hown is an 1880 sketch of what was later the Palace Hotel. Built in 1831 on the east side of the courthouse square, the two-story brick structure was originally the home of the fiery abolitionist Presbyterian Pastor Dyer Burgess. In 1866, it was converted into the Palace Hotel by Hency B. Gaffin and became the location of the Home Telephone Company’s first exchange in 1903. This historic structure burned under dubious circumstances in 1918.
(By Stephen Kelley from the Peoples Defender, 2008)
In last week’s column, we began writing about the history of the telephone in Adams County. It began in 1883 when the owners of Eureka Mills in Bentonville constructed the first telephone line in the county, connecting their business with both West Union and Manchester. The first telephone company in the county was organized in 1899 by E.A. Crawford who happened to be the editor of the People’s Defender. Crawford’s new enterprise was named “Acme Bell Telephone Company” and connected West Union with Dunkinsville, Jacktown and Peebles to the north east and to Bentonville, Manchester and Ripley to the south, with a long distance line that traversed to Cincinnati. All of this before the turn of the 20th century!
As mentioned last week, Crawford’s telephone company’s exchange, where a live operator made the actual connections between telephone customers, was located on the north side of the courthouse square in William C. Leach’s home. Leach’s daughter, Lillian, and wife, Flora acted as operator and relief operator for the company. According to Clarence T. Sproull who penned a history of the telephone in Adams County in 1958.
“About 1901, Mr. Crawford and his associates decided to sell their company and William C. Leach bought all the West Union installations with their connections to Manchester, Peebles and the other small villages. His son, Floyd Leach, was in charge of maintenance of the company which his father then managed, while Lillian Leach and her mother, Mrs. Flora Leach, continued as operators.
Sproull went on to write that, “In 1903, the Leach family sold the Acme Bell Telephone Co. interests to the Central Union Telephone Co. and the exchange was moved from the Leach residence to the second floor of the building just south of the Adams County National Bank, opposite the courthouse square on Market Street. Lillian Leach remained as Chief Operator.” In later years, the central Union Telephone Company became part of the Bell Telephone Company.
About this same time, the American Telegraph and Telephone Company (AT &T) strung telephone lines down the Norfolk and Western Railroad from Cincinnati to Winchester. The Central Union Telephone Company was then permitted to run a line from West Union to Winchester connecting to the AT & T line, granting the company more long-distance capability. As all of this was happening, true American capitalism appeared in the county seat when another telephone company was initiated in direct competition with the Central Union Telephone Company. Again, quoting from Sproull, “About 1903, the home telephone Company, promoted by A.K. Humphreys, built a line from Peebles to West Union and soon completed exchanges in that town and Peebles, promising “free” county service to all subscribers. This company had an outside connection from Peebles to Sinking Spring, thence to Latham and on to Waverly. At first, its only West Union telephone was in the Place Hotel on the southeast corner of Mulberry and Market streets, and on the lower portion of this instrument, in the hotel hallway, was a small switchboard arrangement serving about six telephones in the town. The family of the hotel owner, James Reed, answered the calls here for a short time until an exchange was installed on the second floor of the buildings at the southwest corner of Main and Market streets.” More next week.
