Editing Sumpter, Oregon (section)

==Names==
Baker County was named for [[Edward D. Baker|Edward Dickinson Baker]], a [[United States Senate|U.S. Senator]] from Oregon who was killed in the [[Battle of Ball's Bluff]] during the [[American Civil War]].<ref>{{cite book|last=McArthur|first=Lewis A.|author-link=Lewis A. McArthur|author2=Lewis L. McArthur|author2-link=Lewis L. McArthur|title=Oregon Geographic Names|orig-year=1928|edition=7th|year=2003|publisher=Oregon Historical Society Press|location=Portland|isbn=0-87595-277-1|pages=45&ndash;46}}</ref> Sumpter, first settled by Euro-Americans during this war, was named after [[Fort Sumter]] in the U.S. state of South Carolina. The fort was often mentioned in war dispatches read by the settlers.<ref name="OGN 922">''Oregon Geographic Names'', pp. 922&ndash;23</ref> An account in the Baker ''Democrat&ndash;Herald'' many decades later reported that a round rock found in the area in the early 1860s had looked to residents like a cannonball and, reinforced by the war news, had reminded them of Fort Sumter.<ref name="OGN 922"/>

In 1883, Joseph D. Young became the first postmaster of Sumpter, and, according to his grandson, was not allowed by the U.S. Post Office to use the old name, ''Sumter''.<ref name="OGN 922"/> Since freight to the region then depended on pack [[mule]]s, Young chose the form ''Sumpter'', which was close to the original spelling and evoked the term [[:wikt:sumpter mule|sumpter mule]].<ref name="OGN 922"/>