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Two Hundred Forty-One Years In The Making
The
History of Woodbound Inn
In 1760, James Philbrick of Hampstead, New Hampshire, made his way by
woods trails to the newly settled Town of Rindge and staked out his
claim to the land now comprising most of the Woodbound Inn property.
However, he found time to do some courting, as he soon married Eunice
Hale in 1762; daughter of Moses Hale, Sr., the founder of six generations
of Hales who lived on the farm; which is now the site of Cathedral of
the Pines; about 1 _ miles through the woods from Woodbound. He had
nine children by Eunice, who died May 4, 1776. By June 19, 1777, he
had the first of twelve children by his second wife, Elizabeth Cutter,
whom he had married November 14,1776. These dates are correct from the
Rindge History by Ezra Stearns.
Previous to his removal to Rindge, he had served in the French and Indian
Wars and in 1777 he was at Ticonderoga and Bennington. He was a member
of Colonel Nichols’ Regiment for four months of 1780 at West Point,
much of the enlistment service in the Revolution being for only a few
months. He was a Selectman, serving on several committees including
the Committee of Correspondence during the Revolution and accompanied
the first Minister to town in 1765, the Reverend Seth Dean of Hampton,
New Hampshire.
Besides clearing the land with the aid of the eighteen children who
survived infancy. He provided subsistence for his family as he served
as manager of the first sawmill in the town, near Grassy Pond, and of
a similar mill in nearby Squantum, in Jaffrey, NH. He built his original
dwelling to the southwest of the present buildings. In 1819 and 1820,
he built the farmhouse, which became the core of the present Inn and
the big barn. The resident population on the Inn and the vigorous energy
of James Philbrick and his wives has not been matched by any of the
subsequent owners.
Philbrick found an Indian trail leading along the east shore of the
Lake, from Jaffrey past the Inn property towards West Rindge. The Indians
came from Massachusetts to camp and fish at the outlet of the Lake into
the river where arrowheads, tomahawk flints and other artifacts have
been found. The trail gradually became a road, for there is no town
record of it having ever been laid out officially by the town.
By the time James and Rachel Clay succeeded Philbrick in 1820 in ownership,
there were other farms along the road; the Gardners’ at the little
red house (the house is now a grey color) at the foot of Drag Hill;
the Blakes’ at the present Woodmere Campground; and the Jewetts’
at the Ware-Stratton large white house and grounds on the left, a _
of a mile before the road reaches West Rindge Village. All three houses
were built in the 1700’s and are still standing today.
In contrast to Philbrick, the Clay family lived a subdued but frugal
life. By then the country had opened up some to the outside world and
according to an advertisement in the New Hampshire Sentinel, published
in Keene in 1803, "A line of stages leaves Mr. Wheelock’s
sign of the Indian Queen, #37 Marlborough Street, Boston, every Wednesday
and Saturday at 4 o’clock in the morning, and arrives at Concord,
Massachusetts, by 8 o’clock, at Groton by 12 o’clock and at
New Ipswich by 6 o’clock in the evening. Leaves New Ipswich at
4 o’clock in the morning Thursday and Monday, stopping at North
Rindge and Jaffrey and arrives at Keene by noon the same day and Walpole
at 6 in the evening."
Also in contrast to the Philbricks, the Clays’ had but three children,
a son and two daughters, none of whom married. By the time of the Rindge
History, 1875, one daughter had died; the son, James was farming the
place, Susan B was living there as well as the widowed mother, who was
the oldest person in Rindge at age 92. Before the Civil War and the
Transcontinental Railroad, New England farmers had the eastern seaboard
market to themselves and even in hilly, rocky New Hampshire many farmers
made money. Probably the Clays’ spent very little, as after the
sold the place to the Glouds’ in the late Seventies, the surviving
member, Susan B., (having moved to nearby Jaffrey in the 90’s),she
was persuaded to give or leave her money, nearly $20,000, to build the
Susan B. Clay Library in Jaffrey where her portrait hangs today in the
front hall. However, it is pleasant to note that in a ledger of all
purchases of alcohol in Rindge, 1861-69, James Clay is listed as making
a few purchases of Medford Rum, the most popular item, selling at 80-odd
cents a quart.
The Next family to occupy the place in 1878, was the Goulds’. They
have left us the best description of the house and grounds as it existed
for most of the nineteenth century. Walter Gould, born in 1872 and educated
in the one-room school located on the woods path to Cathedral of the
Pines, visited the Inn twice in the 1930’s and 40’s and wrote
out a description of the property and gave us a photograph of the place
with him and his father standing near the stone wall in front. According
to Gould, the road opposite the Inn, leading past the gravel bank to
the Cathedral, was known as the Gate Road or Bridle Path. To the right,
between the road and the brook, there was a meadow that was mowed and
at the left there was a pair of bars at the foot of the hill leading
to the pasture. The two-story and attic house had two brick ends with
a lean-to kitchen on the rear. The front door, still on the south side
of the present living room, opened into a little hall with a stairway
straight ahead leading to the second floor. There were two rooms on
the ground floor and two on the second, each with a fireplace. An ell
led off, where the present dining room is, with a carpenter shop, a
pigpen and an attic above. The kitchen had a flagstone floor over which
logs were brought in for the open fireplace. There were brick ovens
and Mr. Gould said his mother used cranes and hooks over the andirons
for cooking and the ovens for baking until his father installed a stove
towards the end of their stay. A well under the kitchen and another
out back furnished the water. The present big barn and a row of sheds
originally stood to the northwest of the house.
After the Goulds’
sold out, the property was owned by Derotus P. Emory, then by a Mrs.
J. M. Thompson. She sold it in 1891 to William F. Jowders, who came
from New Ipswich, New Hampshire. Mr. Jowders had a brother George who
was a carpenter and together they constructed a two-story ell in place
of the old ell with a dining room and bedrooms above, marking the advent
of the resort business on the place, probably in 1892. An 1892 atlas
of New Hampshire contains a map of Rindge showing all householders,
and the Inn is listed as the Lakeside Hotel. In the photos in the living
room and bar, showing guests on the lawn in the 1890’s with bicycles
and leg-of-mutton sleeves ~ the sign on the Inn say ‘ Lake View
Farm’. Possibly some guests objected to the name Lakeside since
the buildings were a few hundred feet from the water. One of the girls
in the photo of this period was a guest at the Inn in the late forties
& early fifties.
In 1899, the Inn was sold to Lew Davis who was the original ‘developer’
of the Lake. The property had a shore frontage of 1400 feet or more
and Davis sold off lots on most of the shore except for a narrow beach.
He built cottages on some of them for private ownership. In 1909 the
property and business was sold to Albert Annett, a member of a family
which had owned the Annett Box Company in nearby Squantum, of Jaffrey,
for many years. Albert Annett was a conscientious citizen and a conservationist.
He contributed what is know as the Annett State Forest, lying east of
the Inn property; the Children’s Woods in Jaffrey; was a co-developer
of the 20-mile Wapack Trail; served in the Legislature; was on the Governor’s
Council; wrote the modern Jaffrey Town History in 1934; and fortunately
was a member of the Jaffrey water Commission when the town water system
was established. Being related by marriage to Lew Davis was probably
helpful in the fact that since the principal water main from the reservoir,
or Bullet Pond, passed near the Lake, a branch main was run down each
side of the Lake so that summer cottage owners and also the Inn could
enjoy town water.
The Lake has had three names: an Indian name ~ Peewunsenn Pond; Long
Pond which covered the first 120 years from the pioneer days; the in
the 1880’s and 90’s, the name Sunshine Lake was given to it
by the Spiritualist Association, which maintained a colony and large
Tabernacle almost bordering the Inn. As the Lake is the source of the
Contoocook River, which joins the Merrimac, Albert Annett had the Legislature
designate Lake Contoocook as its official name and he renamed the Inn
to the same name.
Most of the time up into the 1920’s, a brother of Albert by the
name of Asahel Annett and his family ran the Inn. Mrs. Efie Annett,
having been brought up on a summer board farm in Rindge (most any farm
having more than two bedrooms ‘took in’ summer boarders in
those days), was a seasoned innkeeper. The Annetts’ built the tennis
court before 1913, converted a carriage shed to a Play Barn with hardwood
floors and a fireplace; in 1915 built what was long called the Annex,
or Edgewood as it is known today; added the third floor over the ell
and paneled much of the dining room with oak, which was cut off the
Inn property.
At that time there were 6 rooms on the third floor with one public bath;
12 rooms on the second floor with one public full bath and an extra
water closet—no rentable space was wasted on private baths, however,
there was a pitcher, bowl and chamber pot in each room. This was the
accommodation when the Brummer-Bean operation started in 1934.
That operation could be classified as Fifty Years of Putting in Public
Baths! Using one room to put in baths and closets for two others; squeezing
space where possible. There was not only that process over a period
of years, but many of those baths have again been completely renovated.
Ed Brummer & Jack Bean of Jaffrey had been classmates at Dartmouth
College and Ed had been working for three years at the Guaranty Trust
Company in New York City when Jack came down to bunk in with him and
look for a job. One thing led to another and Jack & Ed too the Fall
River Line Boat and train to Boston and Jaffrey, and looked at an Inn
Resort that had run out of business to the extent that it had not opened
the previous August (in those days, the best resort month). Jack &
Ed came back up in April to get the Inn ready to open; Ed with $100
and Jack with less. Money was borrowed from an Aunt and from a classmate,
Red Rolfe, who came up from Newark Bears to the New York Yankees that
spring and had a job. A 1930 wood paneled Ford beach wagon with isinglass
windows was bought and Jack’s sister and her friends were installed
in a vacant ground floor store on Federal Street in Boston at zero rent
to entice people off the street and tell them about Contoocook Inn.
That first year the rates were $3.00 a day with meals and a special
of $17.50 a week at the beginning of the season. (In the thirties, Ed
could eat three meals in restaurants a day in New York City for $ 1.00)
Expenses at the Inn for the season were $4,000, and the income $ 2,000
plus. After the season, the financial figures were shown to a relative
of Ed who owned and ran the Charlesgate Hotel in Boston, who said,’
Your figures look all right, but you didn’t do any business!’
That fall an abortive attempt was made in New Hampshire and Massachusetts
to sell stock in Contoocook Inn, Inc. with the help of sandwiches and
shelter from Jack’s mother & father and with constant patching
of threadbare tires on the beach wagon. The next spring money was borrowed
from the owner, Albert Annett. Installation of modern plumbing started
and business was increased so that the season broke even. From then
on progress was constant.
Facilities were modernized and increased over a long and unending period
of time. In 1935 the proprietors themselves dismantled two one-pipe
furnaces from two houses in town and installed one in the living room
and one in the dining room. The unwitting cutting of floor joists to
install these furnaces has left uneven, slanting floors ever since.
After three seasons, Jack left to go into the lumber business and eventually
the D.D. Bean Match business with his father and brother. Ed bought
the Inn; all mortgage, no down payment; and renamed it Woodbound Inn
and in 1937 his father and mother, Mr. & Mrs. Karl J. Brummer from
Lisbon, New Hampshire, came to live at the Inn. Later they moved to
an apartment in Charity Square in Jaffrey.
After the 1938 Hurricane, it was a question of whether to give the key
back to the mortgage holder or continue. Temporary oil stoves were installed
in part of the Inn. Ed spent the winter of 1938-1939 with six wood choppers,
a boss chopper, a pair of horses and driver, and a truck with driver
cleaning up the Inn property; trucking logs for government storage in
ponds, and doing the same for several other properties in Rindge and
Jaffrey. The crew started New Year’s Day, January 1st, and disbanded
on July 4th. The choppers all came northern Maine and were glad of the
work.
The winter of 1939-1940, forty rooms and baths were added over the old
part of the Inn, "Raising the Roof." In 1940 and 1941 steam
heat was installed in the whole Main Inn with the view to operating
late into the fall and staring a winter season. After World War II,
the ski slopes were gradually expanded and uphill transportation was
provided by portable ski tows bolted to toboggans – later by permanent,
housed ski tows of larger capacity. The original motor was a 1932 Chevrolet
truck engine.
Ed Brummer married Margaret (Peggy) Sloane of the Hale-Cathedral of
the Pines farm and Newton, Massachusetts in April of 1942. This was
180 years after Eunice Hale and James Philbrick from the same properties
were married. Before the end of that season, Ed left for three years
to the Hingham Shipyard. Only having the short experience of the resort
business that first summer, Peggy ran the Inn for a short winter season
and the summer season of 1943 ~ food stamps; gas rationing and scarce
help! In 1944 a manager ran the Inn; the twins Jed and Jeff were born
in August and if 1945 Peg was back with the twins and a nursemaid to
run the Inn until Ed was able to return on Labor Day in 1945. Martha
was born in 1951. Jed was married to Mary Ellen in 1971 along with her
children Chuck and Bill; Betsey was born in 1974 and Sloane born in
1981. Jed Brummer succeeded as owner of the Inn in December of 1981.
The family owned and operated the Inn for Fifty – Five years.
For over the first twelve years of Brummer operation, the cooking continued
to be done with a large ‘hotel’ wood stove, and there were
plenty of cooks who knew how to cook with wood. Likewise, until after
the War, refrigeration was provided by ice boxes. The ice was cut out
of the Lake each winter by a man from Jaffrey and hauled with horses
to the Inn’s ice house. The cooks and staff considered the advent
of mechanical refrigeration a much greater improvement then the gas
stoves. Not all improvements were readily accepted however. When the
first self-propelled lawn mower was acquired, the grounds man refused
to use it, preferring to push an old reel mower. He owned a pick-up
truck but preferred his own horses and carriages. When he went to "Jeffrey"
he didn’t go shopping, he "had to do a little trading."
In 1947, The Palmer (now the Lakewood) cottage, which is near our beach,
was acquired. The first new cottage, Beachwood, was built in 1953, the
first of many. The Pine Room and Dining Room space were added in 1957,
replacing a long porch. The Par 3 Golf Course, probably the best improvement,
was opened in 1963. Beginning just before, and in Jed’s time, the
laundry was built with the Philbrick dining area over it; the Spirits’
Room Bar; horse and carriage roads; sleigh ride trails; and the Edgewood
complex of fourteen fine new bedrooms and the conference center were
added.
Facilities and equipment are fine, however it is the people that make
a resort and Woodbound has been blessed with ‘generations’
of congenial guests who have enjoyed the friendly atmosphere established
by the Inn. In the early days of the resort, it was quite a common practice
for men to sleep in the Play Barn on cots and the women and children
to occupy the rooms. After all not many women were interested in all-night
poker games! This custom also prevailed at a farm-inn in Sugar Hill,
New Hampshire. During another period, the Inn was a favorite place for
railroad men, especially conductors. At that time period, the present
Room # 3 was used for the weekend continuous poker game.
People have used the Inn in many ways and many have been entertaining
in special ways themselves. For several years a female Brooklyn librarian
of middle age came to the Inn and enjoyed nude sunbathing. A wood platform
was placed in a clearing in the woods, shielded with mosquito netting
and the four legs of the platform were placed in unused wash bowls filled
with water to keep snakes and crawling bugs away. A woman occupied Room
#20 for a few years and brought her bird, which she kept in a cage hanging
from the ceiling. The cage was left there all year round from one year
to the next. Then there was a man from a prominent New York City family,
an alcoholic, who received a check each week from his family on condition
that he stay away from the family, a type known as ‘a remittance
man’. After some embarrassing situations, he was put into the beach
wagon and somehow peddled to an Inn in another town. Later he found
his way back to an in-town Inn in Jaffrey and used to buy cases of beer
and sit on the sidewalk curbstone while he provided the beer for the
W.P.A. workers working on the street. A few years later a guest sent
his obituary to the New York Times. Another visitor for two or three
years was a guest called ‘Nature Boy’ who talked to anyone
who would listen about geology, nature, led hikes up the mountain and
most of the time slept decide the trail to the beach. To outward appearances,
he apparently had only a red and black wool shirt and a pair of pants
and shoes. At the masquerade that week, he simply took off his pants;
reversed the shirt, tied the arms over his shoulders and come as a Scotsman
in kilts. And then there was a man and his wife, perhaps forty years
old, who enjoyed wrestling and they would wrestle each other on the
lawn in their regular clothes to entertain the guests.
One of the great assets of Woodbound for fifteen or twenty years was
the all-season guests, Mr. And Mrs. John Brodhead. To begin with, each
had unusual relatives. Humphrey Bogart was related to Mrs. Brodhead
and he once called her regarding the death of an aunt. Mr. Brodhead
was the uncle of former Vice President Henry Wallace and the Wallaces
visited him here for a few days. Mrs. Brodhead was a lovely, friendly
person who was enjoyed by all the guests and who read or sewed or did
Braille on her machine most of the time. Mr. Brodhead, a retired Assistant
Superintendent of Schools of Boston, had to have activity all the time
and kept it up until he was 90. He maintained the lines, blackboard
(who was dead on Whom) and equipment for croquet and instructed new
guests in the rules. If he couldn’t find anyone to play croquet,
shuffleboard or card games, he would sit on the porch and do anagrams
and crossword puzzles. Anyone coning out of the dining room from breakfast
might be accosted "do you want to play Russian Bank?" Having
taught manual training and drafting he begged for any repair jobs around
the Inn and since he put up some gutters over entrances, he was call
‘Vice President in Charge of Gutters’. The little ‘Beehive’
building used by the children as a play house was built by him.
Alice Reynolds and her Aunt; originally from England; were here a few
years and delighted everyone. In her pocketbook, Aunty kept a small
flask of brandy (for emergency), a flash light and a whistle which she
blew when she wanted Alice, who was usually on the tennis court. Joe
Murdy had a habit of getting everyone in the dining room to do a certain
rapping routine on the tables when there was an especially good meal
and he also had a playful stunt of dropping silver on the hardwood floor
and leading everyone else to do it just to hear the clatter, which was
rather startling for new or guests unfamiliar with the custom.
A unique couple took a room for the season in the early years. She worked
in Chicopee and he in Boston, so they would meet here for the weekends
and their vacation. The Inn provided a plot of land and their prime
interest was their vegetable garden. By design or by chance the guests
would be attracted to the garden operation during the weekend and guests
would then be offered the opportunity to weed, water and tend the garden
during the week while the gardeners were away. The garden was to the
rear of the Inn as was the couple’s room. Waitresses would tie
the tomatoes and other vegetables to the vines, then they could look
out the dining room windows and see the gardeners on their weekend return,
rush down to view the progress of their garden.
Many honorary degree recipients at Franklin Pierce College in Rindge,
have stayed at the Inn, such as Frank Perdue (the chicken man), and
Vice-President George Bush. In the fifties, Libby Holman, the torch
singer of the twenties, had a son in school nearby and brought one of
the few Rolls Royces to Woodbound along with a personal maid and chauffeur.
Extended company meetings and family reunions, such as the United Carr
Fastener and the Simplex Time Recorder Company brought many prominent
people and even cabinet members here to the Inn.
It is a bit wistful looking back to more relaxed times when there were
several trains a day and there was a station where the railroad crosses
the river at the outlet of the lake. Up through the twenties a motor
boat serviced the lake, delivering passengers, newspapers and mail from
the station to the lake cottages, and before that there was a small
steamboat. Into the thirties a particular social activity in the area
was an ice cream and soft drink stand about half a mile from the Inn.
It was a gathering place for the whole lake.
A custom few can remember was that ladies should wear hats at lunch.
This went out in the thirties. Some families entered the dining room
in the paterfamilias style, with the father in the lead followed by
mother and the children. Mrs. R.E. Baird of Milford, Connecticut, had
reported to the Inn in the early eighties that in the late twenties,
guests were not supposed to go through the living room in their bathing
suits and so used the fire escape to come and go in that attire. The
office for the owner-manager in 1934 for a year or so was a roll top
desk at one end of the living room. If he was behind the desk, oftentimes
invisible to guests in the living room, he would overhear interesting
remarks.
For many years peddlers came by the Inn to sell their wares to the guests,
especially a Christian Lebanese who practically took over the living
room with his display of linens and laces. The ladies enjoyed this,
the merchant did well and there were always some nice gifts for Mrs.
Brummer when he departed. The last section beyond the center post at
the southern end of the dining room was a bedroom in 1934, then converted
for a few years into a card and music room with a piano. Karl Brummer;
Ed’s father; loved to play his flute and trombone, he had his ‘studio’
out in the old sheds attached to the barn; played with the Rindge and
Temple Bands and would corral any guest or member of the staff who was
musical to play with him in the music room. Earlier, in the deficit
year of 1934, the proprietors kept a careful eye open on the habits
of the guests and the route of discarded liquor bottles. The Volstead
Act Repeal had come but the State Liquor stores had not reached this
area. The discarded liquor bottles were saved, delivered to the local
bootlegger and the proprietors had some bathtub gin they could otherwise
not afford.
Animals were a more intimate part of the scene in the early days. A
family of woodchucks lived under the sheds to the rear of the Inn and
the little ones would play just outside the sills like kittens. At that
time it was open under the dining room as it was built for summer use
only and the porcupines loved to gnaw on the wood in the understructure,
especially at night. Porcupines infested an elm tree opposite the Inn’s
front door and one night after dinner the guests spotted one high up
in the tree. Ted Shea, the desk clerk, was asked to shot it, which he
did with the porcupine falling across and short-circuiting the high
tension lines in a great blue flash and shutting off the power to half
of Rindge. The local news reporter showed up presuming it was an automobile
that had struck a pole, but put the story in the Manchester Union anyway.
For years the Inn bought eight-week old piglets in the spring and sold
them as 250 – 300 pounders in the fall, One of the most profitable
departments of the Inn, being fed nothing but garbage and having the
habit of sometimes escaping from their pen and requiring guests to help
round them up.
In April, 1984, the Brummer family had operated the Woodbound Inn as
a resort for Fifty Years! " ‘Hotel’, ‘Inn’,
‘Resort’ " - these words really do not describe the basic
atmosphere or success of the Woodbound Inn in the past. The fundamental
idea was to entertain people on their vacation and it always seemed,
during those years and earlier as if the Inn was running a continuous
house party, not a Hotel. There were not only activities provided for
the guests, but so many guests returned at the same time each year that
guests expected and did find people they knew from previous visits,
it felt like a private house party each time they would return. Guests
who had return for many years would receive gifts for their continuous
vacations at Woodbound. Wooden plaques, Dinner bells, etc. for five,
ten, fifteen years; Two-score silver pitchers for 25 years, Paintings
of the Inn for 30 years, etc.
The basic activities have been the enjoyment of the natural facilities
of the Lake, beach, golf, tennis, cross-country skiing, hiking paths
and mountain climb. In the seventies and eighties, scheduled outside
children activities, indoor card parties, dances, movies, etc. In the
forties, fifties and sixties, a great deal was made of dancing polkas,
schottisches and squares, oftentimes impromptu in the morning or afternoon
to the records and for a period there were two square dances a week.
For a few years the hostesses kept a log of the activities of the summer.
This item appeared in 1946: "Monday evening. Many of the guests
were transported to the Park Theatre in East Jaffrey to see Bob Hope
and Madeline Carroll in ‘My Favorite Blonde’, which met the
approval of the majority." The softball games by the seventh fairway
had foul line markers and Mr. Brodhead was the umpire with the authority
of a Judge Landis, the first Commissioner of Baseball.
Sometimes the guests took care of the entertainment themselves as when
the management gave the staff a night at a local summer theatre and
late supper, one time meeting Mae West and everyone meeting her on the
stage. On those nights, various guests were appointed to jobs, such
as manager, desk clerk, cigarette girl, bellhop, etc. Guests always
went downtown and tried to make troublesome telephone calls to the "manager"
and one night when the staff returned, all the furniture in the living
room was found neatly piled in the center of the room in a pyramid.
On the other side of the coin, when Mr. And Mrs. Brummer returned from
an American Hotel meeting in St. Louis, 30 or 40 guests met them at
the Keene Airport with banners of welcome draped over the fences.
For a few years beginning in 1935, the old Play Barn was used as a Summer
Theater by a resident troupe with eight or nine productions a summer.
Subsequent movie stars, Lee Bowman and Ruth Roman were members. In the
winter for a long period of time the Jaffrey Outing Club ran a Winter
Carnival on the lake with horse racing, log rolling and the ‘Brownies’
diving into the icy water. For a few years through the gracious interest
and the toil of guests; Josephine Rice, Irene Johnson and Isabelle Baumgartner;
at different times with some Inn guests staged some fine amateur theatricals
for the benefit of the other guests and Lake neighbors.
(These
pages were taken from the ‘Dad’s History of the Place’
written by Ed Brummer for the 50th Anniversary of Brummer Family Ownership
~ 1984)
Approximately in 1989, the
Woodbound Inn was sold to an Investment Group with many plans for development.
These plans were not able to come to fruition. Eventually, because of
financial difficulty, ownership of the Woodbound Inn went back to the
bank. The bank then went into bankruptcy. The Inn was able to stay open
with managements companies hired to run the Inn; as the Woodbound Inn
was an asset to be sold to help the creditors.
In June of 1994, the Kohlmorgens, Rick & Janet and Ken & Barbara,
purchased the Woodbound Inn. These are two sisters who married two brothers;
each couple has one child. The Inn is once again owned and being run
by a family, including their pets.
Over the years, the guests rooms and the lobby have been remodeled,
while still keeping the original charm of the Inn. Offices have been
added, other rooms converted into guest rooms. Telephones were added
to the Main Inn and the Edgewood building. Recently computers were added
to the Front Desk and a website added to the internet. Yes, times have
truly changed from those earlier years. The way that families vacation
has changed, and the fast paced lives that we all lead, keep us from
being able to spend the quiet time away that we all long for, and that
some people don’t even know exist. The Woodbound Inn still remains
one of those very quiet places to take the family and bond together.
The Kohlmorgen Family strives to keep the warm friendly hospitality
consistent with the rich tradition of the Woodbound Inn’s roots,
yet remain competitive and fulfill the needs and desires of our guests
and groups. The Inn hosts many Conventions, Wedding Receptions, Group
Gatherings, Class Reunions, and Family Reunions, always trying to make
each of these events very memorable for all that attend.
We still have the pleasure of being the host to several guests that
have been continuously faithful in revisiting us each year, back through
all the years when the Brummers’ were the host. We truly enjoy
the guests as they are able to share stories and memories of years gone
by; and the children who are now adults bringing their own children
and sharing with their young ones the history, stories and passing on
the wonderful memories from one generation to the next.
The Kohlmorgen family looks forward to giving each of our guests
memories that they will treasure for many years to come.
Our deepest Thanks to all of you for being our guests.
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