There's a Birdie in my family tree

    In an effort to continue the research my mother once did on our family tree, I joined Ancestry.com.  There are many stories that come from my family, some true, others not so much.  One story that IS  true involves the Birdie I found in our tree.  Birdie Pauline Lancaster.  The daughter of Dr. Samuel Theron DeJarnette Lancaster (or STD for short).  Now Dr Lancaster is my great great grandfather, and was a prominent figure in the history of the town where I grew up. Its not really a "town", its not incorporated, but its a farming community located at highway 56 and highway 215 in Spartanburg County. 

    In the early days, post offices were housed at a general store or similar business in a community.  Walnut Grove once had a post office, as did many other tiny communities before the introduction of the Zip code and the combination of post offices nationwide.  Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. 

   The early post offices had a postmaster, and that person was usually the store owner where the post office was housed. That postmaster had the privilege of naming the post office.  And often it changed when the duties of the postmaster were handed to another person.  In the late 1890's, it was decided that the post office names would become permanent.

    The community of Stribling had a postmaster at the time of the decision to solidify the post office names.  The postmaster was Dr. STD Lancaster.  Now, Dr. Lancaster was not only the community doctor, he also owned a store and ran the post office.  When the US Postal Service came around to ask for a more permanent name to the communities post office, it fell to Dr. Lancaster give it a name, for all time.  The name Stribling was already taken, so he named it after one of his lovely daughters, Birdie Pauline. 

   So the Birdie in my family tree is how the town I grew up in got its name.