The Guy House Hotel was operated as a hotel on a regular basis up until the mid 1920’s when it was run by Mrs. Don E. (Mary A.) Ashley, daughter of Augustus Guy, Mr. and Mrs. Howard Boyd and Mr. and Mrs. David Bird. In 1928 the hotel was purchased by Frank W. Childs. Frank’s wife, Alice ran it as a hotel for two year. Frank made some structural changes in 1929 and 1930 and again around 1944. It was used as a large garage for repairing automobiles, as a welding/manufacturing shop, and hardware from 1928 until 1961. July 1976 the 125 year old edifice was razed and a United States post office soon was erected in its place.

 

Through the late 1800s and early 1900s the Guy House Hotel was the pride of the area, an impressive structure in its day. For many years the hotel was popular with school teachers, traveling businessmen and later mail carriers. The hotel register was of interest as it contained signatures of prominent residents of the community such as John Brown, the abolitionist and old manuscripts and autographed letters of prominent people such as Roger Alden, one of the proprietors of Meadville and James Buchanan, Pennsylvania Senator and President of the United States.

 

A story was told by Ancinohie Corey that in 1918 she was renting a room at the hotel while she taught school in the area. A clothes line was strung in the ballroom for people to hang their laundry. Under garments in those days were made from feed sacks and the advertisement regarding the feed was printed on the sack. Ancinohie said, "A rather large lady’s under panties were on the line and the advertisement regarding the feed sack was still on the cloth and it read, for family use only."

 

In 1859 the village of Guys Mills was made sad to hear the news of a fallen friend, John Brown. He seized the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia and was hanged at Charlestown, Virginia for treason. John Brown at one time owned property and lived in New Richmond Twp., Crawford County, near Lyona, PA, five miles from Guys Mills. His property is located on the John Brown Road T300. Some of his family is buried on this property. The foundation of his tannery was still there (2005). Part of the rope that was used to hang him was taken back to Lyona. The North considered his gallows as the cross of a martyr. Lincoln brooded over his fate and Longfellow wrote about his execution, "This is sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind which will soon come." In 1860 Guys Mills consisted of a half dozen houses, a hotel, a general store, a saw mill, two churches, a fast growing school system and a post office.

 

Eighteen Sixty the Pony express was a thrilling part of the early American history. It ran from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California a distance of 1900 miles. The trip was made in ten days. Forty men each riding fifty miles a day dashed along the trail on 500 of the best horses the west could provide. To conserve weight clothing was light; saddles were extremely small and thin. There were no weapons carried. The mail pouches were flat and of a conservative size. Postage was $5.00 per ounce. They went overboard to conserve weight, and space so that the horse was carrying the least amount of weight as possible to cover the greatest distance in the shortest amount of time. In spite of all those precautions to keep the weight down every rider carried a full sized Bible. It was presented to him when he joined the Pony Express and he took it with him in spite of all weight precautions, why, because the scripture was deemed standard equipment. God was important to the people of those frontier days and they recognized the need of daily searching the Word and giving heed to it with all readiness of mind. We can learn a lot from our ancient paths and learn to walk them again.

 

It is hard to believe that the little tributary of Woodcock Creek that dribbles through Guys Mills could supply enough power for a saw mill. The creek was dammed near the present bridge where the fire hall now stands. This created a huge millpond that flooded the western part of the valley in Guys Mills. The mill was located behind where the little stone building now sits. The mill wheel caught the water that ran rushing over the dam and across the mill race and thus powered the mill. Guy’s Mill was kept in continuous operation for many years. The mill however, was used only as a grist mill after 1865. The millrace didn’t supply adequate power for the operation so a huge gasoline engine was added at a cost of three thousand dollars. This huge engine was quite a spectacle and children were known to sit at the mill just to watch it run.

 

The mill’s gas engine burned fifty gallons (one barrel) of gasoline daily. Although gasoline only cost twelve cents per gallon, a less expensive mode of operation was pursued. The owners felt that the profits would increase if they could supply their own fuel. Around 1861 a 100 foot deep natural gas well was drilled behind the mill. No gas was ever found, but the well did produce a very small amount of oil, about a barrel a day. This was one of several wells in Guys Mills’ history. Oil had been discovered two years earlier on a Sunday morning, August 28, 1859 in Titusville, PA. Rumors ran rampant about the oil in Guys Mills and an area newspaper ran a story that oil had been struck in Guys Mills! The article stretched the barrel a day yield to five hundred barrels a day! Around 1861 John D. Rockefeller, a resident of Cleveland, Ohio decided to visit Oil Creek near Titusville, PA. He was considering the possibility of investing in the oil business. On his way to Titusville he stopped in the village of Guys Mills to investigate the news of the oil found there. Four years later in 1865 he sold his interest in a grain commission house and invested in oil. He concentrated on the idea of refining the oil, without which the oil was of little general use. By 1868 he and his partners one of which was Eugene Daniels, husband of our Ethel May Childs Daniels, owned the world’s largest refinery. Competition among the refiners was great and that among the railroads even greater. Some of the rail magnates were making secret deals with refiners, offering them rebates on every barrel shipped, while charging nonparticipatory refineries far more. To further this practice the magnates formed the South Improvement Company (SIC) which Rockefeller joined. The reaction of independent producers and refiners along Oil Creek was fierce. A shipment to Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Refineries was physically blocked and a forty day embargo ensued. The railroads gave way, and the legislature at the command of the independent producers revoked the charter of the SIC. Rockefeller was not stymied by this turn of events. During the "oil wars" he had gained control of twenty of the twenty-six refineries in Cleveland. His position was strong, and he knew the oil producers and other refiners were anxious to make profits once again. He made peace and proposed friendly cooperative control of the industry, a sort of alliance that would end the bitter competition, undercutting of prices, and overproduction that seemed to be ruining the industry. By the fall of 1872 approximately 80% of all the refining firms in the United States had joined the National Refiners Association, which Rockefeller served as president. He rapidly brought over to his own Standard firm and some of the key men from other enterprises, bought up a number of additional refineries especially in the Oil Creek region, expanded his own pipeline system, and then bought a third interest in the Vandergrift pipeline which had long served the independent oil producers. Eugene Daniels invested $300,000, but lost it through industrial sabotage, according to family tradition. Rockefeller and Standard’s interests soon became worldwide, yet it was his successful work in Cleveland and more particularly in Crawford and Venango counties that provided the essential foundation for his industrial enterprise and great fortune.

 

In 1860 the new nation of only seventy-five years lay under a heavy burden regarding slavery. Rumors of unrest were heard through out the nation. In 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected president. South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union. In 1861 the news raced across the nation, "They have fired on Fort Sumter." This was the beginning of the Civil War. The nation was divided and the blood of our people was spilled across the land. The average age of the soldiers to fight in this war was sixteen years old. Lucius Childs and his brother Joseph Orson Childs of Richmond Township and Dewitt Childs of Randolph Township served in the War Between the States. The Union forces captured Roanoke Island, North Carolina. The Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas was fought. The war was all across the land. In 1863 President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves. Robert E. Lee was defeated at Gettysburg. Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address. In 1864, the motto, "In God we trust" appeared on United States coins for the first time. Abraham Lincoln was elected for the second term in 1864. April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee, Commander of the Confederate Army surrendered at Appomattox Court House to General Ulysses S. Grant, Commander of the Union Army ending four years of war. The worst ship disaster in United States history occurred when the ship Sultana exploded on the Mississippi River with 2300 soldiers on board, 2134 of whom were Union soldiers returning from Confederate Prison Camps, 1700 died. In 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery became law.

 

April 14, 1865 our beloved President was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth while attending a play at the Ford’s Theatre in Washington. As he sat in the theater beside his wife he was leaning in his chair and talking to her. He said, "Mary, you know what I would like most of all in the world to do? I would like to take you with me on a trip to the Near East. We could go to Palestine. We could visit Bethlehem, where He was born." At that point John Wilkes Booth stepped into the box, Lincoln continued, "We could go to Nazareth and Bethany." Booth lifted the gun toward the President’s head. "And Mary," he continued, "We could go up to Jeru--." After Lincoln was fatally wounded by a bullet wound to is head his body was carried to the Peterson Boardinghouse. There Lincoln lay for nine hours before dying. Death came to him at 7:22 the next morning.

By 1874 Guys Mills had grown to about twelve dwellings and added to what it already had, another general store, a blacksmith’s shop, a wagon shop, another church and a newly erected schoolhouse.

 

In 1880 Guys Mills’ population had multiplied to one hundred fifty residents. In 1885, this growing trade center had added another tin shop, a harness shop, another blacksmith’s shop, two carriage shops, two furniture stores, a feed and grain store, a new steam and water grist mill, a cheese factory, another hotel, two more doctors and three societies. The population at this time was about two hundred. The four general stores in the village are said to have been filled with a much greater and more varied stock of goods than was usually found in a town of its size. Traveling salesmen claimed they sold more goods in Guys mills than any other stop on their routes.

 

In those days a general store was much more than just a place to buy. It was often the center of daily community activity. Elderly men came to sit outside and whittle the afternoon away. In the absence of modern communication, ladies came to discuss everything from millinery to marriage. Little boys came to eye the licorice whips and jawbreakers. Some early general store keepers were so proud of their selection that they called their establishment "Department Stores."

 

The war with Mexico ended. Our nation was at war with Spain. The Spanish American War was fought in the 1898. In 1908 Den Smith bought Jacob Guy’s grist mill. It was common for him to buy several railroad cars of corn from the Midwest in a month. This was ground and sold for animal feed when the corn, supplied by area farmers, couldn’t meet the demand. Den Smith ran the mill until 1915. After the mill had sat vacant for a couple of years, Percy Bradford and William Wright bought it with hopes of rejuvenating the establishment into a profitable business, but big hopes were not enough and the landmark mill was permanently abandoned around 1920. The gasoline engine was sold and moved signaling the official close of the century-old establishment that named the town.

 

In 1948 Guys Mills supported a population of four hundred residents. At that time the community contained Childs’ manufacturing plant, three garages, two general stores, two churches, a post office and a modern consolidated school. From 1928-1961 the business establishment of Frank Childs kept the community humming.

 

In 1965 the village consisted of a church, post office, the Randolph Volunteer Fire Department, Boyd’s Store, office of Dr. Paul T. Poux, Peg Heme’s Beauty Shop, Mattis’ Rug Weaving business, Terrill’s Garage, Kaputa’s Service Station, Grange Hall, Randolph East-Mead Township Building, Meadville Telephone Company Exchange Building, Headquarters of the Erie National Wildlife Refuge, Union Cemetery, a modern consolidated elementary school and high school, and approximately seventy-five homes.

 

Two centuries ago Guys Mills was an important crossroads. When horses and carriages provided the main mode of transportation, Guys Mills was a convenient place to stop and rest for eastern county residents traveling to their county seat in Meadville. Travelers arriving in Meadville by train and continuing on to points east and the Titusville oil fields made Guys Mills an overnight stopping place. Today, removed from any main traffic arteries, Guys Mills is not a stopping off place.

 

On April 17, 1971 Grace Childs Skiff, great great granddaughter of 1780 Isaac Childs and daughter of Clyde and Mary Flint Childs moved from the village of Guys Mills to Meadville on Franklin Pike. Granddaughter of Clyde and Mary Childs, Cecile Childs Stewart lived at Blackash until nineteen hundred and eighty-five. This ended 164 years and 7 generations of history of the Childs family in connections with the village of Guys Mills, except for precious memories and many loved ones buried there.

 

May 24, 1976 Mitchell and Eloise Kosanovic sold the guy House to Lawrence E. Hurst and Thelma R. Hurst, his wife of Waterford Township, Erie Co., PA for $6000.00. The deed was recorded in the Crawford Co., Courthouse in Meadville, Pennsylvania.

 

In July 1976 my sister-in-law, Marilyn Childs Mears called us to say that the Guys House was going to be razed and she had obtained permission for the family to go through it. Norman, our children and I quickly made plans to return to Guys Mills. On July 5, 1976 we spent the afternoon roaming through the building, remembering and showing our children special features of the building and telling of happy memories. It was breath taking to open a door to a closet or a cupboard and find items setting just as the family had left them some fifteen years earlier.

 

Within several weeks the building was razed and a contractor was hired to erect a United States Post Office on the Guy House Property.

The Guy House Hotel after it had been razed.