Wayside Inn
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Wayside Inn is an historic landmark inn located in Sudbury, Massachusetts in the USA. The Wayside Inn is still in operation, offering a high-quality restaurant, historically accurate guest rooms, and hosting for small receptions. It is the reputed oldest operating inn in the country.[1]
The inn is also known as Longfellow's Wayside Inn, a name given to the inn to capitalize on the popularity of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn, a book of poems published in 1863. Longfellow visited the Wayside Inn in 1862, when it was called the Howe Tavern. In Tales of a Wayside Inn, the poem The Landlord's Tale was the source of the immortal phrase "listen my children and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere."
The grounds of the Wayside Inn include a one-room schoolhouse that was moved there from its original location in Sterling, Massachusetts by Henry Ford, who believed the building was the actual schoolhouse mentioned in Sarah Hale's famous poem Mary Had a Little Lamb, though little historical evidence exists to support his belief. Ford also built a replica and fully working Grist Mill and a white non-denominational church, named after his wife "Martha Mary." Lesser known is Ford's attempt to create a reservoir for the Wayside Inn. Across US Rte. 20 and now secluded in a wooded area behind private homes is a 30ft. high stone dam. Dubbed by the locals as "Ford's Folly" the structure failed at its task because the feeding brook provided insufficient volume and the ground was too porous to allow for a pond to grow behind the stone structure. It's most lasting legacy over the subsequent generations has been as a favorite gathering place for local youth.
The proprietors of the Wayside Inn claim that the inn is haunted.
[edit] Establishment as a Museum
Henry Ford was the last private owner of the Wayside Inn. He purchased it in 1923, from Cora Lemon, and he also purchased 3,000 acres of land surrounding the Inn, with the aim of developing it into a historically oriented village and museum. Although his original aims were not accomplished at the Wayside, he did estabish the non-profit institution that operates the Inn and associated museum, watermill, and archives today. He ultimately fulfilled on his desires to create such a museum at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. [2]
[edit] References
- ^ Wayside Inn Historic District, from the National Register of Historic Places. Last retrieved October 2006.
- ^ Wayside Inn History accessed October 1, 2006.
