Carl J. Weber DuPage Etymology

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I live in DuPage County. This appeared in local newspapers. I wouldn't bet my life on my claim, but it is an interesting diversion no one came up with before, and perhaps it modestly trumps John Swenson's stab at it. By the way, geographical co-ordinates given in a compiled report, done in his time, place LaSalle in DuPage County as a link in his earliest explorations of the North American interior.

What's in a county name? Ask him
COD adjunct professor theorizes on who put the
'DuPage' in DuPage County

August 10, 2007

By RON PAZOLA Staff Writer

Carl J. Weber hopes to set the record straight on how DuPage County got its name. Weber, an adjunct professor at College of DuPage and a former history instructor at Benedictine University, was recently at the DuPage County Historical Museum, where he got into a discussion with the museum's executive director, Jody Crago, on the origins of the county name. Crago admitted to Weber that historians don't really know who DuPage County was named after. Weber is challenging the theory that the county was named for a French trader with the family name Page or Paget.

"Give me a year, and I'll see if I can come up with something," he told Crago. Instead, it took Weber three hours of research to uncover the name of the man he believes is the DuPage in DuPage County.

Before Weber, a Glen Ellyn resident, arrived at his conclusion, the foremost theory was proposed by John F. Swenson, a retired lawyer who has written extensively on French colonial history. In a 1996 article in the DuPage County Historical Museum Quarterly, Swenson proposed that DuPage was the name of a French trader in the area with the family name Page or Paget. But Pierre Lebeau of the Center for French Colonial Studies at North Central College in Naperville said that on linguistic grounds, Swenson's proposed solution is "highly improbable." Swenson acknowledges there is "no direct proof" for his theory.

Weber credits Antoine-Simone Le Page du Pratz as the real source of the name. Du Pratz, a Frenchman, was a well-known historian, army captain, engineer, surveyor, cartographer and man of science. He spent the years 1718 to 1734 in the North American interior. In 1758 he published a three-volume history of Louisiana and the North American continental interior, which included several maps. With his "Histoire de la Louisiane," Du Pratz became a famous expert on the North American interior. "People are surprised to learn that the area later to become DuPage County was part of the original Louisiana," Weber said in a paper he wrote on the subject. "The original Louisiana was charted on a map created in 1684 that had been presented by the explorer LaSalle to King Louis XIV. Incidentally, this was the first map on which the Chicago word appeared. The demarcating line separating the original Louisiana from Canada ran right through Chicago. A full scale copy of this map did not exist in Chicago until I purchased a facsimile from the Harvard Map Collection and contributed it to the Chicago Historical Society. "

Weber had done previous research on French colonial history and was familiar with Thomas Hutchins, America's first geographer. The first map the word "DuPage" appeared on was done by Hutchins in 1778. "There can be little doubt that Hutchins relied heavily on the work of du Pratz," said Weber, noting that du Pratz often signed his name Le Page. DuPage in French literally means "of Le Page."

"Along similar lines of name switching," Weber says, "LaSalle, more properly, de La Salle, was born with the name Robert Cavelier. DuPage is to Du Pratz as LaSalle is to Cavelier."

When asked what he thought of Weber's theory, Crago remained noncommittal. "I will leave that up to the historians and scholars," he said. Weber, who wants to write more articles on regional history, remains confident that his theory holds weight. "I hope du Pratz, also known as Le Page, will earn the permanent memorial of a place name for DuPage County.