Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hickory Hill, Chester County, Pennsylvania


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus‎__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__. The nominator has since been banned. However, even with significant input by other editors there isn't a consensus here especially with issues surrounding the sourcing. If further discussion around a merger is needed, please use the Talk. Star  Mississippi  14:58, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Hickory Hill, Chester County, Pennsylvania

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

GNIS spam-created article about a road called "Hickory Hill Rd". It doesn't meet the legal recognition requirement of WP:GEOLAND, which precludes any argument towards notability. बिनोद थारू (talk) 00:15, 18 December 2023 (UTC) Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 00:39, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Pennsylvania-related deletion discussions. बिनोद थारू (talk) 00:15, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions.  WC  Quidditch   ☎   ✎  05:43, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It is not a road. It is an old 19th and 20th century post office.  "HICKORY HILL, a post-office of Chester county, Pennsylvania." says .  Not a "post-village" or "post-town".  A post office.  USPS post office directories confirm up until at least 1889.  Amusingly, if your next statement is to be "So, then, it is an undocumented post office.": It is a post office that's in the history books, as a store that doubled as a post office for a while and served Elk Township until 1932, the store lasting until 1987, on . I hope that there will not be any desperate wikilawyering gymnastics about keeping "populated place" instead of explaining to the reader that it was a store/post office for 130 years, since  tells us that it is now just a private home.  The classic 1-building "populated place" GNIS rubbish.  &#9786; Uncle G (talk) 16:55, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @Uncle G This location was originally a village by the name of Nottinghamdale until the establishment of the Hickory Hill Post Office in 1850.(see ref box) 😎😎PaulGamerBoy360😎😎 (talk) 20:36, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Three of your five sources (the two hometownlocators and the histopolis) are mere GNIS regurgitators. Your Chester County Press citation just points at an entire newspaper without giving any of the headline, byline, or page number for the article that we should be looking at; and so isn't a source citation really at all. The extract of the 1982 source, the 1 source that you really have, copied onto a WWW page says that this was an "area" and, agreeing with what I said above and the history book already cited above, a post office.  And we have a contemporary 1854 source contradicting the 1982 tricentennial anniversary coffee-table book, saying that Hickory Hill wasn't a village in 1854, as it calls such things "post-village".  The 1854 source has no Nottinghamdale, either.  Lippincott's does not go back much earlier, but  has zero mention of any Nottinghamdale village in Pennsylvania supposedly from 1825, as well.  If 19th century gazetteers that go down to the level of individual villages don't have a Nottinghamdale village in Pennsylvania (which wasn't some sparsely documented territory), that's a strong indicator that there wasn't actually a proper village. Uncle G (talk) 11:01, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * @Uncle G This location was originally a village by the name of Nottinghamdale until the establishment of the Hickory Hill Post Office in 1850.(see ref box) 😎😎PaulGamerBoy360😎😎 (talk) 20:36, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Three of your five sources (the two hometownlocators and the histopolis) are mere GNIS regurgitators. Your Chester County Press citation just points at an entire newspaper without giving any of the headline, byline, or page number for the article that we should be looking at; and so isn't a source citation really at all. The extract of the 1982 source, the 1 source that you really have, copied onto a WWW page says that this was an "area" and, agreeing with what I said above and the history book already cited above, a post office.  And we have a contemporary 1854 source contradicting the 1982 tricentennial anniversary coffee-table book, saying that Hickory Hill wasn't a village in 1854, as it calls such things "post-village".  The 1854 source has no Nottinghamdale, either.  Lippincott's does not go back much earlier, but  has zero mention of any Nottinghamdale village in Pennsylvania supposedly from 1825, as well.  If 19th century gazetteers that go down to the level of individual villages don't have a Nottinghamdale village in Pennsylvania (which wasn't some sparsely documented territory), that's a strong indicator that there wasn't actually a proper village. Uncle G (talk) 11:01, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * ● Keep - I have found additional sources to prove this was/is a place, this location was originally a village by the name of Nottinghamdale until the establishment of the Hickory Hill Post Office in 1850.(see ref box) 😎😎PaulGamerBoy360😎😎 (talk) 19:20, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete While I do see a Hickory Hill Road on the map, I see no indication this is a notable place more than an generic community that lives on the same street. There also being a post office in the area with the same name does not necessarily mean it was notable or needs an article. Reywas92Talk 04:07, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep per the sourcing found by PaulGamerBoy360. Onel 5969  TT me 03:31, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment. They are all GNIS regurgitators (sites which format information from the GNIS database) and none provide WP:SIGCOV. बिनोद थारू (talk) 04:49, 26 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Comment - Was some type of populated area in the 1800s and early 1900s, as attested to by its mentions in dozens of newspaper articles of the period, such as this, this, this, this, this,, this, this, this,and this, and was featured as part of story published in 1892, "The Postmistress of Laurel Run". It seems that the postal service was discontinued in 1904. Onel 5969  TT me 14:34, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment. Given the new sources brought up, I change my vote to merge to Elk Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. https://elktownship.org/about/history/ is the main reliable source for this topic and contains a single paragraph about it. It would not make sense to keep a permastub of "Hickory Hill" given that the main page is quite small and that "Hickory Hill" was just a neighborhood of Elk Township.


 * Comment: I wrung my hands over this for an hour or so and checked the references and maps. I believe what we have here is a situation where the name of a geological feature was generally used to refer to the populace that lived on it. In this case it's a large, maybe relative flat top Ridge, probably formed by the nearby water feature as it flowed over the millennia. Have a look at the topo of this place. I'd even bet my bottom dollar it had a bunch hickory trees on it too. I've seen this in Alabama and all over Georgia. It's just a place where people farmed and they would go to the city when they needed something. And, when anybody ever met them on the street and asked them where they were from or headed the response was probably "OHH just out by Hickory Hill you know." I think everyone over analyzes these things, and we shouldn't have an article for every hill, field and crooked tree that ever had someone live nearby it. Also, the thing about post offices is they put them where they are convenient, and they just don't want to make people walk too far so they spread them around a little bit. This is just a practical and reasonable thing to do that doesn't anoint a place with importance. Far enough back in time, it doesn't even mean there was even a building. It could just be the place where a guy on a horse waited at an appointed time for people to bring their mail to him. This is why they were often in general stores too. The postmaster would just hang out at the general store drink some coffee and maybe see if anybody had brought in some eggs to sell. I read one case where the postmaster carried the letters around in his hat band until he ran into the recipient. Sorry, I've read one too many issues of 19th century newspapersJames.folsom (talk) 23:25, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   09:02, 1 January 2024 (UTC) Relisting comment: Final relist. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Daniel (talk) 00:25, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * DELETE/MERGE It's been my experience that if anything important happened somewhere or if someplace is really important; you won't be able to swing a cat without hitting information about this important thing. This is not the case with this place. There is not enough source material to satisfy WP:NRV and even presumed notable places still have to meet WP:N when they are eventually challenged.James.folsom (talk) 23:25, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete based on the ample discussions above, sure the place exists, but there just isn't enough coverage about it to keep the article. I couldn't even find mention of this place we'd use, so what's above is better than I had found. Oaktree b (talk) 01:59, 9 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Comment Just to summarize, all the keep arguments are about the fact that it existed. And, it may have. But the policies are clear that Existence is not notability.James.folsom (talk) 01:24, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Elk Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania as I'm not seeing evidence of independent notability. ~ EDDY  ( talk / contribs )~ 19:26, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep per new sourcing, and because it should never be deleted over merging to Elk Township, and so it should not come to AfD at all. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:51, 14 January 2024 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.