Some Families of Damascus, Virginia, Part V

by Glenn N. Holliman


This is the fifth in a series of stories with photographs of my great uncle and aunt, Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright and their many years of life in Damascus, Virginia.  Pearl is the grand daughter of Isaac and Caroline Greer Wilson of Ashe County, North Carolina. As ever I am grateful to Phyllis Mink, daughter of Doris Osborne Akers,  Bob and Rob Adema, descendants of Gladys Osborne Adema and Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick, a niece of Pearl Osborne Wright and this writer's mother, for making many of the historical photographs available.

Some of these stories may be found under Pearl Osborne's name in Ancestry.com.


According to historian Louise Hall, Dave's father, P.W. Wright constructed a large home in 1898 along Beaver Creek.  The home became a boarding house, an inn if you will, for the travelling lumber and rail road men who frequented Damascus during the boom years from 1901 to 1926.  Being so close to mountain-fed rivers, the large, rumbustious creeks occasionally overflowed.  During a disastrous flood in 1901, water ran through the first floor, stranding guests on the second floor.

As time passed, Dave and Pearl took over running the inn.  For a while in the 1910s, they may have been assisted by another great uncle of mine, Toby Osborne, one of five sons of G.W. and Frances Wilson Osborne, natives of Ashe County, North Carolina.

Left, the Damascus Inn in the 1910s. Notice the picket fence and unpaved street.  The persons on the right and left are believed to be Pearl Osborne and Dave Wright.  The tall gentleman in the middle is unidentified.

The Damascus Inn would serve as the back drop for several generations of family photos, some of which will appear later in this series.  Below the house from a 1910s photograph taken on the bank of Beaver Creek near the town bridge.

 Today the Damascus Inn, the home first of P.W. Wright and later one of his sons, Dave Wright, is a private  home.  In the fall of 2011, a political sign had replaced one from a century earlier that had read 'Damascus Inn'.   The "Inn", a piece of local history, appears well-preserved by the current owners.

Some Families of Damascus, Virginia, Part IV

by Glenn N. Holliman

This is the fourth in a series of articles on Damascus, Virginia and how one family, my great uncle and aunt, Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright, lived and contributed to the well-being of the community in the first half of the 20th Century.
  
In 1901 the Virginia-Carolina Railroad reached Damascus from Abington, Virginia.  Timber began being removed from the thick forests surrounding the cove and covering the high mountains that surrounded the isolated village.  In 1906, the Laurel Line opened to the south connecting Damascus to Mountain City,Tennessee.

Historian Louise Hall describes the Laurel Railway as a narrow gauge operation that often carried young people into the forests for picnics and then picked them up to bring them home.  Below are some photos illustrating Ms. Hall's information.

The names of the persons on this small track car are not known, but one assumes Dave Wright in on the far right and probably his young wife, Pearl Osborne Wright, is sitting in front of him.  If relatives recognize unidentified persons in this and other photographs, please email the writer at Glennhistory@gmail.com. 

As ever we are indebted for the photographs to my second cousin, Phyllis Ackers Mink, whose mother, Doris Osborne Ackers, grew up in Damascus from 1923 until her marriage to Elmer "Flea" Ackers in the 1930s.  Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright may be the couple (right picture) on the far right side of the person in the dark jacket.  The man in the dark coat may be Dave's brother, Ward Wright, who also lived in Damascus.


Railroads served Damascus until 1926 when operations ceased as the timber had been harvested.  Economically the trains could not survive with out the trees.  Later many of the privately owned forests were purchased by the U.S. Government and have become national forests.  This is another story, one of the Civilian Conservation Corps locating a camp near Damascus during the New Deal.  The CCC location would impact the lives of the Wrights and Osborne siblings.