PARIS — Not many cities with a population under 10,000 have a song named after them.

But Paris, Ill., does, thanks to native son Brett Eldredge, a country singer who penned a heartfelt ode to his hometown.

The lyrics include:

“Hear the wind chimes, see the moonshine / Cane poles by the lake / Always seem to call to me / When my soul needs a break / Well, the geese fly to the sunrise / If I had my choice, I’d be in Paris, Illinois.”

While many know about Eldredge being from Paris, not as many are familiar with another famous celebrity from the Edgar County city of about 8,000, nor how it got its name.

A famous child actor born in Paris is Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer from the “Our Gang”/”Little Rascals” series. He was born in 1927 and died in 1959 at 31 years old.

One can see photos of the young child star and learn more about his life inside the Edgar County Historical Society building on Main Street in Paris.

The county also has been home to a Nobel Prize winner, Congressional Medal of Honor winner and one of the nation’s first female brigadier generals.

Teresa Pennington, who previously spent 40 years at the Paris Public Library and retired as director in 2023, now volunteers as a genealogy librarian at the Edgar County Genealogy Library, inside the Edgar County Historical Society and Museum. She’s a sixth-generation Paris native and loves her hometown.

Edgar County was named for John Edgar, one of its first judges. Paris is the county seat.

Pennington said the county was formed in 1823 when Samuel Vance bought about 160-some acres from the U.S. government. Twenty-six of those acres were donated near the center for the town of Paris.

There are a couple dozen communities named Paris in the U.S.

“How (Paris, Illinois) got its name is kind of up for grabs,” Pennington said. “Everybody assumes that it was named after Paris, Ky.,” she said, because a lot of its settlers were from there. “This is not known really. Nobody wrote it down.”

But in the center of this area that was donated, there was a jack oak tree and Paris was carved in the trunk.

Pennington said the question is, did somebody carve it in the trunk after it was named Paris?

She said she read that the courthouse’s elevator, which is in the center of the building, has a star on its floor that is supposed to represent the location of the tree.

The first house was a log house built by Smith Shaw.

Abraham Lincoln practiced law in Paris.

The first commercial building was a storehouse built by Milton K. Alexander on Main Street, with his house nearby that’s now an art gallery.

Paris was incorporated in 1849 and became a city in 1869.

Some of the bigger businesses were U.O. Colson, a nationally known manufacturer of advertising items like calendars and paper fans; shoe and broom factories; and McGuire-Cummings, which made street cars.

The Arthur House, given to the Edgar County Historical Society by Lena Arthur in the 1970s, was built in 1876 by Henry Clay Moss and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Construction is taking place this year to expand the current next door historical museum to house larger vintage farm equipment.

— JENNIFER BAILEY