A Letter from Bearhead on the Origin of Names

Terry writes:

Your letter brings a couple of more short stories to mind. Whenever my birthday would come around my Great-grandmother and my Grandmother would give me a yearling. By the time I was 10, I already had about 10 head of cattle. My brand was this: RTJ, The R and J were turned backward and placed against the T. And oh my Lord yes. Every person had their "mark". If you owned any cattle or hogs, the first thing you did that was to mark their ear.

As far as the name "Bearhead," my Great-Grandmother told me that at one time there were a lot of bears around. I also read a story somewhere that there was a man who love to pull pranks on people. He knew one man that was scared to death of bears. He also knew this man had to cross BearHead creek at a certain place. Where this man crossed the creek he had to climb up a bank. Well the man pulling the prank had killed a bear, so he took the head and placed it on a stick and stuck it in the ground at the top of the bank the man had to climb. The story went on to say when the man topped the bank he was face to face with the bear head. It scared the crap out of him. And it has been called BearHead ever since.

I can also tell you of how Singer got it's name. The story I have heard all my life, is that one time a train was passing through there on it's regular route and a SINGER sewing machine fell from one of the box cars and it was in a wooden crate with the word SINGER Sewing machine on it. Well, someone picked up the plank that said SINGER and hung it on a tree and it has been SINGER ever since.

One more. I heard a story one time about how De Ridder got it's name. The story goes this way. Way back when they had the pony express, on every mail day they would send someone to the edge of town to climb a tree and to sit there and whenever he saw the pony express coming he would then holler at the towns people: "HERE COMES DA RIDER"! HHHHHAAAAAAAA now that is a good one. "