When we move to a new area, after searching out the nearest beer store, we subscribe to the local papers. It’s been educational.

For example, I learned that tiny local newspapers don’t offer refunds after you’ve subscribed to them without investigating which Wayne County the paper covers.

According to ChatGPT, there are 14 Wayne counties in the U.S. Wikipedia, however, counts 16, from tiny Wayne County, UT, coming in at 2,486 people somewhere in the Wasatch Mountains, to Wayne County, MI, encompassing both Detroit and an unusually large number of disproven accusations of election chicanery.

So far, we have learned a very valuable lesson: we can’t rely upon our AI internet overlords to tell us the truth. Kids, always double check your online sources before you cut and paste!

The Utah Wayne County is the only one not named directly for General Anthony Wayne, aka Mad Anthony, aka Dandy Wayne, Revolutionary War hero and all-around jerk. The Utah county is instead named after Tennessee’s Wayne County, where its early settlers came from, which was named after the general. 

Wayne was an adulterer, slave owner, receiver and bankrupter of war loot plantations, as well as a corrupt anti-democratic aristocrat. After Gen. Wayne‘s bank, business, marriage and political fails, his buddy George Washington sent him back into the military field, where he continued his glorious career of state-sanctioned killings.

So, of course, he has more county (and innumerable township) namesakes than Clara Barton, founder of the Red Cross, who has one. Counties named for women overwhelmingly are named for children or spouses of influential men.

But one was christened in honor of a mysterious Madam Montour. “Montour County, PA is named for Madame Montour, a French-Indian woman who was involved in Native American affairs.” I like that so much I’m just going to leave that right there without researching any further.

Back to Wayne counties.

In Wayne County, TN, the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency is partnering with Tractor Supply to host a Pet Preparedness Community Day at Tractor Supply locations across the state.

Wayne County, MS is the world’s largest aerial spewer of paraquat, a plant killer banned in 80 countries, and the use of which in the U.S. is growing. They’re number one!

In West Virginia, “Wayne countians participate in a Wayne County Resource and Action Planning (RAP) Session at the Wayne fire station.”

And in Wayne County, NJ:

“Thieves Pull Off Brazen Pumpkin Heist at New Jersey Patch.”

“A local family operated farm was the site of a theft of 197 pumpkins... owner reported that overnight, 197 pumpkins, ranging medium to extra-large in size, were stolen from the grounds. A security video captured a minivan with four individuals, believed to be males, in hooded shirts loading pumpkins into the vehicle at 1:35 a.m., 3:01 a.m. and again at 4:58 a.m.”

I had not been aware of the ever increasing pumpkin rustling happening right under our very noses, and not only in Wayne counties! Here’s another from Ohio:

“A woman reported 8:35 a.m. October 12 that someone stole her pumpkins from her porch overnight. She said she is aware of the annual pumpkin roll in Chagrin Falls. Police have no suspects.”

Searching further, we discover that “the pumpkin roll consists of the juniors and seniors at Chagrin Falls High School stealing pumpkins from residents of Chagrin Falls, OH throughout the month of October, so that they can smash them on a hill and sled down it in the dead of night.”

I suspect it would be rather simple for police to look for teenagers covered in pumpkin goop at the bottom of a hill, but unlike the highly qualified current FBI director, I am not a trained investigator.

I really really wanted the following blurb to be about a Wayne County but alas, Louisiana has parishes instead of counties, including one still named after Jefferson Davis.

“With a population of 7,326 at the 2020 United States census, it is nicknamed the Frog Capital of the World, as well as the Louisiana City of Murals.” Is that the frog population or the people population? If frogs, who counted them, and how?

Our (Pennsylvania’s) Wayne County’s very own Honesdale is festooned with murals! Perhaps if it counted its semiaquatic group of short-bodied, tailless amphibian vertebrates it might be able to contest that parish’s title! That would be yet another feather in its cap that it could call macaroni... and another exciting entry into the history of Wayne counties, USA.