Talk:China, Maine

Latest comment: 1 year ago by Doppelbrau in topic Name?

Name? edit

From the article:

Mr. Washburn settled on the name China, because it was the name of one of his favorite hymn tunes (better known as "Jesus Loves Me").

Anybody have a cite for this? I can't seem to find any evidence that "China" is an alternate title for "Jesus Loves Me". It does appear to be a popular hymn in China, with extra verses and stories about using the lyrics to send coded messages after the communist revolution, but that's all much more recent than the naming of this town. In 1818, the West barely had any relations at all with China. Kafziel Talk 14:29, 23 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Nope. I don't buy it. The evidence on the web doesn't agree with what's alleged here. According to [1], the town got its name in 1818. And according to [2], the lyrics first appeared in a poem in 1860. Without time travel, how can you name a town after a hymn title that hasn't even appeared yet?
But, I'm not brave enough to edit the page...
Andysh (talk) 02:29, 9 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
Japheth Washburn was also a respected and prolific hymn tune writer of the time and a lover of Timothy Swan's tune "China". For many decades after it was published it was the most widely used hymn at funerals in New England. Words (by Isaac Watts 1707) of the first verse were:

"Why do we mourn departing friends,
Or shake at death’s alarms?
’Tis but the voice that Jesus sends,
To call them to His arms."

midi of tune [3]
12.27.191.132 (talk) 03:05, 16 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
As the edit and comment from the IP address editor states, the connection to "Jesus Loves Me" is incorrect, but there is a different hymn with the tune name "China" by Timothy Swan. However, the Suffield Library source given to support that the tune is the eponym for the town does not support that claim. That source instead states that the town is the eponym for the tune. Doppelbrau (talk) 21:46, 22 March 2023 (UTC)Reply
...However, the Suffield Library claim doesn't really make sense because the tune was composed in 1790 and published in 1801. China, ME was incorporated in 1818, and multiple sources support the story that Washburn named the town "China" after his favorite hymn when confronted with the objection to the name Bloomville. It looks like Swan named at least one other of his tunes after a foreign country - "Poland". I'll just add a citation after the name-story section so that the probably inaccurate Suffield Library source isn't the nearest source. Doppelbrau (talk) 22:16, 22 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

References

China Lake edit

I'm going to remove the text saying of China Lake "which is actually a pond" since I don't see any reason (including no cited source) that that text is there. It appears to be incorrect to write that as well. The distinction between "lake" and "pond" is not scientific and can be somewhat arbitrary (see Lake, Pond, and http://www.lakescientist.com/lake-facts/how-lakes-differ/ for general discussion). See http://www.maine.gov/dep/water/lakes/lkepond.html for State of Maine's Department of Environmental Protection's discussion of "Lake or Pond???" in Maine. So, it makes sense to let "China Lake" be understood to be a lake because that's what it is named. (Also interesting: China Lake Association Lake Map 2013 notes the body of water has a max recorded depth of 93 ft, total area of 3963 acres and 22.25 miles of shoreline.) RedSource (talk) 15:51, 4 May 2015 (UTC)Reply

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