McAdoo: Pleasant Hill Gets a Politician's Name
Pennsylvania
This coal borough in Schuylkill County was originally called Pleasant Hill, a cheerful enough name for a mining settlement. When it incorporated in eighteen ninety-six, residents chose to rename it McAdoo, after William McAdoo, a New Jersey politician who had served in Congress and later as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Grover Cleveland.
McAdoo the man appears to have had no particular connection to the town. The renaming seems to have been a gesture of civic aspiration: here was a rising American of Irish heritage, and the largely Irish-immigrant mining community wanted to claim him.
The borough's population peaked at five thousand two hundred thirty-nine in nineteen thirty, supported by anthracite mining and a shirt factory. The mines are gone, but the name remains.
