Lost my agatite

In the Sulzer branch of the Chicago Public Library, my wife recently found a fun (though unevenly researched) book detailing the stories behind Chicago street names. The pesky matter of honorary street names will be left for another time.

Apparently the most mysterious name belongs to Agatite Avenue, a quiet side street running intermittently between Montrose and Sunnyside (itself derived from a popular house of ill repute!) into the near northwest suburbs. Some interesting things can be found on the avenue, including the St. Thomas Syro-Malabar Catholic Diocese of Chicago.

The authors speculate, with admittedly no basis, that it could be a corruption of the mineral "apatite," or a lay hypercorrection of "agate," but their discussion consists mainly of failed attempts to find any positive evidence. Another source raised and then dashed the possibility of linking to a Caribbean tree.

Thus Google to the rescue...or so I hoped.

My most promising lead, a shape-note hymn called "New Agatite," turned out to be circular at best: the author lived on the street when he wrote it. Apparently an Agatite Road runs through Jacksonville FL, but that only deepens the mystery.

So here's what I turned up, in decending order of usefulness:

• a series of novels by Clay Reynolds set in the (fictional?) West Texas town of Agatite;
• an "Agatite Cement Plaster" manufactured by one Fred Harvey Quincy of Salina KS in the late 1890s;
• the Agatite Short Line RR that was absorbed into the Fort Worth & Denver RR at around the same time;
• "Red Agatite Stripping Guides" on some handmade fly-fishing rods.

Maybe agatite.com will settle the matter--if it ever gets up and running. But that would be too easy.