Our Story - BBCtavern.com
Toledo Blade - July 1965
BLACKBERRY CORNER TAVERN
On the Corner of
State Route 579 and Ellison Road
Out State Route 579 just
beyone Williston, Ohio is
a place called Blackberry Corners.
Could you tell me why it is so called? -H.R.
We have learned from some old-timers in the vicinity that this location has been called Blackberry Corner since Hector was a pup. The name is, so we heard tell, older than the hills. Ferdinand Lau, of Route 2, Curtice, says it was called that when he was a boy, and he’s 82, nigh 83.
One story has it that the whole area, when it was just a wide place in the road, was jumping with blackberry bushes, and people came from a far piece to pick them. But there was another attraction. There was a saloon there, and some people do say that one day a bunch of berry pickers were lapping it up like sixty and some of them got to smearing each other with berries. Somebody with a funny streak in him said that it was “certainly a blackberry corner,” and the name stuck. It’s a fair to middling explanation as good as any.