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for Ceylon There are many places with international place names in America. Towns have often been named after the cities from which immigrants came to populate a new land but this surely was not the case here? In those early days of the Internet it was possible to search for e-mail addresses by name of city and I e-mailed four residents I found listed under Ceylon, Minnesota. I had this illuminating correspondence with Jerry Rosenberg who replied, “ The railroad came through this part of Minnesota in 1899, and that is when the town was born. At that time, legend has it, there was a gathering in a local general store, where they were trying to pick out a name for their new settlement. Someone saw a box of tea that was from ‘Ceylon’, and suggested that as a name. Apparently the name was adopted!” They
even had a State Bank of Ceylon. Searching maps.yahoo I found a few smaller suburbs called Ceylon in the USA. There is a Ceylon in Green County, Pennsylvania, a Ceylon in Erie County, Ohio and a Ceylon, in Adam’s County, Indiana. I decided on visiting all of them in the fall of 2005. Ceylon
in Green County, Pennsylvania Turning off Highway 40 to Route PA-21, I turned into Ceylon Road and reached the village of Ceylon. About a dozen houses later, I was already leaving the small scenic village with a 19th century charm to it. Taking some photographs, I spotted a sign which read ‘15 acres for sale by owner’. Disturbing the owner who was fixing his TV aerial, I asked the price. At $52,000 for the property, it was not significantly different to the price of agricultural land in Lanka. The seller had no idea where the name Ceylon originated and said that the village was a suburb of Carmichaels. At the Carmichaels post-office, the counter clerk didn't even know that Ceylon Road led to a place signposted as the Village of Ceylon. Ceylon
in Adam’s County, Indiana I drove along US-27 south toward Ceylon, which was between the Swiss towns of Berne and Geneva. Unlike the two previous Ceylons, there wasn't even a sign on the road. Leaving the highway, I went toward the best known landmark, the Ceylon Covered Bridge built in 1860 and advertised as the last remaining on the Wabash river. The road no longer went through the bridge, and the river was all dry. The graffiti inside the wooden bridge indicated it was probably now the local lovers’ lane. Visiting the Geneva Public Library, I was able to refer to a history of Adam's county as well as read about a recent campaign to preserve the Ceylon Covered Bridge. Interestingly I found out that although the name uses the English spelling Ceylon, it is pronounced with the Dutch accent Ceilon, probably because of the European heritage. Ceylon
in Martin County, Minnesota Arriving
at the State Bank of Ceylon in Minnesota, I showed Marlen Bents,
the President of the bank my collection of Ceylon Minn tokens. I
had been able to trace more of them in a few years on the Internet
via eBay than he had in local auctions over a much longer time.
I also displayed for them a number of handicrafts and a book on
Lanka, I had brought with me. The
local Martin County newspapers interviewed me and wrote a story
titled 'Ceylon' man visits Ceylon. In 1898 the Chicago & North Western Railroad establishing a train station in the area had authorized the Western Town Lot Company to sell to settlers from the village they called Tenhassen. However the Post Office had rejected the name Tenhassen because there had already been an abandoned village by that name, and this had led to the selection of the name Ceylon. Both names (Tenhassen and Ceylon, Inc) appear on all old documents until 1950 when that was legally changed to just Ceylon. Ceylon
Area Historical Society Museum The Martin County Historical Society Pioneer Museum in Fairmont which we visited later also had complete collection of the Ceylon Herald which had been published from 1901 to the early 1960s. Gifted by a resident of Ceylon Minnesota, it was a gold mine of information about the town.
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