I am so grateful to have the time in my dotage to spend hours looking up family history in old newspapers. Having grown up in Sullivan County in a family that lived for generations in these hills, I heard lots of family lore. As I have noted in this space, I am probably a shirttail relation to every third person in Sullivan County. There are many familiar local surnames in my family tree: Hill, Segar, Kohler, Abplanalp, Welch, Krantz, Kehrlie, Hanofee and Stabbert, to name a few.

The Segar family had fifteen children that lived to adulthood; the Melchoir Kohler family had 17 children, but only 11 survived to adulthood. Childhood diseases were often sadly fatal in those days before vaccines (attn: RFK Jr.), but I digress.

What sent me down this particular rabbit hole was my desire to write about the many boarding houses in Sullivan County in the late 1890’s through to the 1930’s. At least three of my ancestors operated boarding houses during that time. My second great-grandfather Christian Krantz and his wife Magdalena Abplanalp Krantz ran the Cold Spring Villa, which was in the Beechwoods on Polster Road. Their only child was my great-grandmother Mary who married William Kohler, my great-grandfather and the founder of William Kohler and Sons in 1907.

I found details about my second great-grandparents Romelia and Ormalo Segar in the 1900 census and all fifteen children, ranging in age from 4 to 31, were still at home in Briscoe. Their home was a stop for the stagecoach and his occupation is listed as Landlord. In 1876, Ormalo applied for a hotel license and he and his wife ran a three-story hotel to support their ever-growing family.

Meanwhile in White Sulphur Springs the Hill family ran both the Columbia boarding house as well as the Elite. I well remember the huge dining room of the Columbia since we often visited my great-grandparents there. The porch ran the length of the building and was lined with rocking chairs. My grandmother Katie Hill married her swain Percy Kohler in the front parlor in December 1925. They were quite the dashing couple!

But back to all those boarding houses! I marveled at their evocative names. In North Branch we had Layman’s Homestead Cottage, P. Dorrer’s Ridgewood House, Peters’ Mountain View Farm House, and Lowe’s Chestnut Villa. In Jeffersonville was The Weequehela, the Eagle Hotel, Pfeiffer’s House, Glassel’s Villa Eden, Tonissen’s White House, Abplanalp’s Shady Farm Cottage, George Puerschner’s Sunset Farm, and John Wagner’s Spring Mountain House. There was also Welch’s Dell House, Armbrust’s Maple Grove Farm Cottage, Lindt’s Apple Grove Cottage and Crescent Hill House. 

During the summer season, the local newspapers were filled with the news of boarders. The weekly Sullivan County Record had a column called “Among Our City Visitors” which told of all arrivals. There was also news of the special events at the various boarding houses, such as dances, recitals, singalongs, and card tournaments. The boarders were a lively bunch! And it’s wonderful to see that our mountains still hold the allure that brought the city folk up all those years ago!