The Stranahan Folding Canvas Boat Company of Chagrin Falls

A book by Don Barriball

$4.00
plus $2.50 shipping & handling
16 pages, Saddle Stitch bindsize 5.5” x 8.5”

The story of the three men in Chagrin Falls, Ohio - Frank Hunt, John Jay Stranahan and Frank Holmes -  who designed, manufactured and sold the earliest folding canvas boats, patented in 1881.  They were sold around the world - New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, and other parts of the U.S., as well as Canada, Australia and England.

The boat was awarded a bronze medal in 1883 at the International Fisheries Exhibition in London, conducted under the auspices of the Prince of Wales.

Stranahan moved to Chagrin Falls in 1873, and went into partnership to create the Chagrin Falls Exponent, a weekly newspaper, of which he became the editor.  He later was elected to the Ohio Legislature, and in1894 was appointed Commissioner of the U.S. Fish Hatchery at Put-In-Bay, Ohio.  He subsequently was appointed Superintendent of the Fish Hatcheries in Warm Springs, Georgia, and later retired and returned to live in Chagrin Falls.

Frank Holmes was hired by Stranahan to supervise construction of fish pens in Warm Springs, Georgia in 1894, then was sent to Michigan for the Put-In-Bay station of the U.S. Fish Commission.  In 1911 Holmes went into retirement in Chagrin Falls, where he lived until his death in 1915, at the age of 79.