Re: Linnville Inn / Field's Motel

Here is a story I have on Martha Ella Frush Field. It was taken From Violet Grubaugh Garey research dated December 14,1966. Dennis Frush.

Written Friday, June 5, 1953
Martha Ellen Frush Field (Aunt Ellie)
Few persons now living can recall the days of the toll bridges on Route 40 when the highway was practically the only artery of communication through the county.
These went out of existence not long after the Civil War but the towns along the road retained their economic importance for many years. One of the most thriving was Linnville, now a community of only a few residents.
To look at the village now, one would never guess it was once one of the most important in the county but those conditions remain clear in the mind of Mrs. Martha Ellen Field, who will celebrate her 93rd birthday Sunday, June 7, 1953.
Only slightly gray-haired and still unbelievably active for her age, the community's oldest resident has little difficulty in remembering the way the town looked to visitors around the 1870's when it had three general stores, a tannery, a blacksmith shop, a postoffice, and a carriage manufacturing shop.
Born five miles away in Franklin Township, the elderly woman recalls moving to Linnville at the age of 16. "The toll bridges were gone then" she recalls, "but I can remember passing through them a number of times before we moved here."
"At one of the stations to the east there used to be a one-armed gate keeper who collected tolls. I believe they charged something like 10 cents a horse, or 20 cents for a carriage drawn by a team."
In those early days, all the towns along the National Road, as Route 40 was known then, had hotels for visitors who might be passing through. One of these, located where her house now stands, was one of the most famous and was owned by her husband's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Dudley Field.
She helped operate it for a number of years after their marriage but when she and her husband became its owners, they decided the old hotel was beyond repair. Razing the old building was no task as neighbors offered to help and accomplished the job in a day. (Aunt Ellie and Uncle Noel moved to the Linn Tavern and lived in it until after the new hotel was built.)
Aunt Ellie as she is known by her many relatives, still retains in her present home much of the old furniture which was used when the place was still a well known stopping place for tourists.
She rents part of the large frame building to another lady but lives alone in half of it, still doing all the household chores at the age of 93. Some of her work is done by the most old-fashioned methods such as using a washboard instead of a modern electrical appliance.
Some of the pieces of furniture are older than she is but are still in quite good condition. Among the items she still has is an old spinning wheel which is now only a relic of the days when she, her five sisters and six brothers, wore clothes made from flax grown on her father's farm.
She recalls one childhood incident when she and a younger sister, (Millie) started a fire in a pile of the residue scraped from a bunch of flax (it is called single tow), in preparing it for spinning. The two hid in a barrel as the rest of the family who had been eating, rushed from the house on seeing the flames. When they later found the two girls they were so relieved to find they had not been caught in the blaze that there was no punishment for the mischief.
When Linnville still had a postoffice, a man with a two-horse covered wagon used to pick up the mail from the towns along National Road and took it to Zanesville.
He also used to carry passengers and many of the town's womenfolk also had him do errands in the city. "He used to bring us bread from the bakery. Six loaves for a quarter." recalls Mrs. Field.
Perhaps the biggest change in the gradual decrease of the economic life of the community, according to the former hotel operator, came with the loss of the telegraph line through the town.
The highway through the town is still an important traffic artery but travellers now hardly notice the name of a community which, like many others, was an important stopping place in years gone by.