Since Paulding County, Ohio’s Crane Township is celebrating a milestone this year, and I read the Township Clerk’s request for memorabilia, as well as information on a pioneer settlement called “Henpeck”, I decided to do some research about how the unusual name might have been chosen.
As one can imagine, “hen peck” has been the subject of jokes about bossy women subjecting their male friends or family members by “wearing the pants in the family”, so to speak, to get their way, thereby putting the men to shame.
Paulding County Carnegie Library’s newspaper archives contain many jokes about Mr. and Mrs. Hen Peck depicting the miserable husband being constantly nagged by his overbearing wife. The Paulding County Ohio road map still shows the word “henpeck” between sections 5 & 6 of Crane Township.
The Library’s archives revealed that in 1917 and 1919 Henpeck School was honored for selling war bonds. In 1914 the Henpeck School had a new teacher named Charles E. Hoel/Hole. There were several notices posted by the Board of County Commissioners about the public road known as the “Henpeck Road” that was to be improved with the announcement of the time and date of a hearing for objections and claims. In the Antwerp Argus dated April 30, 1891, it told that Mrs. Flo Grear (I found by research that she was Flora Belle Blalock born in 1863), “commenced her school at Henpeck Monday.” (Possibly as a teacher?)
Henpeck Road was still being shown in listings of published roads and salaries submitted by the County in 1927. In 1917, I found that “Mrs. Will Hinsch and children attended the picnic at Henpeck School Friday.” As late as 1928, the County published various taxation rates including Crane Township and Henpeck, just to name a few news items I’ve run across.
Additional reading found a “Henpeck Wood” near England, a henpeck weed commonly known as bunny flowers (very pretty purplish colored florals); and I found a website for “henpeck farm & flowers” where the henpeck seeds may still be ordered today. An old European dictionary definition shows “henpeck” meaning “to noggle”. That’s a peculiar word in itself but back in the 1600’s to noggle meant to group together. A story I ran across stated an Army officer made the comment that most of the farms were owned by women (their spouses being off to war) and he thought the settlement name “Henpeck” was appropriate for that reason.
The luckiest find of all was the Henpeck School 1914 photo with teacher Charles E. Hoel standing at the back. Unfortunately, no names were supplied of anyone else, but at least it is a good picture. Before I stopped my research, I found that a Mr. Richard W. Helbock actually visited as many pioneer post offices as possible and mentions the Henpeck Post Office in Paulding County’s Crane Township in one of his many printed volumes of United States Post Offices.
I’m hoping someone knows the true name origin of Henpeck in Crane Township; and, if so, I hope they’ll share the facts.
Submitted by: Cara Lou Strahley, Paulding, Ohio
