Around Swedish America in 
Day 441 - St. Petersburg
St. Petersburg is today a city with a quarter of a million inhabitants but it started out as just the end station of Florida’s first railway. The Orange Belt Railway named the places where it opened stations after its investors. When the railway reached the end station the only investors whose names had not been used for a station were the Swedish-born Joseph Henschen (the son of the Uppsala judge who recruited the workers for Sanford on Day 430) and the Russian-born Demeens. According to the city archives, Henschen felt that both names were too difficult to spell so he suggested that the station be called after Demeens’ place of birth, St. Petersburg. “It will never amount to much of anything anyhow, so its name won’t make any difference,” predicted the Swede!