Added: 01/26/2006 |
Shy And Single, Modesto?s RalstonI possess absolutely no proof that William Chapman Ralston, the founder of Modesto, California, was shy and single. Modesto has on its Website, however, information that would lead one to reach that conclusion. It contains information detailing one of the primary characteristics of Mr. Ralston. That characteristic, extreme modesty, suggests that Mr. Ralston would have had difficulty asking a Modesto female on a date.
Did William Chapman Ralston do any dating? Modesto does not provide Internet users with that information. It does though share with the readers of Internet stories an interesting tale, a tale that raises doubts about the likelihood that Mr. Ralston did much dating. Modesto appears, according to that tale, to have been founded by a very humble and retiring fellow.
According to the information on the Internet, William Chapman Ralston was the undisputed founder of a California town, one that was located close to San Francisco. At the time when this town was created, it had no name. The residents proposed naming the town after its founder, a man who I suspect to have been single. Modesto was not a name then on the minds of those residents.
Yet one can see today on a map of California that no town named "Ralston" exists in the area around San Francisco. What happened? Well the residents encountered objections from a man who was probably single. Modesto's William Chapman Ralston discouraged the residents from adopting their chosen name.
One of the Mexicans, obviously a man who would have loved to see his name used as the designation for a town in California, could hardly believe his ears. He must have searched his mind for a way to explain Chapman's unwillingness to have the town he had founded named after him. This gentleman then needed to express his extreme surprise, but his English was not very good. The astonished Mexican thus said "muy modesto." That was how he described that town's founding single. Modesto thus became the name of the town founded by William Chapman Ralston.
I have referred to Ralston as the town's "founding single." But I have no proof that he was single. Modesto does not include in its posted story any information about Ralston's marital status. Still, it seems fairly obvious that Ralston had the sort of personality that might well have caused him to remain single for some time.
Moreover, if Ralston was married on that day, that day when he shied away from using his name to identify a California town, then news of his actions must have turned his wife into a very furious Modesto female. In other words, he was probably a single man soon after that day.
News of such a separation, if it did in fact take place, no doubt spread quickly among the Modesto men who were single. Modesto men must have then set their sites on Ralston's ex-wife. What took place beyond that point in time remains a mystery. The story thus lacks any evidence that a man who was shy and humble chose to remain single. Modesto lore leaves any matchmaker, or matchmaker-wannabe, eager to learn whether or not that was in fact the case.
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