Page 265 - Family History

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The main boarding houses also were along the boardwalk or across the street:
Henrietta Lodge's, at the west end of town where the boardwalk began; Madeline
and Annie Kuhlmann's across the street; and Flora Katherine Hammerly's at the
northeast corner of Locust. At the Kuhlmann House, summer guest Lloyd C.
Douglas wrote his best-selling biblical novel, "The Robe." The typical rate was $7 a
week room and board, plus $1.50 for Sunday dinner. The guests' favorite sport
was lawn croquet. At BridgeStreet, the boardwalk ended.

Safety was another concern, and one of the ordinances prohibited "any attempt
at trial of speed between two or more horses or mules" on any street. Addie
Purcell told me the story of her Uncle Ep--Eppa Hunton--who would drive his two-
horse vehicle down from Woodgrove. When he saw Walter Howell, town
sergeant, Ep would lay the whip on his horses, and they'd race through town,
taking the turn into the pike on two wheels. Before Howell could mount his horse,

Ep was beyond the town limits.

Howell later went out on his own and in 1909 replaced the boardwalk and board
sidewalks with cement walks. At the end of each walk, he inscribed his name and
the year. You still can see the writing.

About that time, automobile drivers began to venture into the hinterlands, and in
July 1915, the Town Council decreed that the speed limit should be 12 miles an

hour. Violators were subject to the steepest town fines, $25, or three days in jail.
Previously, fines had ranged from $1 to $20--and those were days when the
average person made $1 a day.

Two townsmen at that time owned autos. The first was a Ford runabout bought
by physician Ed Copeland about 1910. Jimmy Carruthers bought the second, an E-
M-F, a few years later. Named for its manufacturer, Edward M. Flanders, the E-M-

F was a popular early auto in Piedmont Virginia. It had two nicknames, "Every
Mechanical Fault" and "Every Morning Fix."

To make summer folk feel at home in the evening, the town had six street lights,
lit with coal oil (a primitive kerosene) by lamplighter S.E. Hindman. Though
businesses and homes had electric lights by late 1912--courtesy of the newly
electrified Washington & Old Dominion Railroad, the successor to the Southern

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