My Observation While Standardizing US Locations: "Wherever there’s a Newton, there’s a Jasper"

A number of my Hibbs relations ended up here from Tennessee/Indiana. Newton is the county seat of Jasper County, Iowa (here shaded in pink).  Image from Google Maps.

I didn't grow up with the Newton/Jasper thing out here in San Diego, but I have noticed that when counties and townships were being named throughout the United States in the 1800s the Newton/Jasper occurrence in place names was surprisingly common:

Newton Counties (from Ancestry's location box search)

Jasper Counties (from Ancestry's location box search)

My Turners and Hendersons were here in Newton and Jasper County, Georgia in the earlier 1800s.  Closeup from FamilySearch Wiki on Georgia.

Back in 1958, Lou Ann Everett tried to figure out the origin:

Sometimes they were associated as counties, sometimes as county and county seat; often a town or county of Marion was nearby. Maps showed more than sixty Newtons and Jaspers in all, half of them juxtaposed in an almost conjugal relationship. They were about as much a part of the American scene as Lincoln Avenue, Washington Street, and Courthouse Square," she wrote. "But why?
"My own investigation of state histories reveals that they commemorate heroes of an incident that may never have happened, that they are linked together because of a dialogue that never was spoken."
In fact, one of the duo may not have even existed.

This quote, and the rest of Ariel Cooley's 2016 article "Across country Jasper, Newton paired together because of American Revolution story" is here.


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