Showing posts with label La Moille. Show all posts
Showing posts with label La Moille. Show all posts

Sunday, December 31, 2017

The Town She Left Behind, Part 2

In my last post, I provided a glimpse of La Moille, Illinois, the town woman soldier Frances Hook left behind when she enlisted as a soldier.  Click [HERE] for the post.  In this article....which is more like part 1.5 instead of part 2....I discuss the means by which she left her small town, bound for Chicago.

Thursday, December 21, 2017

The Town She Left Behind - Frances Hook's La Moille, Illinois

Mark and I stopped by woman soldier Frances Hook's hometown yesterday.  Located in Bureau County in northern  Illinois, La Moille was settled in the 1830's and named for the Lamoille River Valley in Vermont.  Yes, Lamoille is another spelling.  I have also seen it listed as LaMoille with no space.  As for the pronunciation - well, I discovered I had been saying it "wrong" the whole time.  Down here along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the French Canadian influences can be readily seen and heard in the names of our towns and surnames of the people.  So I naturally wanted to pronounce La Moille like what I was used to.  Nuh uh.  It's la - MOIL, as in the last part rhymes with oil like you put in your vehicle.  And now it's going to be difficult to change the way I say it because I had been pronouncing it a certain way for so long.  Plus, we  Southerners have problems saying "oil."  Just ask us.