History of Salem, Virginia

A Guide to Historic Salem -- Volume 2, Number 2 -- Summer 1996

"Hotels, Taverns, Inns Enrich Salem History" by Lon Savage

"Listing of Salem Hotels" by Lon Savage

"Old Tabernacle Named to Historic Registers" by Lon Savage

"Hildebrand Edits Civil War Journal"

"Museum Herb Garden Recaptures the Past" by Mary Johnson



Hotels, Taverns, Inns Enrich Salem History

 by Lon Savage

Since its founding along the "Wilderness Road" in the early 1800s, Salem has been well known as a place for travelers to stop for a night's lodging, something to eat and drink, and a few days -- or perhaps a full summer -- of relaxation in the mountain air.

The town has a colorful history of taverns and inns that served wayfarers and pioneers, stage coaches and carriages, horseback riders and pedestrians, vacationers and later motorists passing through. They first came on the Wilderness Road, enroute to Tennessee and Kentucky and points beyond, to settle the West. Later they came for commercial and educational reasons, or because the courthouse was here, and still later, they came to enjoy the mountain air and healthful water. When the old Wilderness Road became U.S. Route 11-460, automobiles stopped at motor courts, and now they're stopping at motels along Interstate 81.

Those early inns sported colorful signs advertising names like the Bull's Eye, the Leather Bottle, the Globe, the Eagle, the Indian Queen, the Star and Garter, and, appropriately enough, the Hotel Salem (the first of four hostelries to bear that name). The Mermaid Inn, perhaps the first, opened just west of the little town, about where Chestnut and Burwell Streets intersect today, not long after James Simpson laid out the town in 1802. It was operated, for a time at least, by Simpson's son-in-law Griffin Lamkin, who built a quarter-mile race track nearby for his guests' amusement.

Among the Mermaid's guests was Andrew Jackson who stopped there in July of 1807, eight years before the Battle of New Orleans and 22 years before he became the nation's seventh president. Jackson often stopped in Salem after that, traveling between his home in Tennessee and Washington, staying also at the Bull's Eye or with a friend, Dr. John Johnston who lived at the current site of Lake Spring Park. In the last years of his presidency, at age 69, Jackson complained, after passing through Salem, that it took seven hours to travel ten miles because of the muddy roads. He wrote that "in the Streets of Salum [we] broke a swingle tree and the fore axes of the Carriage -- in many places it takes ten horses to pull through the bog one waggon."

On the east side of the little town, meanwhile, the first Hotel Salem opened, a brick building about where Thompson Memorial Drive crosses Main Street today. Advertised as a "complete and elegant establishment" with extensive stables, it did so well that within twenty years it had opened an annex across the road.

Other inns followed. The two-story Indian Queen opened at the southwest corner of Main at Colorado (then known as Church Alley) with a sign displaying dazzling colors of costume and headdress of its namesake. The Exchange Hotel opened on the southwest corner of Main at Walnut (later College). The Bull's Eye, which Jackson frequented, operated on Main Street near where the First United Methodist Church stands today, "a tall brick building," according to one historian, with a street-front gable, "in the center of which was to be seen a circular window, with its glass or wooden panes, painted blue, giving the name to the inn of 'The Bull's Eye'."

Faris' Tavern opened at Main and Market, and it was here that the justices met in 1838 to organize the courts of the newly formed Roanoke County. Salem Presbyterian Church now occupies the site.

The Salem inns offered a variety of accommodations: single rooms, rooms with two to a bed, and a choice of stable or pasture for horses. In 1821, a typical inn keeper advertised "Madeira Wine, old Rum, French Brandy, Wine, Bitters, Cherry and Raspberry Bounce, also old whiskey."

William C. Williams, who had managed the Mermaid, bought the Hotel Salem in the early 1840s, sold it in 1845 to Henry Harrison Chapman, became proprietor of the Exchange Hotel, gave that up in 1851 to David Guthrie and, at age 67, opened the American Hotel on the crest of Main Street Hill, promising a table "supplied with the best the country affords" and a "bar...furnished with the choicest wines and liquors...[and] stables provided with good hostlers." Williams died that year, and his son, William W. Williams, along with Chapman and Guthrie, became the big three hotel operators in Salem in the 1850s.

The Globe Tavern, one of the earliest inns, later became the Coffee Hotel, according to one report. According to another it was renamed the Homestead about the time of the Civil War and hosted such famous people as Gen. Robert E. Lee. Charles L. Snyder, who purchased the Homestead in the 1850s, slaughtered cattle on the property and sold the meat to feed the Confederate armies during the Civil War, according to the Roanoke Times. With five huge fireplaces, 27-inch walls and six dormers looking down on Main Street (see photo, Page 6), it housed apartments and insurance offices in its final years. The site is now a grassy area in front of Snyder Nursing Home.

Following the Civil War, a cluster of three hotels became prominent around the courthouse. The Huff House opened about 1875 across College Avenue from the courthouse, catering to the courthouse crowd and Roanoke College families. The Hampton House opened about 1879 at the southwest corner of Main Street at College, catering to commercial transients. And Monterey, the only one of the three still standing, operated behind the courthouse at High and Clay Streets in a much lower key, providing rooms to visitors from the coast and deep south fleeing from the pestilences of those areas.

Accommodating the well-to-do from the deep south and coastal areas in summer was rapidly becoming a flourishing industry. People from those areas took trains to Salem for mountain vacations to relieve or cure a host of ailments, ranging from malaria to hay fever, "diseases of the throat and lungs," "serious derangement of the digestive organs," and insomnia.

Prime mover in this new industry was Flavius Josephus "Joe" Chapman, who ran three such hostelries: the Lake Spring Hotel in Salem, the Roanoke Red Sulphur Springs across the mountain at Catawba, and the Lucerne Hotel, at the southeast corner of Main at Colorado. All three were filled each summer with people from places like Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas.

Chapman opened the three-story Lake Spring Hotel in 1876 at the site of today's Lake Spring Park, with accommodations in the main building and cottages for about 150. Guests boated on three acres of spring-fed lake beneath willow branches and listened to the music of a little Italian string band playing in a small bandstand in the center of the lake. They could also fish in the lake for carp, perch and trout or walk a half mile to the river for bass. The hotel boasted a spacious dance pavilion, billiard and bowling saloons, omnibuses to all trains, and hot and cold baths.

Toward the end of each season the Lake Spring held "The Tournament," the big social event of the season, when horseback riding "knights" tried to run their lances through detached rings strung out in a row for about eighty feet. The knight who ran his lance through the most rings crowned the queen of the ball. All this with meals for $12.50 a week or $25 to $40 a month. A South Carolinian who spent the summer of 1888 at the Lake Spring with his family attested he knew of no place that matched its advantages "for pure air, good water and healthful surroundings."

Chapman also operated the even more famous Red Sulphur Springs at Catawba, where the Catawba Hospital is now located. Guests sometimes took a buggy from the Lake Spring to "The Red," a trip over the mountains that one guest described as offering "the grandest scenery in Virginia...this trip alone will fully repay the tourist or seeker for health or pleasure." Chapman's operation also shipped out mineral water at $4 per case of twelve half-gallon bottles.

This came to an end when fire destroyed the main building of the Lake Spring Hotel in June 1892. In the meantime, malaria had been largely overcome; other resorts offered increasing competition, and the age of the spas declined. The Town of Salem bought the site as a park and water source in December 1900.:

Other hostelries in Salem at the turn of the century included the Belmont, a small three-story residential hotel, built in 1890 at what is now the corner of the Boulevard and Virginia Avenue; it was torn down in 1973 to provide a site for dental offices now located there.

African American Salemites also had opened a hotel by the 1890s, the Baptist, operated by John Baptist on Water Street (now South Broad Street), between School Alley and Stewart Alley.

The original Hotel Salem was renamed the Hotel Chapman in 1864 and the Hotel Virginia in 1870 and finally came to an end when its last buildings were razed in 1908. Meanwhile, the old McCaul Hotel was named successively the Woltz, the Roanoke, and the Waugh and then became the second Hotel Salem from 1869 to 1873. Its name then was changed twice more, to the Barnett and the Central.

In 1891, the third Hotel Salem opened, a town showpiece (see drawing, Page 1) at the corner of College Avenue and Fifth Street, with 100 rooms and five floors. It had financial problems, however, and the Lutheran Orphan Home bought it at auction in 1899 and used it for 25 years. It was torn down in 1931-32 to make way for the new Andrew Lewis High School (now Middle School).

Under a bewildering variety of names, the Crawford Hotel on the crest of Main Street Hill had emerged in the early 1900s as the town's premier hotel. This was a new three-story brick hotel, built in 1871 by W. D. Duval on the site of the old American Hotel (which had become the Central before Duval took over). After a brief stint in the Joe Chapman family holdings (when it was named the Lucerne), it reverted back to Duval for a few more years and became the Crawford in 1902 -- with more names yet to come. (See illustration, Page 1.)

With about 35 rooms, it hosted such notables as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Dudley Warner and William Jennings Bryan, as well as a stream of tourists. In 1905, (when it was the Crawford) Carter Glass, Senator from Virginia, and Claude A. Swanson, candidate for governor, stayed there for a barbecue for some 5,000 people promoting Swanson's candidacy. In 1906, Carrie Nation strolled through the lobby on Christmas Eve, berating people she saw smoking. While in Salem, she excoriated Teddy Roosevelt and the Republican Party, described the WCTU, which had a chapter in Salem, as "a band of desperate women banded together to prevent the Republican party from murdering their sons and debauching their daughters," and left behind small hatchet souvenirs symbolizing her pleasure in smashing saloons.

Around 1908-10, O. D. Oakey and J. E. Townes bought the Crawford and got Town Council approval to open a billiards hall on the street level. Church groups rose in opposition. "There are some folks who are bound to play pool and drink likker," an opponent said at a February, 1911, Council meeting where the proposal was re-examined, "and I say to them, go on to Roanoke where you belong!" Despite such outcries, the approval stood. By April the pool room was operating with three tables, and the name had changed again -- to the fourth Hotel Salem.

This Hotel Salem began having problems, too. Dr. Charles J. Smith, president of Roanoke College, said in a 1925 speech that a good, small hotel with first class service was Salem's greatest need. Businessman Henry A. Oakey bought the hotel that same year and, after some negotiating and maneuvering, changed its name to Hotel Fort Lewis, the name it kept from then on, and the name that older Salem residents today remember as a social center for dances, teas, civic club meetings and the like.

The Fort Lewis was condemned as unsafe in 1973 and demolished the following year. The site, where a hotel had been operated for at least 123 years, now provides tenant parking for the Salem Bank and Trust building on Main at Colorado.

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Following is a listing of some of the inns, taverns and hotels in Salem's history:

 American Hotel. (1852-64). See Fort Lewis.

Augusta House. Listed in 1881 Salem Classified Business Directory.

Baptist. West side S. Broad between School Alley and Stewart Alley. Hotel for blacks operated by John Baptist in 1880s-90s.

Barnett. See Central Hotel.

Belmont, The. SW corner Boulevard at Virginia Ave. Built 1890. Hotel until 1903 or later, then apartments. Razed 1973.

Bulls Eye, The. Inn/tavern before 1819 until undetermined date. North side Main about where Chestnut intersects today.

Central Hotel. North side Main St. diagonally across Main from Duval House. Opened as McCaul Hotel 1862-about 1866; then Woltz (1867-1869); Roanoke, Waugh, Salem (1869-73); Barnett 1873-76); Central (1876-to about 1891). Razed about 1905.

Chapman. See Hotel Salem (No. 1).

Coffee Hotel. See Globe Tavern. Joel Bott advertised in Jan 1822 "COFFEE HOTEL" in Salem "At the sign of the Globe" with assortment of wines, rums, etc.,

Crawford (1902-11). See Fort Lewis.

Duval House. See Fort Lewis.

Eagle, The. Nineteenth century tavern, location undetermined.

Exchange Hotel. On sw corner Main at Walnut (later College) in 1851

Faris Tavern, nw corner Main & Market. Tavern before 1838.

Fort Lewis, Hotel. se corner Main at Colorado. Built and in operation as Williams Hotel before 1851. Subsequently called American (1852-64); Central (1864-1872); Duval (1872-1890); Lucerne (1890-1894); Duval (1894-1902); Crawford (1902-1911); Salem (1911/12-1925); Fort Lewis (1925-1974). Demolished in 1974.

Globe Tavern (later known as Coffee Hotel) at nw corner Main St. & Broad.

Hampton. On sw corner Main at College. Operation before 1879, bought in 1890 as drug store for Dillard and Persinger, but other parts of building continued to be known as the Hampton until at least 1900.

Homestead. Onetime tavern. Questionable report says it was built in 1818 as The Globe. Served as apartments in 1900s. Torn down in 1972.

Huff House west side n. College Ave., across from Roanoke County Courthouse. Operation 1875-1896 period.

Indian Queen. sw corner Main & Colorado (then Church Alley). Tavern before 1819 until undetermined date. Building torn down in late 1860s.

Lake Spring Hotel 1876-1892. ne corner Main at Green destroyed by fire, 1892.

Leather Bottle, The. Nineteenth century tavern, location undetermined.

Lucerne, Hotel (1890-94). See Fort Lewis.

McCaul. See Central Hotel.

Mermaid. Established early 1800s in vicinity of today's Burwell Street at Chestnut about a block south of Main.

Mitchell House. Listed under "hotels" in 1881 Salem Classified Business

Monterey. On ne corner High at Clay. Private residence before 1862 operated as summer hotel, about 1885-1920.

Revere House. "Near the freight depot" in June 1891.

Roanoke. See Central Hotel.

Hotel Salem No. 1: (1818-1908) approximately at what is now intersection of Main Street and Thompson Memorial Drive, later occupying additional buildings directly across Main. Called Hotel Salem (1818-1864); Chapman (1864-70); Virginia (1870-1908). Original buildings burned 1866 and not replaced; last of buildings razed 1908.

Hotel Salem No. 2: 1869-73. See Central.

Hotel Salem No. 3, 1891-1933. Town showpiece at ne corner College Ave at Fifth St. Opened 1891, bought at public auction by Lutheran Orphan Home in 1899 and used as such until 1926. Razed in 1931-32 for new Andrew Lewis High School.

Hotel Salem No. 4. See Hotel Fort Lewis.

Star and Garter, The. Nineteenth century tavern. location undetermined.

Virginia House. 1870-1908. See first Hotel Salem.

Williams Hotel. See first Hotel Salem.

Waugh. See Central Hotel.

Wolz. See Central Hotel.

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Old Tabernacle Named to Historic Registers

by Lon Savage

The Salem Camp Meeting Association, where people have assembled to praise God and participate in old-time country religion for more than seventy years, is now on the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register.

Richard H. Fisher of Salem, owner of the property, was notified recently of the approval of the designations for the association's two buildings, a 1922 tabernacle and a dormitory built a few years later, both located at the corner of Colorado Street and Third Street. The buildings "represent an urban interpretation of the rural camp meeting form, both in architectural and experiential terms," according to the association's application for registration. The property traces its history back to an earlier tabernacle on Boulevard, a nineteenth century Holiness Movement and the leadership of a former Confederate officer and turn-of-the-century industrialist.

Fisher, a retired orthopedic surgeon, bought the property in 1994 and has restored the buildings for continuing use by gospel sings and camp meeting programs for which it was designed. Fisher is known in Salem historical circles for having bought and restored the old Post Office on Main Street and gotten it designated, too, in the National and Virginia Registers.

A nine-page report on the property prepared by Daniel Pezzoni, Roanoke preservation consultant, states that from the 1910s until services ceased in the early 1990s, the Camp Meerting "Association provided Salem and Roanoke urbanites and out-of-town visitors a strong connection to traditional rural values." The association, according to the report, is an outgrowth of the Southwest Virginia Holiness Association Camp Meeting, which has its origins "in the Holiness Movement, a mid-nineteenth-century offshoot of Methodism." In that movement, adherents tried to live perfect :"holy" lives, according to scriptural teachings, with the camp meeting central to its activities.

The movement was always popular with formerly rural populations that had moved into rapidly urbanizing towns and cities. "In the alienating environment of the city, the Holiness Movement reinforced traditional rural values through the distinctly rural form of the camp meeting," the report states.

Guiding force behind the Salem movement was industrialist Demetrius Bittle Strouse (ca. 1830-1915) battle-tested former Confederate cavalry officer, president of at least six corporations and founding director of two banks, and president of two cigarette machine companies in the Roanoke Valley. In 1896 when he was in his sixties, Strouse became convinced of the evils of tobacco, resigned from the companies and devoted the rest of his life to religious work.

In 1900, Strouse, his son Clarence, and three others purchased several lots on the Boulevard in Salem for the construction of a 1200-seat auditorium. The barn-like wooden building -- known simply as the Tabernacle --opened in September 1901 and for nearly fourteen years served not only as the site of annual 10-day evangelistic meeting and other religious meetings, but Strouse also let Roanoke College and Salem public schools use it rent-free for commencement exercises.

After Strouse's death in 1915, the Tabernacle was torn down, and his ministry, organized as the Southwest Virginia Holiness Association, met at various locations. In 1921, the association purchased property on Colorado and Third Streets, across from the Colorado Street Methodist Church and constructed the current building.

The Association officially changed its name in 1953 to the Salem Camp Meeting Association. "This was in part," the nomination states, "to dissociate the meeting from Pentecostalism, a radical version of the Holiness Movement that gained popularity in Appalachia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."

This conservatism was also manifested in its architecture. While other associations moved toward "full-fledged denominationalism" and their "'crude wooden tabernacles became brick and stucco churches,' ...the Salem Camp Meeting preserved its defiantly unostentatious trappings."

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Hildebrand Edits Civil War Journal

The following is extracted from a review by James O. Lehman, archivist for the Eastern Mennonite University and Virginia Mennonite Conference, of A Mennonite Journal, 1862-65: A Father's Account of the Civil War in the Shenandoah Valley, edited by John R. Hildebrand of Salem. The journal, published by Burd Street Press, can be purchased at $9.95 in paperback at the Salem Museum as well as area bookstores.

This significant and unique story of Civil War life on the home front in a Mennonite home in Virginia scores a first! No other Mennonite diary or journal of this magnitude has been located heretofore. This journal kept by Jacob R. Hildebrand of northern Augusta County only came to light recently, thanks to John R. Hildebrand of Salem, a great-grandson of the journal's author. It provides an unparalleled glimpse into a Mennonite home that was very involved in the Confederate cause in that unhappy and most destructive war.

Feelings and loyalties ran deep in this war that has been called the "Brothers War." All three sons of Jacob R. and Catherine (Rodefer) Hildebrand eventually enlisted in the war, serving in the 52nd Virginia Infantry and 1st Virginia Cavalry. The oldest son, Benjamin, enlisted in July 1861, fought through the entire war, and was at Appomattox when General Lee surrendered. Jacob, himself, though never called to active duty, paid the $500 commutation fee to exempt himself from war duty.

Politically and militarily astute, Jacob closely followed troop movements and whether "our troops" were winning. Often, he noted the number of casualties. Frequent trips to town kept him updated on war news. He voted in elections and occasionally attended a political meeting.

Periodically, he took food and supplies to his sons in the army and stayed overnight to be with them and catch up on how the troops were doing. War news, crops and farming, weather, significant dreams, grand jury duty, attendance at church, his longing for peace, paying taxes, having grain "impressed" by Confederates, economic activity, deaths, loving concern for his sons in the army -- it's all there. At least once, along with others, he went to the battlefield "to bury our dead." We sense the relief numerous times when the sons return home safely. When they leave again they are committed to the Lord "who doeth all things well."

War's many impacts came all too close home in 1864, when General Sheridan and the Yankees, with destructive vengeance, burned barns, mills and some houses in the Shenandoah Valley. (Hildebrand's buildings on several farms apparently were spared.) Within a short time a nephew was killed, first son Benjamin came home with a painful wound, and second son Gideon came home with a wound after a bullet passed through the heart of his horse and hit Gideon's leg. All this occurred only several months after Gideon and three others on a scouting expedition on June 10, 1864, were surprised by Yankees and "had to Run." What was the end result of that fracas? Jacob R. simply wrote that "Gideon shot one of them but lost his horse" and his pistol! A week before the war ended, Gideon died from a wound "by an accidental shot of one our own men."

This book deserves wide reading. This family was not typical among Mennonites but it is a part of the Mennonite story. Regrettably, the journal has numerous lapses of time when Hildebrand wrote nothing. The longest such stretch is June 15, 1862, to July 25, 1863.

Editor John R. Hildebrand is a retired civil engineer and graduate of Virginia Tech, and he served in the Air Force during World War II. He has very helpful, explanatory comments on war developments, specific battles and military officers mentioned in the journal. He provides genealogical background for the family and gives helpful information about persons frequently mentioned. The volume concludes with a number of appendices, endnotes, and an index.

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Museum Herb Garden Recaptures the Past

by Mary Johnson

"The gardens of any period in history are its most intimate spirit, as immediate as its breath, and as transient. Yet, unlike all else about a particular time, they are capable of being recaptured and recreated today, in essence and in fact. Styles of speech have disappeared; modes of pronunciation must be guessed at; tones and voices can be only surmised; sounds and timing of laughter are gone forever. But in living materials, identical with those which delighted and sustained people in the past, we can replant their gardens. Their plants bear direct testimony to the tastes and needs, the whims and joys, even to the most secret hopes and fears, of the people themselves. In recreating gardens of other times we come as close as is possible to those who worked and walked in them."

--Early American Gardens "For Meate or Medicine," Ann Leighton

Botanically, an herb is a soft-stemmed plant which dies down to the ground every fall. However, in 1629 John Parkinson, an apothecary of London, wrote a definition which has become a classic. "Herbs," he said, "are fit for Meat or Medicine; for Use, or for Delight." So any plant is an herb if it has a history of use, as a seasoning, a perfume, a medicine, or as an aid to good housekeeping.

The herbs are the workers of the plant kingdom. They have a long human history because men have carried the herbs with them, wherever they traveled, across the world. What man would leave behind a plant that would insure him a safe journey, protect him from pestilence and witchcraft and the Evil Eye, heal his illnesses, and make his heart merry? Herbs were used in religious ceremonies, to flavor and preserve food, to heal every wound and to bury the dead.

Their history goes back hundreds, even thousands, of years. In early times, herbs had important uses in the home. There was no refrigeration; some of the herbs were used for preserving meat. Some were used to repel moths and other insects. Sanitation was unknown; floors were strewn with sweet-smelling herbs, like rosemary, sweet marjoram, thyme.

In those days, the mistress of the house held great responsibility for the health, not only of her family, but of the servants on the place, and for wounded warriors, when the business of life was war. Near the kitchen door she had a planting of herbs for cooking and for the medicines which were concocted in the adjacent "still room." At the end of the growing season the still room shelves were well stocked with ointments and oils, syrups and cordials which were all ready to treat failing appetites and dizziness, war injuries and fevers, and even troubles of the mind and the spirit, which then, as now, were hard to cure.

When peace was upon the land, new and pleasant ways of using the herbs were found. Herbs and flowers were made into fragrant little nosegays called tussie-mussies, and given to friends. These often had hidden meanings, which only those who knew the language of flowers and the symbolism of the herbs could understand. Marjoram meant joy; rosemary, remembrance; myrtle, true love; lemon geranium, unexpected meeting.

Everywhere that people went, the herbs were taken with them, and so these plants, most of them native to Europe and the shores of the Mediterranean, were brought to America early and planted in the gardens of our forefathers. They have been growing here ever since.

Acquaintance with even a few herbs is the beginning of a new experience in gardening. Their fragrance is set free at the slightest touch. The colors and textures of their leaves are charming, and because of their long history of use and the legends associated with them through the centuries, an herb becomes a bit of human history in one's hand.

Come tour the Salem Museums Herb Garden. Enjoy the sights, smells, taste and textures of history captured in an herb garden.

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