Cornwall Borough resident Bruce Chadbourne offers another of his “Who Knew?” installments of Cornwall history.
Previously in this series we introduced two famous Lebanon homes and the two families who “swapped” their dwellings in 1887 out of friendship and satisfying the needs of both. Having lost two young daughters, the DeHuffs felt a cloud of gloom over their home on Chestnut Street.
We turn from the story of Gilbert and Emma DeHuff to their friends Lyman and Louisa Nutting.
In 1883 the Nuttings were comfortably settled in their home at the corner at Walnut and South 9th streets. The DeHuffs, Gilbert and Emma, had just built their grand home at 239 Chestnut Street the year before and in that October had suffered the loss of two young children.
Of course, in building his house on Walnut and South 9th streets in 1870, Lyman Nutting had no idea it would become a women’s shelter a century later, known today as Agape House, operated since 1985 by the Lebanon Rescue Mission for women and children.
And, if you could ask her, Mrs. Nutting would tell you that Agape was not the first women’s home in Lebanon. While her fingerprints may be found on the “DeHuff House” (above), which became Agape, her true labor of love was a different house, the “Home for Widows and Single Women of Lebanon.”
Lebanon’s first women’s home
Late in 1883 Louisa and a committee of women met at St. John’s Reformed Church on Willow Street, discussing the need for a women’s shelter.
By the end of the year they had drafted a charter and successfully petitioned Lebanon’s court of common pleas for approval of a charitable association, which began a public campaign to raise funds. By the end of the year in the height of the Christmas season, they had purchased the above brick dwelling from John Light for $2,500. They expended an additional $650 for repairs.
The first resident came in April 1884 and occupancy rose to 16 by 1887. A grant from the state brought the introduction of water and steam heat.
The charitable association, consisting of 451 residents of Lebanon eventually paid off its debts and shored up its financial assets to sustain operations. Women of note, in addition to Mrs. Nutting, included Mrs. Bertram Dawson Coleman and Mrs. Horace Brock. From Cornwall, the women known as “R. W. Coleman Heirs” donated an adjoining property.
The Home served the community for 40 years. By 1922, when expenses for maintenance and repairs were mounting, another committee began meeting to replace the home with a new facility.
A publicly-spirited fundraising campaign again transpired during 1923, raising $100,000. The new home was built on a lot on Oak Street known as “The Heights” near 12th Street.
The new home served for many years, and more recently became known as “Oak Terrace,” an affordable housing apartment for seniors, operated by Community Homes of Lebanon County.
Let’s regroup and pick up the family thread in this story.
Lyman Nutting (1824 – 1893)
The Nutting name has faded from local memory. His remaining legacy in Lebanon is the five-story “skyscraper” that he began building in 1892 at the corner of 8th and Cumberland. Many today know it the “Samler Building” for the man of “Bon Ton” department store fame who purchased and completed it.
Read More: A salute to the Samler Building, Lebanon’s downtown icon
Stories abound; without the benefit of an elevator, one woman remembers climbing four flights of stairs as a young girl going to dance classes on the top floor.
Lyman Nutting was not a local man; he was born in 1824 in Otisfield, Maine, to Lyman Nutting, Sr. and Charlotte Chadbourne. This author, also not a local man, was surprised to discover a family connection; Lyman is a close cousin four generations removed.
As young men in their twenties, he and his older brother James left the farms and forests of western Maine. James had studied law but came to Pennsylvania as a teacher and opened a school in Womelsdorf.
Lyman came a few years later, following his brother in teaching. Having attended Bridgton Academy in Maine, Lyman taught school locally at the Myerstown Academy in 1846-47 and was the principal of the English department.
The academy closed in the 1860s and the Joseph Liebovitz clothing factory was built on the property; that building still stands at 113 E. Main Street. Albright College’s roots spring from the Myerstown Academy.
Lyman’s Gold Fever
In 1849 Nutting, age 24, went to Ohio to study law. His studies were soon interrupted when he obeyed the siren call, joining a prospecting company headed by Ohio governor Wilson Shannon. Haskins’ history of the gold rush, “The Argonauts of California” records their company departing New York February 21, 1849, on the ship “J. G. Costar” headed for the west coast.
A successful Lyman returned in 1859 to nearby Pine Grove, having learned the value of trading real estate and merchandise in times of economic expansion, a lesson he would learn to apply in Lebanon.
Since the 1840s Pine Grove had been booming, with men seeking their fortune in coal mining. The Union Canal and the introduction of coal were transforming the local iron industry. The canal branch had been finished in 1832 providing transportation of the coal to the new anthracite furnaces around Lebanon.
The 1860 census registers Lyman in Pine Grove as a coal worker with $25,000 in real estate assets, boarding with Wm. Graeff, a farmer. William’s daughter had become the wife of brother James L. Nutting.
Lyman Nutting invested his capital in the Rausch Creek colliery with John Graeff, D. R. Miller and Reuben Stiess.
James later became a gentleman farmer on an estate known as Brookside and became engaged in politics. He succeeded in a contested race to the nation’s 45th Congress from the 13th District of Pennsylvania.
In related trivia of that era, a famous Californian named John Sutter returned impoverished to this region in 1865 and is buried in Lititz.
Readers might also be interested to learn that portions of Schuylkill and northern Lebanon counties near Pine Grove have, in addition to coal, their own history of gold mining (see for example “Gold Mine Road” northeast of Fort Indiantown Gap). Returning miners experienced lingering gold fever, noticing similarities between the terrain around Pine Grove and Sacramento, leading to local prospecting. They remained at it into the 1890s.
Louisa Halter Nutting (1839-1919)
In 1862 Lyman Nutting married Louisa Mathilde Halter of Pine Grove and they soon raised a family of four children. They lived in the house built in 1823 for the son of Michael Ley, the architect of Tulpehocken Manor. The mansion (below) has since been known as Nutting Hall.
Louisa’s father Nicholas Halter had come from Switzerland and married Catherine Flickinger in Berks county in 1821. Louisa was born in Washington D. C. in 1839; her mother died in 1842.
Upon marrying and moving to Iowa, Nicholas sent his daughters back to Pennsylvania. The 1850 census shows 12-year-old Louisa Halter living in Pine Grove in the home of coal operator and clerk Joseph Strimpfler and his wife Elizabeth, with another young woman. The 1860 census confirmed that it is the same Louisa from Washington D.C.
An 1880 obituary for Elizabeth clarified that she was Louisa’s aunt, and had lived with the Nuttings for the last few years of her life.
The Meily connection
Another in the DeHuff circle was John Meily (also of Swiss descent) born 1826 and raised in Mechanicsburg. After his schooling he was a clerk, and then involved in the Union Canal with his cousin (later Senator) George F. Meily, with offices in Jonestown and Middletown.
The 1860 census lists him as a “transporter” in Lebanon, having erected a rail car works on North 10th Street, which relocated four years later to North 7th Street when he had entered into partnership with Peter L Weimer.
During the Civil War he mustered with the Pennsylvania 110th Infantry, discharged in 1865.
In his 1904 paper to the Lebanon County Historical Society, Henry Grittinger explained the connection between Meily and Nutting. In his early career Meily had acquired sufficient knowledge of the iron business. He formed “Meily, Nutting & Co.,” with Henry Meily, Richard Meily and Lyman Nutting, and in 1864 they purchased the Middletown Anthracite Furnace (built in 1853).
In 1867 they erected the Lebanon Valley Furnace on Brandywine creek between Forge Street and the Lebanon Valley Railroad (near present Willow and 14th streets). The furnace was in the vicinity of G. D. Coleman’s North Lebanon furnaces. Grittinger described their furnace as “small, but with a good record, staying in almost continuous operation.”
Much like his esteemed contemporary Artemas Wilhelm, Meily’s biography credits the success that attended his business career “largely due to his thorough attention to detail, intimate knowledge of his undertaking, and his high sense of honor which gave absolutely fair treatment to customers and employees alike.”
After Helen’s early death in 1873, John remained a widower for ten years until marrying Kate DeHuff, daughter of the hardware proprietor next door on Cumberland Street.
While a widower John Meily filled the office of Chief Burgess (“mayor”) of the borough of Lebanon in 1880.
He also served as president of the Lebanon County Insurance Company. For many years he was a member of St John’s Reformed Church of Lebanon in which congregation he was a prominent figure.
All in the family
Close consideration of the family diagram found in Part 1 of this story raises a number of questions. How did Meily and Nutting meet, and how do their marriages to the “Halter” women fit into the picture?
John had married Helen, Louisa’s sister, in 1852, ten years before the Nuttings married in 1862.
One theory would be that the two men met in the early 1860s while Lyman was in the coal business in Pine Grove and John Meily was working for the Union Canal in Jonestown (incidentally the name “Meily” occurs earlier, with a so-named teacher in Myerstown at the time Nutting was teaching there in 1846 but any connection is uncertain). The Pine Grove branch of the canal served the coal business; as the two men connected first through business and then socially, John’s wife Helen might have introduced Lyman to her sister.
What is unclear is how John met Helen, remarrying in 1852. She was from Washington D.C. and is not found in the Pine Grove census. She may have been living in the area with another relative after her family had split up.
A different theory regards Louisa as a teenaged woman living in Pine Grove. She had been living with John and Elizabeth (her aunt) Strimpfler, a clerk, possibly in connection with Lyman Nutting’s coal business. John introduced his business associate Lyman to his ward, the young woman in his household. Once they had married it would be inevitable that “brothers-in-law” Lyman and John became acquainted.
A home of their own
The 1870 census reveals “iron master” Lyman Nutting having a personal estate of $100,000 and property valued at $115,000. The family home in the boarding house on North 9th Street was conveniently situated near his Lebanon Manufacturing Company on 10th Street and the Lebanon Valley Furnace a few blocks further west.
In1870, Lyman and Lousia purchased the lot at 139 S. 9th Street at the corner of Walnut Street from Henry B. Oves, who lived on the block. Oves was a respected senior citizen, and prominent in the Lebanon County fire company, living next door to the “Engine House.”
The Nuttings began building the two-story brick house that has become the feature of this story. The 1880 census reports them living there four teenaged children. His profession then listed simply as “At Home.” According to the 1870 map (above) they had chosen a familiar neighborhood with members of the Meily family living next door and across the street.
Moving to 239 Chestnut Street
What really prompted the Nuttings’ decision to “trade” properties with the DeHuffs in 1887? Part 1 of this story raised their “act of kindness” toward their friends through the social engagements of the extended family. They probably saw one another every week at church services and functions.
Given the social functions in the DeHuff’s home on Chestnut Street old reports say the Nuttings had become fond of its elegance. With their continually rising fortunes and esteem in Lebanon society, desiring a grander home is not surprising.
In that year their youngest child William Nutting turned 18. Perhaps the “empty nest” made the move easier, though only eight blocks away.
Three sons were away at the Hill School in Pottstown and then attended Princeton University as civil engineers. Two of them would later join their father in developing the East Lebanon Iron Company on 5th Avenue and other business enterprises.
Nutting’s other pursuits
In 1867, still in the iron business, Nutting was also listed as a director of the newly commissioned Reading and Trevorton Railway Company.
At age 50 he sold his share of the iron business to John and Richard Meily for $150,000, at which time (1874) the firm name changed to “J. & R. Meily Co.” He retained ownership of the Middletown furnace until 1880.
During the 1870s Nutting invested further in real estate, including a farm in Cornwall he bought in 1872 from Samuel and Alfred Hauck for $20,841. It was purported to have an iron ore deposit. In exchange he sold a Pine Grove farm to the Hauck brothers for $7,000.
His name appears frequently in the affairs of the State Agricultural Society, having served as a vice-president.
In 1874, the same year he left Meily & Co., the Lebanon Daily News was referring to him as “our esteemed townsman.” Another account called him “visionary,” having invested a great deal of money in modernizing Lebanon.
He was stockholder and director of the Edison Illumination Company (formed in 1880), as well as the Lebanon & Annville and Lebanon & Myerstown Street railways, the Lebanon Manufacturing Company, the West End Rolling Mill Company, the Lebanon Valley Traction Company, the Lebanon Market House, and the Lebanon Steam Heating Company.
His sons worked alongside him and developed the companies further. William extended the steam lines throughout, from Lehman to Chestnut Streets, between 3rd and 10th streets.
“A true philanthropist, his charitable donations helped improve the conditions of the poor. His interest in promoting higher education endeared him to all who knew him.”
Yet another, “genial in disposition, unostentatious, a man of sound judgment, making wise investments for himself and giving counsel to many who sought it.” Nutting epitomized the spirit of kindness toward others.
He assisted Zion Lutheran Church’s construction of a new building on 9th Street, having taken down the 30-year-old structure on that site. He and Louisa hosted “Mite Society” socials at their home to raise funds for the new church.
Some unhappy horse stories
Whoever quipped “get a horse!” should reconsider.
One concerning event occurred in 1875 when Mrs. Nutting and the children were out in their horse-drawn carriage at Six Street and Walnut Alley. Louisa had disembarked to visit a friend, granting the children permission to drive the carriage a short distance. They attempted too sharp a turn, upsetting the carriage and throwing the horse on its side.
Despite being shaken, thankfully all were well, including the horse. Just a year before a more tragic story had unfolded, the fatal fall of 14-year-old James Coleman from his horse in Brickerville.
Twenty-years later their son Harry, “a noted gymnast and horseman” was kicked in the knee while working in the stable. Dr. John Gloninger, the family physician and son of George Washington acquaintance John Gloninger, recommended skin grafts to heal the wound. Harry’s brothers and six friends showed up at the Chestnut street mansion, each donating a piece of skin from his arm, which the doctor applied to the knee. The operation was successful.
Finally, a horse proved the demise of Lyman Nutting. At age 68 he died of lockjaw (tetanus) “superinduced by a kick on the arm from a vicious horse.” While the family was away at their Chautauqua cottage in Mt. Gretna, Lyman remained working in Lebanon where he suffered the kick. He visited the family at the cottage on Sunday, complaining of his injury. He returned to the doctor on Monday, only to die that evening.
His obituary told of his extensive holdings in real estate and mentioned his Cornwall farm. He had kept a farm in Pine Grove all of those years after moving to Lebanon and was frequently mentioned in the local Pine Grove Herald as a prominent citizen.
He was lauded for the magnificent five-story structure and business block opposite the courthouse. In years later his son Harry would use the building to house “The Scenic,” Lebanon’s first movie theater.
Also mentioned in the obituary was the fact that Lyman Nutting was cousin of “our townsman” W. K. Woodbury, Esq. Woodbury began practicing law in Pottsville and Pine Grove, and later in Lebanon County.
After his death, Lyman’s sons continued in managing his firms, including the Edison Illumination Company. William and Harry expanded Lebanon Market House Company to consolidate other market houses in Lebanon.
Louisa lives on
Lyman’s penchant for real estate was carried on by Louisa after his death in 1893. As mentioned in the beginning she had already been very active in the 1883 development of the Home for Widows and Single Women.
Into the 1900s numerous real estate transfers are listed in her name in all quadrants of Lebanon. She seemed to be liquidating properties Lyman had owned to sustain her lifestyle.
She sold the family cottage at Mt. Gretna for $900 and bought lot #68 for $50, perhaps downsizing but still participating in the Chautauqua lecture programs.
She continued living at 239 Chestnut Street, dying on August 1, 1919 with a modest estate. The house passed to her daughter Mary who lived there until 1949.
Continuing in the series – a look at the interesting life of A. Gilbert DeHuff’s brother Jacob; and more on Lebanon’s early industries.
Story Credits
John DeHuff (background and photos), and Mike Trump (maps and photos).
Questions about this story? Suggestions for a future LebTown article? Reach our newsroom using this contact form and we’ll do our best to get back to you.
Free news isn’t cheap. If you value the journalism LebTown provides to the community, then help us make it sustainable by becoming a champion of local news. You can unlock additional coverage for the community by supporting our work with a one-time contribution, or joining as a monthly or annual member. You can cancel anytime.
More Top Stories
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
