Why is Marion, Marion, and Why Are There 50 Others?

The name of our city is not unique.

You know this when you Google search "Pizza, Marion" and the top result is "Mackies Pizza" in Marion, IL. All told, there are 43 towns and 17 counties named Marion.

How could a guy be so popular that 50 U.S. locales are named in his honor, yet so unpopular that no one has heard of him?

You actually probably have. Francis Marion, the man all these places are named after, was the inspiration for Mel Gibson's character in The Patriot.

As it turns out, the real one was much more impressive.

At the time when Marion was a general in the American Revolutionary War the English, the English out-armed the American forces and were far better trained.

So what did Marion do with his ragtag group of lightly armed farmers and regular folk?

He fought with dirty, unconventional warfare.

"It was unique to American troops that the British had never dealt with," said Marna Rehage, director of the , who schooled me on Marion's history. "When they fought the French they had a standing army and the tradition of the military organization."

In other words, they used to fight in a highly organized fashion, with lines upon lines of brightly decorated men shooting at their enemy, also brightly decorated and often organized in lines.

But Marion wasn't British or French, he was American, so not only did he lack this long held European tradition, but he had some ideas of his own.

It's a fairly simple idea, really: Beat the enemy without getting the poor saps who put their life on the line killed.

So he hid his troups, dressed them in rudimentary camoflage and then retreated to the swamps in South Carolina when things got rough.

He was nicknamed the "Swamp Fox" by the British.

It has been said that he introduced guerilla warfare to the west, though, that might not be fair, as Rehage pointed out that Americans likely learned this way of fighting from the Native Americans.

So the claim that he is the father of modern warfare isn't completely accurate, but even aside from that, what makes Marion amazing is what he represents: America's long held values of ingenuity and practicality.

"He had the nerve to between rocks and trees while the British stood in their tight, bright red uniforms," Rehage said. "American ingenuity at its best."