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.
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.
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