A blogger I follow has Osage Minnesota in the location. I don't know whether the blogger lives in Osage or if it's the server location.
So the other day my curiosity led me to look in my atlas and find out where in the ???? Osage is. Now going to my atlas tells you I am rather ancient. So I looked in my trusty atlas and couldn't fine Osage. Finally I said, "Oh Look on the internet!" Osage, Minnesota came up right away and with it a total description of the town.
Now as I was looking in my atlas and before I gave up I noticed a number of towns with the same name as towns in my home province of Saskatchewan. So I wondered did these places have any connection to each other. I knew that many Americans came to homestead in Saskatchewan. I also have read some local Saskatchewan history and remember that some places were named because of where some of the settlers had come from.
So in about two minutes I found Wadena, Watson, Kelliher, Bruno, Ogema, Elrose, Benson, Atwater, Belle Plaine and Ceylon. All of these are also place names in Saskatchewan. I researched one, Wadena. And yes, the first Settlers had come from Wadena, Minnesota and had named the place Wadena because that's where they came from. One wonders if the settlers were so attached to the area they came from that they used the name to make themselves feel better or if they were short on imagination and creativity?
No matter it was still an interesting little discovery. I also wonder if the Minnesota names came from somewhere else?
