SECOND BAILEY HOUSE

It was the ideal country inn, famed for seasoned management and unsurpassed, old-time hospitality, the ambiance gracious, sociable, congenial, comfortable, making it the much-preferred address for the traveler who, after 1896, had the option to stay in newer, more modern hotels like the R. P. Camden across the street. Service to patrons was impeccable, beginning with the moment of their arrival; while hostlers attended to the travelers’ horses and conveyances, if any, other Black retainers met the guests at the front door with large whiskbrooms to brush away the journey’s dust. The cleanliness of the lobby, of the public rooms, the halls and bedrooms was fastidious. Starched bed linens were spotless, pillows and mattresses restful. Woolen carpet slippers, boiled in a lye soap solution between uses, were under every bed for guests’ use; boots and shoes placed outside the room door were polished by a bellboy during the night. The food in the dining room, served boardinghouse-style on trestle tables, was memorable; the rye and bourbon poured at the bar were of the best quality and generous in measure.

For many Westonians, the Bailey House was the center of community life, a place for dances, parties and holiday revelry, for ladies to have teas and show off their newest hats and other finery created by Weston’s several modistes, and to gossip while they played whist. Weston’s business and professional men looked upon the hotel as a welcoming resort, a treasured place of fellowship, a retreat where one could smoke cigars, drink a little whiskey, and wager a few coins on euchre or poker or pinochle. For intellectuals — there were a few — the game was chess; for the rustics — there were many — checkers. Those sojourners with a taste for politics and debate, and that was most of them, had a name for themselves: the Weston Senate and Every Evening Club. The Senate met nightly, in the roomy lobby in cold weather, within earshot of the barkeep; summer weather took them outside, where they seated themselves under cooling maple shade trees that fronted the chewing tobacco-stained, flagstone sidewalk, the high-back chairs of the “discussers and cussers” leaning against the hotel’s red brick wall.

The original genius of the inn’s management was its namesake, “hail fellow, well met”, backslapping, portly Major Minter Bailey, born in Fauquier County, Virginia, in 1799. When he was nine, the Bailey family moved to Broad Run, yet in Harrison County, not to become part of Lewis until 1816. In 1832, newly married, he purchased the former Weeden Hoffman ordinary, then owned by Thomas Bland, on the southwest corner of the Main-Second intersection. In working partnership with his talented, tireless wife, the former Sallie Bastable — who oversaw the kitchen, the laundry and three girl slaves: cooks Nancy and Maria Lee, and the mute and illiterate chambermaid, “Babs” — he made it the first “Bailey House”, although the formal name was the Weston Hotel.

By 1850, the Weston Hotel had become too small to accommodate the growing numbers of patrons. The following year, construction was completed on a new hotel that would be named the Bailey House, a plain Jane, three-story brick on the other side of Second Street, where is now the Citizens Bank. (A spread-winged American eagle of great size, painted high on the south wall and visible at some distance, was the hotel’s only outside identification at that time.) In just a few years, this building could not meet the still greater demand for overnight and longer stays, and, in 1858, a two-story extension was added on the west end. As well as more guest rooms, it included a larger dining room capable of seating forty, and an adjacent, new kitchen. In or around 1900, most likely because the up-to-date-in-every-way Camden Hotel had opened four years earlier across the street, a third floor was added to the extension whose rooms were the hotel’s first with private baths.

Ownership of the hotel remained in the Bailey family all its days. After Mrs. Bailey died in 1888, title passed to her son-in-law, Edward M. Tunstill. His son, Stokes, and daughter, Sallie, who married Emory M. Vandervort, were the last owners. It was she who sold the property to the Citizens Bank, in 1927, and so the Bailey House was lost — except in the fond memories of its many, many patrons.

Smith, E. C. (2010). History of lewis county, west virginia. Place of publication not identified: Nabu Press.

Gilchrist-Stalnaker, J., & Oldaker, B. R. (2010). Lewis County. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Pub.