Our very own Landaff resident, Rachael Booth, just finished a book about her home town titled “The Little Port in the Corn Fields – A History of Evansport, Ohio”. She went home last week to present the book to a large audience and the local historical group called the Stryker Area Historical Society. They’re going to pay to have the book printed through our local printer in Littleton, Sherwin-Dodge Printers, and Rachael will turn it over to them so that they can take any profits from print book sales and put it back into the historical society. A print copy will be available through them on their website at http://www.strykerahc.org . She is also looking into publishing an electronic copy.
The town itself has only 200 people in it. Rachael started to look into researching the book when a friend from town told her that she has heard that Francis Scott Key had owned a tobacconist shop in town during its heyday. Turns out it was Francis Llewellyn Key, Francis Scott Key’s cousin. Rachael’s parents had bought their house from his grandson and it turned out the house was one of only 2 hotels that had existed in the town. There were hints that there were two hotels but no one knew where the second one was. The town itself was founded in 1831 when a couple of guys from central Ohio went up to northwest Ohio to buy the land which was in a place called “The Great Black Swamp” and form a mill town around the river that almost surrounded it. It took her 2 years and constant travelling (1600 miles for each trip) to go back home to research this. Looking at the book now, Rachael says “I’m amazed at how much work went into it.”
The Landaff Ledger 