Greetings from Wakarusa!

Was Lawrence supposed to be named Lawrence?

How close did Lawrence come to not being callled Lawrence? Pretty close! There were actually several names being bandied about in the autumn of 1854 when the first groups of activists, opportunists and others seeking a new start arrived to build a new town a few miles west of the confluence of the Wakarusa and Kansas rivers. What were the chances of any given one ‘winning’? Its impossible to know - but that doesn’t mean we can’t guess! So below are the very scientific and not at all made up chances that our fair town might have been named something different.

Here they are, in order of the least likely to the most likely:

1. Plymouth

2. Yankeetown

3. New Boston

4. Excelsior

5. Eureka

6. Quindaro

7. Worcester

8. Wakarusa

Plymouth: Less than 0% chance

This one makes the list because, bizarrely, the Wikipedia entry on Lawrence notes it as a name that was considered. Yet the source of the claim doesn’t support it at all. It comes from an entry in Alfred Andreas' 1883 book "History of the State of Kansas" and its section on Douglas County. In it, Andreas notes several of the other entrees on the list like Yankeetown, New Boston and Wakarusa. He then quotes a description of Lawrence from a different travelogue, in which those authors describe the scene of hardy pioneers just starting out in a new land as reminiscent of "Plymouth Rock". But none of the people in the settlement ever seemed to describe it that way.

Yankeetown (or Yankee Town): 0%

This seemed to only be included in early descriptions because it is what the newly formed settlement was derisively called by Missourians and other squatters. It never appeared to be used by the settlers themselves

New Boston: 10%

This is another of the commonly referred to names in contemporaneous histories and those written throughout the rest of the late 19th century. It doesn’t seem to come up in correspondence from early settlers but it is understandable that the settlement might have been colloquially referred to New Boston. Still, none of the stories from people in the first two Emigrant Aid Company parties ever allude to it as something that was ever seriously proposed as a formal name for the town.

Excelsior: 15%

This name is a bit of a cheat, because it was never a suggested or considered by the group of settlers that were sponsored by the MEAC. But the MEAC group was not the only one making claims to the land that that would become Lawrence. One of those groups, lead by an early squatter named John Baldwin, was extremely hostile to the claims of the MEAC emigrants and actually went so far as to lay out their own town on the site and named it Excelsior. Charles Robinson includes a description of it in his book The Kansas Conflict.

The state of play at the time the territory was opened for white settlement was extremely fluid. Lawsuits in numerous jurisdictions would be filed, shady legal maneuverings were employed, payoffs were common ... in short, there was no guarantee that the MEAC settlers would prevail. (And the last of the competing land claims for large chunks of the ground under which Lawrence was developing would not be settled until 1865!)

Eureka: 20% / Quindaro: 21%

The next two names get a leg up on the previous ones on the list by dint of being suggested as possibilities by folks at the actual meeting when the town was organized. Joseph Savage, who came to Lawrence with the second party sponsored by the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company in the summer of 1854, described the meeting of the first two groups of settlers as part of a newspaper series of his memories of the founding of Lawrence, published in 1870: 

“On this day (the 18th), we met on the hill nearly, if not exactly, where the new University is being erected, to form an association for laying out the city …  It was at this time and place that the discussion arose as to a name for the association, which finally gave name to the city.  Dr. Doy and Mr. Mallory spoke at considerable length in favor of some of the Indian names common to the country, such as Quindaro, Eureka and Wakarusa.  E. D. Ladd, J. S. Emery, and others, took part in the discussion.” (It was at this meeting that the Lawrence was suggested and then adopted as the name of the town.)

So while Eureka and Quindaro were brought up, there seems to have been no real constituency for it. I give Quindaro a slight edge because a few early settlers of Lawrence were involved with founding a town by that name just to the west of Kansas City 1856. It would briefly prosper but ultimately only lasted as a going concern for a handful of years.

Worcester: 33%

Worcester being this high on the list may come as a surprise, especially because it is not among the commonly know ‘alternate’ names, but there is a strong case for it. Worcester, Massachusetts was a hotbed of anti-slavery sentiment (the Free-Soil Party was founded there) and a large contingent of the first and second MEAC settlers came from Worcester. The first thing named in the area, by members of the first party, was Mt. Oread, where they camped upon their arrival. It was named in honor of the Oread Seminary in Worcester. More interestingly, Charles Robinson claimed (in a letter to Amos Lawrence imploring him to accept that the settlers were committed to the name ‘Lawrence’ for the town) that, “A letter from Mr. Thayer was received some time since, offering a library on behalf of the citizens of Worcester, if the city would be called by that name.” Considering the number of settlers from Worcester, and the desire of the settlers to secure financial support for their fledgling town (a big factor in choosing the name Lawrence), the name Worcester has to be given a real possibility. If Amos Lawrence had, prior to the earliest parties leaving for the Kansas Territory, had made it abundantly clear that no town should bear his name, there is a not insignificant chance we might be living in Worcester, Kansas.

Wakarusa: 95%

This is what the city of Lawrence should have been named. In its first days in the early summer of 1854, the MEAC spoke with men who had already traveled through the territory on their way to California, and anticipated that their first settlement would be in the Wakarusa valley. Beginning in August of 1854 and continuing until the late fall, the executive committee, trustees and secretary of the MEAC would refer to the nascent town as “the Wakarusa settlement.” The first edition of what was to be the city’s newspaper (it was printed in Pennsylvania and distributed in the Northeast) carried a dateline of “Wakarusa”

Even after the settlers decided to name the town ‘Lawrence’, Amos Lawrence asked that they reconsider, telling the settlers he believed that Wakarusa was a better option. But he would be rebuffed, and by December, the MEAC was printing up the plat of their new city, forevermore to be known as Lawrence.