Dr. Evans Went Down to Pennsylvania?

Lucia Dillersberger

lcd13@students.uwf.edu

I am currently on a month-long camping trip with my family. We camp our way up to Pennsylvania every year to visit relatives and we recently stayed at Caledonia State Park in southern PA. Two years ago, we actually spent one night at this park but didn't have time to explore too much. This time we had a whole day to run around and see the sights.

The park's main attraction is the remains of a blacksmith shop and furnace built by Thaddeus Stevens in 1837. The facility originally included stables, warehouses, the blacksmith shop, tenement housing, a sawmill, rolling mill, forge, and the furnace. It was a massive operation to produce iron products. Slag from the process of producing the iron can be found everywhere in the park. Some pieces are so shiny and smooth that they almost look like glass. We spent part of

the morning checking out the remaining historic buildings and taking lots of pictures. Then we decided to wander around the rest of the park.

My family was checking out one of the little picnic areas near where the Appalachian Trail connects with one of the hiking trails and passes through

the park. In front of the restrooms sat a Little Free Library. I am always super excited to find Little Free Libraries on our travels. You never know what you'll find inside. In the past, I've found such things as cookbooks written completely in

German, crazy self-help books, and romance books with incredibly strange cover pictures. One of my favorite books right now, "The Door in the Wall" by Marguerite De Angeli, came from a Little Free Library in Virginia a few years ago (Yes, I am aware that it is a technically children's book).

So imagine my surprise and delight as I open the door to the Little Free Library at Caledonia to find two books about the Lincoln-Douglas Debates and one book about "Looking for Lincoln." My immediate thought was, "Was Dr. Evans here?"

Most current honors students can agree that my immediate connection between Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Evans is rather justified. After this past year's Honors Colloquium on Lincoln, the spring break trip that followed Lincoln's footsteps, and the Lincoln exhibit that took up part of Pace Hall's kitchen, it's pretty hard for anyone in the program to be unaware of this obsession with a specific former president. Finding these books on my summer travels definitely got a laugh out of me. Did Dr. Evans plant these books in Pennsylvania? Is she still lurking here somewhere?

While a collection of books on Lincoln might seem as if it holds absolutely no connection to Caledonia State Park, I found that it makes a lot of sense after I did a little research. Caledonia State Park is deeply rooted in the history surrounding the American Civil War.

Aside from his interest in the iron business, ironworks founder Thaddeus Stevens also dabbled in law, education, real estate, and politics. He served in both the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the US House of Representatives over the course of his lifetime and pushed for free public education and the abolition of slavery. But Stevens isn't the only person who made Caledonia special in the fight

for freedom. The foreman of the Caledonia furnace, William Hammett was a conductor on the Underground Railroad. He delivered escaped slaves to the next conductor, who was just west of the park. Because of the combined work of these two men, the park is now considered a Path of Freedom site.

So the books about Lincoln seem right at home in the Little Free Library at Caledonia State Park. This makes it more likely for them to have been placed there by a friend of the park or some other local individual who knew the history of the place. Still, one has to wonder if Dr. Evans planted them there. Maybe she's out there right now, lurking behind a tree or building, waiting to plant more books about President Lincoln. We may never know.

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More information on the history of Caledonia State Park can be found here: https://www.dcnr.pa.gov/StateParks/FindAPark/CaledoniaStatePark/Pages/History.aspx