Given the fact that the Lilypons, Maryland, Post Office was created to handle the increased mail-order demand from Three Springs Fisheries, a Frederick County, Maryland, business that sold goldfish and water lilies, you might think Lilypons is a misspelling of Lily Ponds.
Yes, it is a misspelling.
Not of lily ponds, but of Lily Pons, a 1930s opera singer.
Three Springs Fisheries
George Thomas started his business in 1917 as a roadside stand in Buckeystown that sold the vegetables and goldfish that he grew on his farm. “He had a keen eye for finding some type of venture where he might be successful,” Charles Thomas said of his grandfather in an interview with the author. While customers may have bought his vegetables, they tended to show more interest in the goldfish bred in his goldfish hatchery, Three Springs Fisheries.
Business grew quickly and the little town post office where his farm was located couldn’t handle the volume and so the live goldfish were being shipped fourth class through the Frederick Post Office 10 miles away.
A New Post Office
Thomas requested a local post office and because of the volume of his business, the postal service granted the request. Thomas was allowed to name the new post office and he chose Lilypons. And so the only post office in the world to be named for an opera singer became official in 1932, according to Thomas.
“I always recall hearing she was elated that there was a post office bearing her name,” said Charles Thomas.
The post office was located in a corner of the fisheries’ shipping room in a pink farmhouse that sat amid the many goldfish ponds. The new post office served about 40 families, most of whom were on the company payroll.
Lily Pons Visits Lilypons
Pons first visited her namesake in June 1936. The visit coincided with the release of her movie I Dream Too Much with Henry Fonda.
Charles said, “It was also planned for when the water lilies were blooming at their height.”
Pons and her entourage were given a state police escort from Baltimore to Frederick with the police officers changing each time the group crossed a county line.
“Her fiancé Andre Kostelanetz traveled separately,” Charles said. “Since they weren’t married, they didn’t want to create a scandal.”
The mayor of Frederick, Lloyd Culler, escorted her on a tour of the historic sites in the city. President Franklin Roosevelt sent a representative to greet her while Maryland Governor Harry Nice was personally on hand to meet her.
“She was very high in her career at the time and people wanted to see her,” Charles said.
The reason for her visit was to see the town named in her honor, though. Thousands of spectators showed up to watch Pons tour the grounds and pick water lilies from the ponds as she sat in J. Paul Delphey’s canoe.
“To this day, the imagery lingers, and the mystique created by the clever name still draws visitors,” wrote Susan Stiles Dowell in Maryland Magazine, Autumn 1989.
George Thomas, Jr. wrote about Pons, “Her many commitments have made frequent returns impossible, more's the pity, but she often has her Christmas cards and gifts mailed from her namesake post office, and she writes to us and also sends us albums of her latest records.”
As the area developed, the post office was eventually closed.
Pons died on Feb. 13, 1977, but her name lives on in the Lilypons Company.
By 1980, Lilypons, once the world’s largest producer of goldfish, had diversified so that it now specializes in water garden supplies and plants more than in fish.
