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Hi Bill
The Paw Paw gets it's name from the Paw Paw trees in the area. It's an edible fruit. Taste like a cross between a banana and a strawberry.
The Paw Paw is a fairly lazy river as evidenced by it's meandering. Where I am it is the main Branch. There are three branches east of me. The further upstream you go the colder the water, mostly spring fed. There are trout in the other branches, Not so many by me. the water is a little warmer. I did catch a small Brook Trout here a few years ago. It has a wide selection of fish. Small Mouth Bass, Walleye, Northern Pike, Blue Gill, White Bass, Suckers, Carp. Even been a few Muskie taken. Ocasional brown trout. But where I live it is pretty slow moving. The best spots are where you find holes or under cut banks. It runs about 4 to 5 feet deep through here but there are 12 foot deep holes. You just have to find them. Due to all the farming there is a fair amount of erosion.

Runs pretty clear most of the time but muddies up pretty good when it rains. That being the result of all the agriculture along it's path.
200 years ago it was a premier trout stream, before the logging and agriculture had it's impact.

My parcel has gone through some changes over the centuries.
There is a local Museum that has a display of Indian Artifacs that where found here through the earlier years. It was probably a small village.
150 years ago it was a Sheep farm area. In 1930 it was purchased by the previous owner. He and his wife built the house. 768 Square feet. They raised cattle and Strawberries and Blackberries. They Raised 4 Daughters here. One of which was living here when we bought the place. They did not have indoor plumbing until the late 1950's. We have 4 Huge Blue Spruce trees at the back of the main yard. Story is the farmer planted one each time a daughter was born so I don't have the heart to cut them down. Plus they are a great wildlife habitat tree.
I recently located the old well. It is really only a shallow cistern at the bottom of the hill where natural cold underground streams emerge.
My Barn was built in 1933. It was disassembled from a different location and reassembled here. The beams in it were Hand Hewn and reported to be over 100 years old at that time. Solid white Oak. But many were severely damaged by powder post beetles.
When I built the studio I had to remove a lot of them and replaced with new wood.

When I bought this place it had not had any updates since the 1940's except indoor plumbing. It was 768 square feet, No insulation and fiberboard on the interior walls. When I gutted it we found the walls lined with newspapers.
It musta been brutal in the winter.
The barn loft was still full of hay.

In 1993 I had lost everything I had in Chicago due to some trouble with the IRS. We had to start over. Decided we'd move to the country. I was unemployed, flat broke and my wife had decided to go back to school to be a nurse. We stumbled across this place and made an offer. When we explained our situation to the seller they agreed to sell it to us on contract. On faith alone. Isn't that incredible. We vowed we would not betray that trust, and did not.

When we first moved in we used to get bats in the house all the time coming in through cracks in the ceiling, LOL.

I have since remodeled it top to bottom and added on. It is now 2000 square feet but still like an old farm house. I made no effort to make it "modern".
The woods are pretty wild. There has been no farming here since the 1960's.
We do have chickens though. I love fresh eggs.

But as much as I love this place I'd move to Tennessee in a heartbeat if my wife would go, LOL