after 1700, but it never came into general use. The form QUOCHECHO is a unmitigated barbarism, so is COCHECO, although its unfortunate adoption by the Manufacturing Company of this place has given some credit to that form. The form Cochecho is best supported by old examples and is at present generally adopted by all who know anything of its origin." In 1909, Pacific Mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts bought the Cocheco Manufacturing Company and set about making changes, one of which was to end the disparity between the river's historic spelling and the mill's 1827 error. Instead of correcting the mill's spelling, it petitioned the United States Board on Geographic Names to drop Cochecho and adopt Cocheco. It complied, a federal agency bowing to a commercial enterprise, beginning more than a century of confusion about the name, a common Dover brand then and now. In 1937, the Cocheco Manufacturing Company succumbed to the Great Depression and went out of business. All that remains of the business are its repurposed buildings, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and contentious spelling. In 2015, the United States Board on Geographic Names received a formal proposal to correct the spelling of the name from Cocheco to Cochecho, reversing the board's 1911 decision. The petition was supported by the Dover mayor, Dover City Council, the NH Department of Cultural Resources (which includes the Division of Historical Resources), and the Department of Resources and Economic Development. It also garnered support from the Dover Chamber of Commerce, which runs the Cochecho Arts Festival and promotes the Cochecho Waterfront Development. In its deliberation, the US BGN sought the opinion of the State of New Hampshire. On September 15, 2015, it was answered by the State Names Coordinator of the NH State Names Authority, who recommended that the US BGN decline correction. But New Hampshire has no State Names Coordinator or NH State Names Authority -- both are fictions invented by a NH state bureaucrat whose real job is providing census data to planning boards. The US BGN took him at his word, however, and declined the petition. As a result, the contradictory spelling was sustained, with signs on Dover bridges identifying the stream as the Cochecho River, that on the Spaulding Turnpike as the Cocheco River. But now that it is known the US BGN was misled, a review of the 2015 petition, or consideration of another