At the Lucknow Mini Mart, Andrew “Pop” Williams and Deborah Tisdale Gardner say the same thing. They say that, when the logging companies came here, they looked around at all the longleaf pines and said, “We’re in the luck now!”
But that might just be a legend, they say. If anyone knows for sure, it will be Cecil Stevens, and they give me directions to his house.
No one is home, but the license plate on the Cadillac reads LUCKNOW, and I know I’ve got to find Mr. Stevens. As luck would have it in Lucknow, his wife pulls into the driveway and tells me he’s down at the church, and she gives me directions to get there.
I find Cecil Stevens, the Lee County Historian, out back near the cemetery, sawing wood for a new door frame. He doesn’t seem at all surprised to see me. He invites me inside the church, where it is cooler, with beautiful light radiating through the stained glass windows.
“That’s a myth—and it’s been written and written and written—but it’s not true,” he says, about the story I heard at the Mini Mart. “They were in luck now, but they didn’t name it Lucknow.”
According to Mr. Stevens and an old map in his office, Lucknow Village was part of the Buffalo Township in the late 1700’s, and many of the first villagers had immigrated from Scotland.
“Now, this is what I think; it’s not fact, but there’s a place in Scotland called L-O-C-K-N-A-W.," Mr. Stevens says. “Some of them came from that little town called Locknaw. That makes more sense.”
The spelling, that is, was an Americanized phonetic change—like how Bardo, Kentucky was named after Bordeaux, France.
It might be said that the town itself—which once had a movie theater and a jail and a turpentine mill and a sugar cane mill—ran out of luck when the last train came through, but for his part, Cecil Stevens remembers that, too.
“When my mother was about 20 or 21, she took me out to Lucknow as the train was making its last run,” he says. “The conductor took me up in his arms and rode me about a block down the track and brought me back up. Now, they always told me this. They said, ‘Cecil, you was the last one to ride the train.’”
But that might just be a legend, they say. If anyone knows for sure, it will be Cecil Stevens, and they give me directions to his house.
No one is home, but the license plate on the Cadillac reads LUCKNOW, and I know I’ve got to find Mr. Stevens. As luck would have it in Lucknow, his wife pulls into the driveway and tells me he’s down at the church, and she gives me directions to get there.
I find Cecil Stevens, the Lee County Historian, out back near the cemetery, sawing wood for a new door frame. He doesn’t seem at all surprised to see me. He invites me inside the church, where it is cooler, with beautiful light radiating through the stained glass windows.
“That’s a myth—and it’s been written and written and written—but it’s not true,” he says, about the story I heard at the Mini Mart. “They were in luck now, but they didn’t name it Lucknow.”
According to Mr. Stevens and an old map in his office, Lucknow Village was part of the Buffalo Township in the late 1700’s, and many of the first villagers had immigrated from Scotland.
“Now, this is what I think; it’s not fact, but there’s a place in Scotland called L-O-C-K-N-A-W.," Mr. Stevens says. “Some of them came from that little town called Locknaw. That makes more sense.”
The spelling, that is, was an Americanized phonetic change—like how Bardo, Kentucky was named after Bordeaux, France.
It might be said that the town itself—which once had a movie theater and a jail and a turpentine mill and a sugar cane mill—ran out of luck when the last train came through, but for his part, Cecil Stevens remembers that, too.
“When my mother was about 20 or 21, she took me out to Lucknow as the train was making its last run,” he says. “The conductor took me up in his arms and rode me about a block down the track and brought me back up. Now, they always told me this. They said, ‘Cecil, you was the last one to ride the train.’”
