Pompeii, Michigan, and the 'i' that took 40 years

A small settlement in Fulton Township spent four decades spelling its own grand name wrong, and nobody seemed to mind. Pompeii, Michigan — about four miles east of Perrinton — started out in 1854 with a far humbler handle. The first settler, Joseph B. Smith, named the place after himself: “Joe B’s.” When the post office opened in 1856, somebody upgraded it to Pompei, after the famous Roman city buried by Vesuvius.

Except that the Italian Pompeii has two i’s, and the Michigan one had only managed one. The mistake rode along, on letters and ledgers and the depot sign, for forty-some years. Not until late in the 1800s did someone finally point out that the original had a spare letter, and Pompei quietly became Pompeii.

The village had bigger moves than spelling in those years. In 1886 the whole town picked itself up and rebuilt a mile and a half south, just to be near the railroad and the travelers it carried. The relocated Pompeii did well for a while: it had a bank, a depot, a grain elevator, a hotel, even a hospital and schools.

Most of that is gone now. Pompeii is the kind of crossroads people are quick to call a ghost town, though folks still live there and would rather you didn’t. What lingers is the name — a flattened Italian volcano town transplanted to the flat farm country of mid-Michigan, finally spelled right after four decades, sitting quietly where a man named Joe B. once put down stakes.