#45 Saints Alive
Usually, saints are identified with the Roman Catholic Church. That’s the case with Arkansas places such as St. Elizabeth in Conway County, founded in the 1870s by German Catholics and named for the thirteenth-century saint.
And it seems likely that the Arkansas County town of St. Charles was named by founder Charles Belknap for his patron saint.
Saint Francis County is named for the Saint Francis River which was almost certainly named by the Marquette and Joliet Expedition of 1673. While Catholic history has a number of saints named Francis, the river was probably named for St. Francis of Assisi, although since Marquette was a Jesuit, he may have wanted to honor the Jesuit St. Francis Xavier. [In any case, Spanish soldiers from Arkansas Post called it the Rio San Francisco, and we have anglicized it to Saint Francis.]
On the other hand, Saint Vincent in Conway County was first called Pigeon Roost on account of all the passenger pigeons that lived in the nearby hills. But new settlers in the 1880s changed the town’s name to honor their hometown of Saint Vincent in Pennsylvania.