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Lester Green

Pumpkintown 'mayor' to relate history for Conn. fifth-graders

By Rose Hooper
Lester Green's Pumpkins

Lester Green of Pumpkintown received a letter from fifth-grader Dajanna Walcott of South Windsor, Conn. In a letter addressed to the "Mayor of Pumpkintown," Walcott asks how the town got its name. "Does your town have a lot of pumpkins?" she wanted to know as part of a school project. Green is sending her pictures like this one, along with the legend behind Pumpkintown's name.

Although he's never been officially elected mayor of Pumpkintown, Lester Green has been jokingly given the title by many locals.

"Now the joke's on them," he said after receiving a letter from South Windsor, Conn., simply addressed to "Mayor, Pumpkintown, N.C."

Gloria Rogers, his daughter, said the very afternoon the letter was delivered she called Evelyn Burch, their mail carrier.

"Evelyn was just dying laughing. 'I know what you are calling about,' she told me even before I could say anything. Eveylyn said she didn't know who else's box to put the letter in. 'Lester was the perfect one,' she said."
The letter was from fifth grader Dajanna Walcott at Philip R. Smith Elementary School in Connecticut. Her letter reads: "As a fifth-grade English project we are writing letters to towns with interesting names. I would like to know how your town got the name of 'Pumpkintown.' Does your town have a lot of pumpkins?"

"This girl hit the jackpot with Daddy," Rogers said. "He's got this green barn he works in and all his antiques, and he's going to send her pictures of those, along with the church and community. I bet she'll get an A on her project."

Green is giving the student the late John Parris's version of how Pumpkintown got its name. The name supposedly originated with "Fighting Billy" Woodard, who settled in the community right after the Civil War. According to Parris, Billy and other folks planted pumpkins on the hillsides of both sides of the creek. After the first frost, everybody just rolled their pumpkins down the hillsides into the creek.

"Sometimes there would be so many - hundreds and hundreds - that they would dam the creek," Green said.

The "mayor" is thinking about how he's going to tone down the rest of the legend for this fifth-grader.

Seems "Fighting Billy" would have big corn shucking' where he buried a jug of "corn squeezing" in the pile of corn. All the men would try to be the lucky one to reach the jug first. During one of those events - the biggest ever, Green said - the jug ended up with Billy, who took a big slug, and as the whiskey set his belly on fire he shouted out, "Hooray for Pumpkintown." The name stuck.

"The whole thing is really funny since Daddy's not really the mayor and Pumpkintown is not really a town," Rogers said. "But that's not stopping him from sending that little fifth-grader a ton of information."

Back to Archive: 02/17/00.