Ithaca Daily Journal, August 20, 1904, p. 6
SLATERVILLE RESORTERS MISTAKE HIM FOR A SAVAGE.
Claims to be A Now Arrival from Gormany Who Had Lost His Way While Walking from the Sea To Villace In Pennsylvania.
The finding of a half starved foreigner in the wood near Slaterville Springs, who had lost his way and because be could not speak English had been unable to make people understand that he needed food, caused quite a sensation among the fashionable summer people in that village yesterday,
For six days the man had been living in a small shanty on the farm of Lyman Ellis. Potatoes that he dug from nearby felds and cooked in an old tin pail over a small fire bad been his only food. He was on the verge of insanity when found, and in fact was thought to be a wild man when first seen. The only clothing the man wore consisted of trousers, a coat and a pair of heavy shoes several sizes too large. He had lost his hat and his gaunt looks and unkempt hair gave him the appearance of a savage. He had been seen several times and badly frightened some persons of whom he had tried to get food.
Finally Constable Henry Lyme was detailed to make an investigation. He found the man cooking potatoes in the shanty but could not understand his foreign tongue. He was taken to the home of Dr. W. C. Gallagber, and was fed and afterwards to the Fountain House where Mrs. Theodore Dobrin was able to converse with him in German.
He spoke fluently in this laguage and to the interpreter had the appearance of being a scholar. He stated that he came to thie country four weeks ago from Everfelt, Germany, and that be wanted to reach relatives in Sunbury, Pa., on the Susquehanna river, where be would be able to get employment in a silk mill, he being an expert dyer.
According to the remainder of his story as understood by Mrs. Dobrin he had shipped his personal effects including 60 marks in German money, all that he had in the world, to Sunbury and had set out for that place on foot. He followed the Susquehanna river for a great distance but finally the river came to an end he said, and then he did not know where he was. It is thought that he might have got sidetracked on a tribusary and after reaching the head of that smaller stream wandered in the direcion of Slaterville, a great distance out of his way.
Being unable to make his needs known he suffered for the want of food. He appeared to be too proud to beg and stated that he had an idea that persons who did not have visible means of support would be returned to their own country. The people at Slaterville offered him assistance which at first he refused to accept. Finally however, Dr. Gallagber and Constable Lyme took bim to the Lackawanna station at Caroline and started him for Sunbury.
Constable Henry Lyme was born in July 1856. He married Mary Dean of Candor in 1884. They had five children. Mary died in 1907. Lyme remarried in 1922 to Mrs. Alida Leebody of Cortland. The marriage did not last more than a year before they divorced. Lyme died on 26 July 1928.
In addition to serving as constable and later highway superintendent, Lyme is better known as the proprietor of two Slaterville hotels. He first bought the Magnetic Springs House, which had fallen into bankruptcy, in 1909. Unfortunately that hotel burned to the ground in 1911. He purchased Card's Hotel from E.H. Card in 1912, when Card retired, renamed it Lyme's Hotel, and owned it until 1924. The building passed into the hands of the Grange, which owned it until the mid-1960s, when the Slaterville Fire Company bought the place, demolishing it in 1964 to make room for an expanded fire hall.
Lyme's Hotel was known not just as a place to stay but as an entertainment venue, offering food, music, and dancing in Lyme's Hall, a second building that had been constructed behind the hotel. Local organizations used Lyme's for meetings and benefits. The ladies of St Thomas Church chose it for many years for their chicken dinners, and, in a neat twist, after the hotel was demolished, continued to use the location for their spaghetti dinners at the fire hall.
In this ad from 19 October 1921 Lyme uses one of several aliases that he gave his hotel. The Slaterville House was an earlier name of the Magnetic Springs House which came up for grabs when the MSH burned in 1911. The use of the same name for two different hotels has caused some confusion among historians.
(You can hear Happy Bill Daniels play at the Fountain House page of the Tour Six Mile Creek web site. Click the speaker icon to the left of the image slider to turn on the audio.)