The local school district had a snow day today. It’s a Tuesday, the day after a holiday, and really it was a good call on the part of the Superintendent; snow followed by an icy mix, frozen, but with the promise of more rain and warmer temperatures. It definitely didn’t thaw in time for the buses on those icy secondary, rural roads. Thinking about the first winters Warren and I lived in Wayne County, we remember more snow, and rougher roads. In fact, the mental picture we both have is thick frozen snow packs across the roads with two tire track ruts, that you definitely didn’t want to get your wheels out of while driving for fear of just the bumping making you lose control!
I’ve always wondered what life would have been like living in Wayne County two hundred plus years ago when the county was new and people were just starting to settle in this wild, remote area. Winters were hard. We hear so many stories of how many feet of snow and how many blizzards were in a “normal” winter. Right? Isn’t that what our grandparents always told us? “ We didn’t have snow days, we had to walk miles to get to school”. Yes, and the schools dotted the countryside, one room, and only a few neighbors made up the student body. Early records of our sweet community of Bethany document a lot set aside for a school in the public grounds around the village square. These lots were surveyed and mapped in 1800 by Jason Torrey. The house lots sold to the public and original settlers at auction in Wilsonville, the town now under Lake Wallenpaupack. Bethany, as it became kinown, at this time was slated to be the county seat of Wayne County, the county created by an Act of the Pennsylvania Legislature on March 21, 1798. And so it began.
The first true, recorded resident of Bethany was a pensioned Revolutionary soldier and shoemaker, William Williams, was living as a squatter on the area where the new courthouse was to be built. The Trustees for the county paid him to move, and it is said that “school was held” in the Williams log cabin. Bethany has more history in schooling, including the Beech Woods Academy, and Pennsylvania University. The picture shows the one room schoolhouse that was on the square until closed in 1931. There will be more about the schools in later posts. Let’s return to the beginning.
Settlers to early Wayne County came mostly from Connecticut and Massachusetts. Two log houses were built in 1800. The courthouse, jail and sheriff’s residence were built in 1801. Henry Drinker, the original owner of the land donated for the county seat, also built a house in 1801. This house is the oldest house still standing in Bethany. It is the house to our inn’s immediate right and pictured here.
This house became a hotel and tavern in 1805. At that time the house was assessed for $200.00. The house remained a lodging hotel into the 1900’s. In the meantime, going back to the early 1800’s from 1801 until James Manning built his house in 1819, at least a dozen other houses were built, as well as the proper buildings for a growing county seat. The two room school was built, a sawmill, a gristmill, law office, apothecary, a post office established, a store, and the Presbyterian Church. The glass works was established bringing even more to the area. So this sets the stage until the next history lesson, snow day school, yep, it can be fun!