Farmington [History]

The other day, I mentioned that we have decided to name the new house “Farmington.”  I have long wanted to name our homes–both because it has been a popular convention throughout history and in the hope that we’d be less likely to move away from a home that we had such an attachment to.

Some well-known named homes: Washington’s Mount Vernon, Jefferson’s Monticello, Madison’s Montpelier, the Vanderbilts’ Biltmore, Hearst’s San Simeon, Rockefeller’s Forest Hill (which is now much of East Cleveland and Cleveland Heights, where we previously lived), Reagan’s Rancho del Cielo and Hamilton’s Grange in NYC’s Upper West Side.

As a huge Hamilton fan, I have been lobbying for Grange since our house in Cleveland Heights, to no avail.  With this move, Madysen and Speed were interested in the idea, but Holly balked at the name.

A few years ago, on one of many Ohio to Oklahoma treks, we visited Farmington in Louisville, Kentucky (and the Louisville Slugger Museum, which is pretty cool).  Farmington was the home of Joshua Speed, a very close friend of Abraham Lincoln. (Lincoln stayed at Farmington in 1841 when Lincoln and Mary Todd were broken up.)  Holly’s mother is a Speed, from whence Speed gets his name.

So we all decided that Farmington was the name.  May we have many years of peace and happiness there.