After a century, Alaska district drops Hampton’s name

Lost in a wave of rejection of Confederate symbols following the massacre at Mother Emanuel church in Charleston was an action to change the name of a remote census area in Alaska’s Yukon named after former South Carolina governor and Confederate Lt. Gen. Wade Hampton III.

The U.S. Census Bureau, at the request of Alaska Gov. William M. “Bill” Walker on July 1, renamed the vast, remote area on Alaska’s southwestern shore Kusilvak, the name of the region’s largest mountain. It’s pronounced COO-sil-a-vak.

The area is the size of Oregon and had borne Hampton’s name for nearly a century.

Hampton was a three-star Confederate general and slave owner who fought as a cavalry commander under Robert E. Lee. Once the richest man in the South, he would go on to become the state’s first governor after Reconstruction as well as a U.S. senator.

Hampton is enshrined with an equestrian statue on the south lawn of the State House and numerous buildings and streets are named after him, including Hampton Street in Columbia.

While the events in South Carolina figured into the Alaska governor’s decision, it had been brewing for some time, Walker’s spokeswoman Katie Marquette said Monday. “There were a lot of requests coming in from Alaskans to change the name to better represent their history and culture,” she said.

Census areas are unique to Alaska and are the equivalent of counties in other states. They are used only for demographic research and there are no signs to indicate that a person is entering or leaving the former Wade Hampton Census Area.

“Very few people living there would know they are in the Wade Hampton Census Area,” said Alaska State Demographer Eddie Hunsinger.

The area in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta is the poorest part of Alaska and one of the most impoverished in the nation, reporter Lisa Demer, who covers the area for the Alaska Dispatch News, said. It has no roads and only a few Eskimo villages.

“It is an extremely poor area where people treasure a life off the land – hunting seal and walrus, moose and rabbit, fishing for salmon and whitefish and blackfish, gathering berries and native greens,” Demer wrote in an email to The State newspaper.

It’s the most intact Native American culture left in the country where people still speak the language, where elders grew up at time when families were nomadic and followed the food season to season, often by dog team, she said.

“Residents have Internet and cellphones but many still don’t have flush toilets,” Demer wrote. “They use snow machines (what Outsiders call snowmobiles), four-wheelers and skiffs with motors, so (they) need cash for gas and for stove oil that heats their homes. There is much despair and dysfunction as people try to find their place. Alcoholism, suicide and domestic violence all are rampant.”

But why was Hampton’s name on the district? He never had even visited Alaska and had no connections there during his life.

It happened like this: In 1913 his son-in-law, John Randolph Tucker of Virginia, was appointed a federal judge in Nome, Alaska. Tucker’s biggest impact came when he ordered bars closed at midnight on Saturdays so they would be closed all Sunday. Perhaps his most little-known action was to name a remote mining district in the Yukon after his father-in-law.

The mining district eventually became a census district and the name was forgotten to just about everyone except demographers. Then late last year, Myron Naneng, president of the Association of Village Council Presidents from Hooper Bay, Alaska, Googled Hampton’s name.

“He was a general for the Confederacy,” Naneng said. “He was a slaveholder. I don’t think the name is appropriate for our region.”

But the issue is bigger than the slave-holding history of what to Naneng was an obscure Confederate general. Many towns and landmarks and designations – like Hooper Bay, named after a white explorer – have no connection with or to native Alaskans, he said.

“It’s about time our landmarks are recognized by all the people of the region,” Naneng said, “and not named after someone we’ve never heard of.”

When contacted, state Rep. Kirkman Finlay, R-Richland, a direct descendant of Hampton who lives on the general’s former plantation in Columbia, said he had only recently learned of the district. He said he’s fine with the change.

“I don’t presume to tell the people of Alaska how to manage their state,” said Finlay, son of one of Columbia’s former mayors. “I’m sure Wade Hampton would have been honored, but he also would want the people of Alaska to be happy.”

This story was originally published July 13, 2015 at 10:36 PM with the headline "After a century, Alaska district drops Hampton’s name."