lowndes county and the future metropolis of South Georgia were casting about for a name for it, a poetically minded member happened to think of a beautiful Italian valley, the Vale de’Osta, and forthwith Valdosta was christened.
The Times, though it may not know it origin, is able to make a definite statement as to the identity of the man who gave Valdosta its name. He was Lenorean DeLeon, editor of the Wiregrass Watchman, at old Troupville, in 1858-59, the first newspaper printed in Lowndes county.
This statement is made on authority of Mr. I. L. Griffin, a pioneer citizen who was born at Troupville, and who knows the history of Valdosta from its founding. Mr. Griffin states that after Valdosta was established and the county site moved from Troupville, Mr. DeLeon, who was a very talented man, suspended publication of his paper and moved along with the majority of Troupville’s population to the new town, where he became head of the village school, which he taught for several terms. He was an old-time, well-read Southern gentleman,of French extraction,and came to this section from Savannah. About the close of the Civil War he removed to Texas, where he spent his remaining days. His extensive reading made him familiar with foreign history and countries, and lends strength to the statement that he named the new town after the Italian valley.
The new county proposition, or rather the clamor for county seats, was as insistent in those days as they are now, and the establishment of Valdosta was partly due to the demand of the people in the western part of the Greater Lowndes, for a division and a county seat for themselves. Brooks was thus cut off and Quitman established as the county seat, with Little river as the boundary.
With its western half gone, a commission was appointed to select a new site for the county seat, which would be a little nearer the center of the abbreviated territory. After looking around, the commissioners decided that this was the ideal location for the county seat site, though it would still be near the western border. They did not think the flat lands to the east and south so well adapted for the laying out of a town, while to have gone to the north would have placed the county seat too far away from the southern border. Four hundred and ninety acres of land were then purchased, the new town laid out and the name supplied by Mr. DeLeon. The latter fact, Mr. Griffin states, was well-known to many of the older citizens, among them Capt. W. H. Briggs and Mr. A. Converse, Sr., who lived at Troupville.
The father of Col. W.S. West was the member of the legislature from Lowndes when Brooks county was formed and introduced the bill authorizing the moving of the county seat from Troupville to Valdosta.
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Valdosta Times
February 18, 1912“Val-De-Osta” Was Name of Troup’s Farm
An article that appeared in the Times last Friday in regard to the origin of Valdosta’s name has caused a good deal of comment in this city and section, among old-timers especially.
The Times has a communication from an old resident of Valdosta which says: “In regard to your article in the issue of February 14, ‘The Man Who Named Valdosta’, the facts are these: Lenora DeLeon, whom I knew personally before he went to Texas in 1867 or 1868, named Valdosta after Governor Troupe’s plantation in Laurens county, old Troupeville having been named after the rugged old governor. See the suggestion of one by the other.
“But it is a historical fact that Governor Troupe named his plantation after the Alpine Val-de-osta.”
These facts have several times been printed by the Times.
The confusion seems to have arisen by claiming that Valdosta was named after the Alpine valley and town of that name, when, as a matter of fact, it was named after Governor Troupe’s estate in Laurens county, the name of his home be adopted for the new town, which was made up largely of people who came from a town named after Governor Troupe himself, old Troupeville.
The Savannah Morning News of Sunday contained a correspondence from Valdosta, which made it appear that Valdosta was named after the Alpine city and valley. If the Morning News had printed the entire article that was sent it the facts in the case would have appeared, as it was stated in the full article that Valdosta’s name was taken from Troupe’s home, though the original Valdosta was in Italy.
A year or two ago Bishop Pendleton sent to the public library of this city a book by Felice Ferrero, the Italian historian, who was thoroughly acquainted with the valley of Val-de-osta and who wrote a most interesting story of that valley and of its people. More than 1,000 years ago it was one of the most beautiful spots in Europe and the old castles, the sewerage and the splendid highways that were built then still exist, though in a dilapidated condition.
In the near future the Times hopes to review the story which was written by this Italian historian, reproduce many of the things which he wrote of the Valdostans who formerly inhabited the Alpine valley and who, in many of their characteristics, remind one of the sturdy, hard-headed Valdostans of South Georgia.
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Sparky Hudson said,
October 29, 2016 at 1:28 pm
However the name evolved, it certainly is unique. Just like the name Waycross, there’s no other town by that name anywhere in the world.
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