The Lemon House

By Julia Basal.

Growing up, my Dad always told me stories about the Lemon House, a historic house in his hometown of Cresson, Pennsylvania.  As a kid, I never paid too much attention to these stories.  I remember him telling me that his grandparents once lived there, and that Abraham Lincoln had stayed there.  He also told me that there were stories of the house being haunted—of pianos playing by themselves and sheets lifting themselves off beds during the night.  When I was about nine or ten, my family and I took a trip to Pennsylvania to see some of my Dad’s family, and during the trip we visited the Lemon House, which today stands as a historic museum.  I only have the vaguest memories of the visit today.  To be honest, up until beginning this project, I did not give much thought to the Lemon House, and I realized upon starting my research that I did not have the slightest idea what the Lemon House was or is, or why it is significant.  Upon asking my Dad about the place and doing some research of my own, I have discovered the huge wealth of history that accompanies the Lemon House, which is made that much more exciting because of the familial tie I have with the place.

The first thing I did when beginning my research was to call my Dad.  I asked him what he knew and remembered about the place—all the things that I never bothered to listen to as a kid.  First of all, what was the Lemon House? According to my Dad, it first opened as a hotel, and throughout history became a private residence to a few different families.  What I didn’t know—I’m not sure how I missed this as a child—was that the Lemon House was actually right next to the home my Dad lived in growing up.  I remember him talking about his neighbors, the Gaileys, but I didn’t realize until calling him that the Gaileys actually lived in the Lemon House.  Mrs. Gailey told my Dad that before she and her family lived there, my Dad’s maternal grandparents—Catherine and James Glass—lived there for a brief period before moving to a house right down the street.   Throughout our phone call my Dad recollected going over to the Lemon House with his four siblings to play with the seven Gailey children.  He remembers Mrs. Gailey teaching him and his brothers how to dance a polka, as well as how to raise chickens.  He remembers Mrs. Gailey always trying to set him up with her daughter Betty, though the two never really got along.  He also told me he learned from the Gaileys that back when the Lemon House was a tavern it had two bars, one that closed at midnight and one that closed at one in the morning, so that customers would switch over from the one that closed earlier to the one that closed later at midnight.

The phone call with my Dad was interesting, though I still didn’t really understand why the Lemon House stands today as a historic museum—what was the Lemon House, and why is it important today?  Upon doing research I found a whole history that I didn’t even know existed.  I found a really informative document about the house, which answered a lot of my questions.  It’s a Historic Furnishings Report of the Lemon House from the National Park Service and Department of the Interior, written in 1980.  According to the report, Samuel Lemon bought 286 acres of land at the base of the Allegheny Mountains, on the line of Blair and Cambria Counties, PA, in 1826.  The property was alongside the Great Northern Turnpike, constructed in 1820, which allowed for greater transportation to Pittsburgh and the west.  It was also expected to be the location of the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal over the Allegheny Mountain Range.  If this canal was indeed built, it would be the first and only direct train route between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.  Lemon knew that this railroad would be widely travelled so he bought the property with the idea of beginning a business there (US Department of the Interior).

Upon buying the property, Samuel Lemon cleared twenty acres of the property and built a log tavern.  Travelers on the Northern Turnpike would go to Lemon’s with their horses and wagons to eat, feed their horses, and lodge for a night or two.  In 1831, when construction began on the canal, which was to be known as the Allegheny Portage Railroad, Sam Lemon built a larger house, this time not a log tavern but a huge house made of stone, to accommodate the expected growth of customers and lodgers to the tavern. That stone house became known as the Lemon House—the same one that stands today.  In 1834, the Allegheny Portage Railroad opened for business.  According to tax records, the tavern’s assessed value had doubled by 1835 based on the swarm of business the place received from the Railroad, which a reported 25,000 people travelled on (US Department of the Interior).

The Allegheny Portage Railroad remained open for twenty years, until 1854, when “the Pennsylvania Railroad company had completed its all-rail line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh,” taking business away from the Alleghany Portage Railroad and eventually leaving it unprofitable (National Park Service).  Samuel Lemon did a good business in his tavern until he and his family moved to Hollidaysburg, PA in 1847 (US Department of the Interior).

Reading this history of the Lemon House was an “Aha!” moment for me.  I finally understood why this was such an important place in my Dad’s childhood—he got to grow up playing with neighborhood children and learning to dance in a house which played an integral part to the history of Pennsylvania.  But the most exciting moment in my research was when I found proof of my great-grandparents stay in the house.  Though Lemon did not give up ownership of the house when he and his family moved, some tenants were reported to have stayed at the Lemon House around the 1880s (US Department of the Interior).  Here is where I discovered my family’s small part in the history of the house.  In the report from the US Department of the Interior, I found this paragraph describing the stay of my great-great grandparents, Catherine and James Glass, at the Lemon House, as reported by the Gaileys, neighbors of my father:

The Gaileys were acquainted with an elderly woman, a Mrs. Glass, who told them that she and her husband lived in the northeast room, first floor, for a short time after their marriage, and that Mr. Glass’ brother and his wife lived briefly in the southeast room, first floor, while their home was under construction.  To the best of the Gaileys’ recollection, Mrs. Glass celebrated her fiftieth wedding anniversary between 1932 and 1942, which would date her short stay in the house between 1882 and 1892.  It is likely that Mr. and Mrs. Glass lived there during the winter months, for Mrs. Gailey was told that they used the fireplace both for cooking and their only source of heat. (US Department of the Interior)

Whereas I found in my research that members of the Lemon family stayed at the house in the warmer months as a summer home, it was really interesting to read that my great-grandparents stayed there in the cold and snowy Pennsylvania winters.  Although I don’t even know what my great-grandparents look like, the image of the two huddled around a fire, cozy in the huge house, comes to mind.  After I found this blurb, I excitedly called my Dad, and he confirmed that the date of Catherine and James Glass’ fiftieth anniversary between 1932 and 1942 makes sense.  I couldn’t believe I was reading an actual published document that spoke of my ancestors—I had never read anything published about the history of my family before.

When I read further into my research, I was even more excited when I got to a short report given by Mrs. Gailey, as told to her by Mrs. Glass.  More written proof of my great-grandmother’s stay in the house! And even better is that it is in her report that I found confirmation regarding my Dad’s story about the two bars. From what my great-grandmother told Mrs. Gailey, the line that separated Blair County, PA from Cambria County went right through the center-most hallway of the Lemon House tavern.  Though no documentation was found to support this, my great-great-grandmother reported that Cambria County laws would not permit waitresses to serve alcohol past midnight.  One bar in the tavern was on the Cambria County side, and the other was on the Blair County side, so that customers in the Cambria bar must have gone to the Blair bar at midnight so that they could drink for an extra hour (US Department of the Interior). I found it greatly amusing that it was my own great-grandmother who told this story—I can only imagine her as a little old lady, hurriedly rushing from one bar to the next at midnight just to get an extra hour of drinking and merriment.

The next question I wished to get to the bottom of was if Abraham Lincoln had actually stayed at the house. According to the US Department of the Interior report, it was rumored that Lincoln had stayed in the room to the right of the stairs, room 206, now known as “the Lincoln room.”  A biography of Lincoln states that he travelled to the nation’s capital in 1849, and due to the urgency of his trip he may have elected to take the most direct route—the Allegheny Portage Railroad. Thus, Lincoln may very well have stayed a night at the Lemon House, though there is no documentation to directly prove this.

I did find out however, through the National Parks Conservation Association, that Charles Dickens and Ulysses S. Grant stayed at the Lemon House.  According to Wikipedia, American Notes for General Circulation, a travelogue in which Charles Dickens explains his trip to North America, discusses his trip to the Allegheny Railroad in the tenth chapter.  He visited the Lemon House sometime in the first half of 1842 (American Notes).

Next I wondered how the history of the Lemon House changed—from a tavern and lodge for travelers on the railroad to the private residence of the Gaileys, my father’s neighbors. What I found was that when Samuel Lemon died in 1867, he left the Lemon House to his wife, Jean, who died thirteen years later. At that point, in 1880, the house became property of John and Samuel Jr., two of their sons.  For the fifteen years leading up to John’s death, his family stayed at the Lemon house often during the summer. It wasn’t until John Lemon’s death in 1895 that Samuel Jr. took an interest in the Lemon House and claimed his ownership of the place.  There was reportedly some turmoil between Samuel and the remaining Lemon family because, after John’s death, he took the place from John’s wife who was living there at the time, and on top of that he gave the Lemon House to his wife, Mary E., in his will.  When Samuel died in 1903, Mary got complete control over the Lemon House, and since she had no fond memories of the place or familial ties to it, she sold it out of the Lemon family in 1907 (US Department of the Interior).

Many different owners inhabited the Lemon House in the years after Mary E. sold it. In 1914, the owner at the time—Joseph Weston—was running a dairy farm at the residence and hired James Gailey, then a 12 year old boy, to work on the farm. In 1917, Gaily moved in to be a full-time farm hand.  When Joseph and his wife died, their son moved to Pittsburgh with his family and asked the Gailey family to move in and protect the house, so they leased it and lived there from 1943-1954 (US Department of the Interior). This lines up with my father’s childhood, as he was born in 1937.

The Gaileys moved in with five children, with two more to be born in the years they lived at the Lemon House. James Gailey was an electrician and Zella Gailey cared for the seven children.  They took in boarders for sleeping accommodations in the furnished upstairs bedrooms, and for a short time after the war, Zella’s brother, Ted, lived in the upstairs wing.  The Gaileys lived in the central living quarters on the first floor (US Department of the Interior).

After discovering this history of the Lemon House, the stories that my Dad told me on the phone and throughout all of my childhood about living next to the Lemon House became so much more significant.  I had no idea when I was a kid touring the house that my great-grandparents stayed in the very place. The rooms I walked through were the very rooms that Mrs. Gailey taught my Dad and his brothers how to dance.  All the stories my Dad had told me suddenly gained a whole new importance—stories of how he and his brothers would go over to the Gailey’s home to watch TV, as they were the first ones in town to have a color TV, or stories of how Mrs. Gailey showed my Dad how to keep chicks warm in the delicate days after hatching.  It was truly mind-blowing to unearth all this history that was sitting right under my nose for years, and to realize I had waited so long to discover some fascinating family history.

As far as the history of the Gaileys at the Lemon House, they moved in the early 1950s, and Byron and Florence Roberts bought the house in 1954. They were the last private owners, living there until 1966 when the house was sold to the National Park Service (US Department of the Interior).

Though I discovered so much about the Lemon House through my research, one question still lingered in my mind—were there reports that the place was haunted, as my Dad had told me?  When I searched the subject, I came to a few sites listing all the claimed haunted places in Pennsylvania.  All the websites had the same little blurb about the Lemon House: “This National Historic site at the summit of the Allegheny Portage Railroad was once a tavern and inn.  It is documented that people have died in the house.  National Park Service employees have reported strange noises of banging and of windows and doors shutting at night.  Foggy nights are the most active times” (Cresson Lemon House).  As told by the Gailey children to my Dad and his siblings, the pianos in the house would play by themselves and sheets would fly off the beds at night.  Who knows what the truth of the matter is, but it is interesting nonetheless.

I come away from this project having discovered a huge chunk of knowledge about a historic Pennsylvania house, but most significant to me is how much I found out about my family’s role in the place, and about the role of my father’s childhood neighbors.  Though my Dad would often tell me stories about the Lemon House, it was not until completing this research that I felt a connection to it.  It is exciting to know that, even if minutely so, the history of Lemon House holds a connection to my ancestors.

1830s photograph of the Lemon House in Cresson, PA. http://www.ebay.com/itm/1830-Lemon-House-Inn-Cresson-Pa-Cambria-County-1930s-View-Print-/270977630614.

A painted depiction of the Lemon House, showing its proximity to the railroad tracks. http://www.funimag.com/funimag28/Allegheny01.htm.

The Lemon House today: http://www.chss.iup.edu/kpatrick/Central%20PA%20Trip.shtml.

Works Cited

American Notes. (2012, July 21). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved October 29, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=American_Notes&oldid=503498212.  Cresson Lemon House. (2012). Forgotten USA. Retrieved from http://forgottenusa.com/haunts/PA/10291.

National Parks Conservation Association. Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site [Data file]. Retrieved from http://www.npca.org/parks/allegheny-portage-railroad-natio.html.

National Park Service. Allegheny Portage Railroad [Date file]. Retrieved from http://www.nps.gov/alpo/historyculture/index.htm.

United States Department of the Interior/National Park Service. (1980). The Lemon House Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site [Data file]. Retrieved from http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/alpo/lemon.pdf

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