“Confusion is apparent all over town,” declared an article published in The Ballinger Ledger in August 1977. How should the main street running through Ballinger be spelled: Hutchin/Hutchins or Hutchings? This was a highly contested issue going back nearly to the town’s founding, but actually, both schools of thought were wrong in that attorneys stated the typical authority on spelling must be the original town plat – where it is spelled “Hutching” (with the ‘g’, without the ‘s’). However, a cursory review of the history shows it was named after J. H. Hutchings; making this spelling the best fit.
Nonetheless, controversy continued to rage through the years until finally, in March 1978, Ballinger City councilmen sat down in meeting to hash out the issue and adopted a resolution where the street spelling was formally and forevermore recognized as “Hutchings Avenue”. “After 100 Years, It Is ‘Hutchings‘,” declared The Ballinger Ledger!
That settles the controversy and confusion, right? Well, kind of, you don’t go a century with both spellings believed to be correct and used prominently and have that erased with a single stroke of a pen. In fact, it wasn’t until 2015 when the appraisal district finally standardized property tax records (copied from existing tax records in 1982) to use “Hutchings Avenue”. And, as it turns out, there are still those today who believe “Hutchins” to be the correct spelling nearly 50 years after the resolution was adopted and filed. Additionally, the United States Postal Service continues to recognize both spellings. (We would argue this is the right thing for them specifically since it would be ridiculous to have mail returned for forgetting the ‘g’ in Hutchings.)
Why does this matter? If mail will be delivered no matter how I spell it, how is the correct spelling of Hutchings Avenue relevant? Because our office has been receiving reports in recent months of people unsuccessfully attempting to find properties on Hutchings Avenue through third party real estate sites, such as Zillow or Redfin, or on Google and even our own property search site due to spelling it as “Hutchins”. Some websites have advanced search functionality and will be able to find a match even with a minor misspelling, but not all do. At the end of the day, we can only reinforce the right spelling of “Hutchings” Avenue.
