Little Known, Hard To Prove

This column originally appeared on Sunday, June 8, 2008.

Here are some things you may not know about Chester County.

These little-known and hard-to-substantiate tidbits of information may have escaped you during the history portion of your high school education — either because you didn’t live in Chester County when you went through that particular course of study and the teachers in Kansas City, Mo., didn’t think to include a syllabus item on an obscure-though-wealthy southeastern Pennsylvania county, or because you did live in Chester County when you went through that particular course of study but your teachers were more intent on clueing you in to the history of the Phoenicians or the Hammurabians or the Mesopotamians or other surging, vital cultures, knowledge of which is essential for understanding the current energy situation.

First, did you know that West Chester was the number two pick for county seat? The top pick? Tredyffrin, of course.

It seems that William Penn was quite partial to the Welsh who populated the eastern portion of Chester County back in the day. (And by “back in the day,” I don’t mean the Earl Baker-Bob Thompson-and-Pat O’Donnell day. I mean the Everybody-Dresses-Like-The-Guy-On-The-Quaker-Oats-Box day.) He proposed to local Welsh leaders Owain Glyndwr and Gruff Rhys that they pick a site where they would like the county seat of Chester to be located, within the bounds of their native Tredyffrin. Someplace along the beaten path where farmers could come and pay their taxes or take out a marriage license, and preferably a place whose name contained as few vowels as possible. (Consonant-to-Vowel Ratio, CVR, in name Tredyffrin — 8:2.)

Rhys and Glyndwr (CVR — 11:0), unfortunately, personified the great Welsh character trait of being exceedingly proscratinatory and were forever putting the decision off. “Coda i’n gynnar for,” Glyndwr could be heard to say when Penn asked him to name a suitable place. (Translated, “I’ll get up early tomorrow and let you know.”) “Na’i godi’n gynnar fory,” reiterated Rhys, when Penn sought him out. (Translated, “It’s at the top of my list, I swear.”)

Meanwhile, farmers were pressuring Penn to designate a county seat because they had no place to pay their taxes or take out marriage licenses, and what with being unable to balance their checkbooks because of the non-payment of taxes and a certain level of frustration over not being able to settle down with a wife and kids, they asked him to make a decision like, yesterday. So legend has it that Penn took a dart, aimed it at a map and decreed that wherever the dart landed, so would that be the county seat. Thwunmp! Hello, Dub-C, as they say.

(Five inches to the left? Hello, downtown Modena.)

Second, did you know that of all the elected county officials in Chester County listed on Wikipedia, from district attorney to jury commissioner, only one person’s name is a hyperlink that will direct you to more information on said person? And did you know that said person is Sheriff Carolyn Bunny Welsh? And that “Bunny” is not encased in quotation marks, like George Herman “Babe” Ruth or Eliot “Emperor’s Club” Spitzer? And that if you Google “Sheriff Bunny” the second link you see is to “I Shot the Sheriff” by Bob Marley and the (Bunny) Wailers?

Third, did you know that the police public affairs specialists in West Goshen speak only the Welsh English language (colloquially known as “Wenglish”) and that’s why they never tell us anything?