Near my children's school, here in Cambridge, Mass., is a short street with a name that, for a long time, irritated me.  The street is called Manassas Avenue.

Two things bugged me.  In 1861 and 1862 two battles took place at a creek in northern Virginia called Bull Run.  The first was the first battle of the Civil War.  So, the first thing:  we northerners call those battles the first and second battles of Bull Run, since we favored geographic features while southerners favored the nearest town when naming battles.  But Manassas, I have to say, seems to be winning out, and I see the battles referred to more often that way than I remember from my youth.  I can kind of deal with that, though I always suspect the loyalties of the National Park Service.

But, the stranger thing:  we lost.  The North got its butt handed to it in both those battles.  Can historical knowledge have fallen so low that a street in the heart of the heart of the North, Cambridge, got that awful name?  Any Gettysburg Streets in Charleston or New Orleans?  Somehow, I doubt it.

Well, come to find out, Manassas Ave. is named after a person, Manasses P. Dougherty.  The name was changed in 1907, from Sparks St. Court.

I'm still suspicious.  Why the spelling change?  A southern sympathiser in the Registry of Deeds?  Rewriting history is those people's favorite hobby.  You can't take anything for granted.