I was saddened to learn of Eli N. Evans’s death, as reported in the Aug. 28 obituary “Author parsed Southern Jewish life through family lens.”
In 1988, I read in “The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South” that nearby Manassas was one of the places “named for Jews who owned the plot where the post office was built or used the crossroads as a center for their peddling.” I wrote Mr. Evans to express the importance of having this Manassas history more widely known, and he wrote me right back, supportive of my idea. With Mr. Evans’s guidance, I located the Aug. 10, 1861, edition of the Richmond Enquirer that explained the legend of “Old Manasseh.” It stated “an enthusiastic friend” explained “the mountain pass had taken its name from a caterer for the traveling public, we believe a Jew, who for a long time had his house of entertainment there. He was widely known and much esteemed for his kind heart and good cheer, and the horseman would often add many miles to his day’s journey, that he might spend the night with ‘Old Manasseh,’ as they familiarly style him. In short, he was as well known as his gap, and from him the latter caught its name of Manasseh’s Gap.” That led to the name of the Manassas Gap Railroad that formed a junction with the Orange and Alexandria Railroad in present-day Manassas.
