(By Stephen Kelley from the Peoples Defender, 1981)
The Village of Rome was founded in 1835 by William Stout. William was the son of Obadiah Stout, reputedly the first white settler in Green Township. Obadiah was a native of New Jersey and was a veteran of the American Revolutionary War. Shortley before moving into Adams County in 1796, he made his home at Graham’s Station in Kentucky where two of his ten children were tomahawked and scalped by Indians. William Stout’s son, Obadiah, born in 1796, had the distinction of being the first white child born in Green Township.
William Stout was an entrepreneur at heart and realized the potential of the wilderness area where his father had settled. Envisioning a bustling riverport where he could make a fortune, he platted a small town just east of the confluence of Stouts Run and the Ohio River and dubbed it Rome thinking of the great Italian shipping port. One of the first to purchase lots in the new village was William Stout’s own namesake son, William Stout, Jr. (1806- 1859). Sharing his father’s dream of building a thriving city, he constructed a substantial brick hotel on the riverfront. Completed in 1837, Stout named his new hostelry, The Valley House. Here riverboat men, drummers (salesmen), tradesmen and out of town visitors were made welcome and entertained for over eight decades.
William Stout Jr, continued to operate the hotel until his death in 1859. In 1866, Elisha P. Stout, son of William Jr bought the Valley House and rented it out for the next thirteen years. Elisha,
too, shared his father’s and grandfather’s dream of building a town. He proved somewhat more successful, helping found both Omaha, Nebraska and Denver, Colorado in the 1850’s. Elisha was quite a character traveling the west seeking fame and fortune for several years prior to the Civil War. One of Elisha’s sons in law was William S. Stearns, one of the founds of the Stearns and Foster mattress company of Cincinnati.
In 1879 Elisha Stout sold the Valley House to his cousin, Elizabeth Stout Stewart, wife of the Reverend Jonathan Stewart. The Stewarts managed the hotel for a number of years then it passed through several operators before it burned to the ground in 1920. No trace of the old hotel exists today, a mobile home setting on the site.