Life above the Carversville Inn

An 1869 photograph of Carversville, take from The Excelsior Normal School, later the intriguingly-named "Hill-Side Home and Pleasure Park," and finally The Carversville Christian Orphanage. The building was torn down in 1939.

Sometimes, on nights I can’t sleep, I stare up at the ceiling and think about all the things that have happened right here. Did someone lie here, thinking these same thoughts, occupying this very same space, on this night 100 years ago? Who were they? What did they think about? What did they hear?

Small towns are always described as being slow, peaceful, quiet. When you think about it though, they were anything but. Imagine: The barking dogs, the noisy drunks downstairs at the Inn, the crowing roosters, all hours of the night. What an endless racket there must have been in Carversville.

The part of the Inn that I live in is an addition — albeit an older one — added in about 1860 by a guy called Isaac Stover. The rear wing and the entire third story that Isaac was adding were expanding a building that was, in his day, a little less than 50 years old.

The Carversville Inn circa 1900.

Interestingly, this building was designed to be an inn and has remained a public house, in one form or another, ever since. In 1813 a different fellow called Isaac (this time a Mr. Pickering) bought a couple acres of land in Carversville (though back then it was known as “Milton,” a conjunction of the even earlier name "Mill Town") and began construction of a public house so that passers-through would have somewhere to stop, partake of a meal or a drink, and rest until morning.

An 1806 indenture (a deed) between Thomas Blackfan and Isaac Pickering for eight acres and 45 perches of land. Apologies for the somewhat atrocious image.

 This was probably a relief for Milton’s residents, who, to cite Pickering’s Petition for License, were “often obliged to accommodate travelers, to their great inconvenience.” By 1819, the tavern was known as The Bird-in-Hand — a moniker it held for another 25 years.

The original part of the Inn — you can see the large cornerstones if you look closely at the exterior wall today — was two stories tall (as opposed to today’s three) and about 40 feet wide by 30 deep. It had porches on the same two sides it does now, and myriad outbuildings: an ice house (today the ground-floor cottage), a barn (almost as large as the Inn itself), and two sheds.

It stood that way, bearing silent witness to countless long, late, discordant nights, for half a century until, in about 1860, Isaac Stover got hold of it and added his rear wing and third floor. After that, the external part of the Inn remained pretty much the same. There’s an extra bit out back now, to house the modern kitchen where meals are cooked, and during the 1940s the ice house was expanded and turned into a small cottage.

I made this 3D rendering of the Inn's third-floor front-facing apartment using Google SketchUp.

In the early 1970s the upstairs lodgers’ rooms, long a residence for proprietors and servants, were renovated into three separate apartments.

A view of the Carversville Inn circa 1945. The sign on the right reads, “Carversville Inn / Under New Management / Draught Beer Wines Liquor / Restaurant Service / Harry (Hurry Back) Bothwell, Prop.”

Harold D. Bothwell (1894 - 1971) ran the bar from 1945 to 1951. He kept a line of miniature doghouses in the bar room referred to as “Dog House Row” — a system that allowed locals to know which village residents were in or out of "the dog house" with their spouse at home. After leaving the Carversville Inn, Harry opened his own place, Harry’s Inn, in Lumberville. He’s buried in the Carversville Cemetery just down the road.

Harold D. "Hurry Back Harry" Bothwell behind the Carversville Inn bar, sometime in the 1940s. You can see a little of Dog House Row on the shelf behind him.

Today, the building I call home is over 200 years old. It makes mysterious noises, has a scary attic and an even scarier basement. I find ancient, lost things behind its radiators and under its floorboards. Its walls and door frames and closets are full of secrets. Maybe it’s all those stories that keep me up at night.