Striking natural beauty draws many visitors to Lake County, but the area also has a rich and captivating history. Willoughbeach Amusement Park arose where one of the worst shipwrecks in Great Lakes history occurred years before. Secret passageways and tunnels helped slaves escape to freedom. Native son and Tuskegee Airman Earl R. Lane earned the Distinguished Flying Cross. Marge Hurlburt, a service pilot during World War II, set an international women's flight speed record, and Amy Kaukonen, one of the nation's first female mayors, personally raided suspected bootleggers during Prohibition. Author Jennifer Boresz Engelking uncovers the history behind some of Lake County's most well-known people and landmarks and reveals stories lost to time.
This book is a collection of one-page stories or snippets of Perry, Ohio history published in local sources by the author over the course of several years. Taken together, they reveal the evolution of a village/township and its people who successfully managed the land in a rural agricultural setting and modernized into a twenty-first century community that retains its rural character. This book gives life to Perry Ohio streets, buildings and people whose names have become an integral part of the city they lived and died in.
Lake County, established May 27, 1887, was carved from portions of Orange and Sumter counties. The Legislature had defined borders but allowed the twenty-two hundred plus registered voters to decide where to place the county seat. Four elections and a courtroom battle later, Tavares, on August 10, 1888, finally became the official seat. The selection process lasted 440 days from start to finish.An 1880 dream of two Orlando Attorneys, Tavares was founded on a historic parcel known as "Hull Place", the homestead of pioneers James and Nancy Hull. The lawyers however did not purchase the land directly from the Hull's. Attorneys Alexander St. Clair-Abrams and partner Robert L. Summerlin bought the undeveloped property, with its "bearing grove", from the estate of George C. Brantley.Platted as a city in 1881, Tavares, when Lake County was formed in 1887, had 20 trains daily passing through its downtown corridor, "more than any Florida depot", said an 1887 visiting correspondent. In six years Tavares, the darling community of Orange County, had blossomed into a Florida railroad hub at the center of 40 plus want-to-be neighboring towns in two counties that, as of May 27, 1887, became 40 plus want-to-be Lake County communities.TAVARES: Darling of Orange County, Birthplace of Lake County, is the story of how Florida's "Great Lake Region" transitioned from a 19th century wilderness into a vibrant Citrus Belt district. Amazing pioneers dared to dream big - dared to imagine creating such places as Leesburg, Lady Lake, Mount Dora, Montverde, Eldorado, Eustis, Umatilla, Astor, Clermont, Yalaha, and Tavares, to name a few. This is a story of triumph over tragedy; of homesteaders becoming town builders; of steamboats and railroads forging a new homeland, and of remarkable men and women who made it happen. There is even a touch of mystery and intrigue. This is the story of the earliest days of settlement of Florida's Lake County.
