The Strong Inn

Birthplace of Grandma Hoerner

----- Excerpted from Manhattan/Riley County

Preservation Alliance newsletter, Dec. 2009 

Photo courtesy of the Riley County Historical Society

   Recently purchased by a great, great, great, granddaughter of Henry and Elenora Strong, the historic stone house at 1916 Beck Street in Manhattan has returned to the ownership of its original family.

   Henry Strong, born in 1831 in Bolton, Connecticut, came to Manhattan in 1856.  Early on he worked as a freighter or “bull whacker,” driving wagons from Leavenworth to Santa Fe and along the Smoky Hill Trail to Denver.

   In the spring of 1858 Henry made his way back to Connecticut to marry his second cousin, Hariette Elenora Strong, born in 1835, also in Bolton, Connecticut.  After their wedding on June 1 of 1858, they settled into a log house at the foot of Bluemont Hill west of today’s water pumping station.

   Henry was a master mason with a quarry near his house.  The quarry supplied stone for some of Manhattan’s most prominent buildings, including Anderson Hall on the Kansas State University campus.  Henry was also a farmer and dairyman; his was the first dairy in the area.  He also had the largest apple orchard in Kansas.

   Family lore holds that before and during the Civil War the Strongs were part of the Underground Railroad between Topeka and Nebraska City which helped escaping slaves avoid capture from bounty hunters.  Henry dug a cave in a tree and brush-filled ravine near his home to shelter escaped slaves.  Since harboring escaped slaves was a federal crime, this was dangerous work.  In later years the cave was used to store apples.

   Elenora was an educated woman who taught school in Eastbury, Connecticut, before her marriage.  Upon arriving in Riley County she held a small private school in her log home where she taught the boys of the area.

   The county’s original Strong School, the first public school to be organized, started in 1862.  School was held in the loft of the Strongs’ stone barn.  Later Henry donated the stone to build a proper school which was named the “Strong School.”

    After a fire destroyed their log house, Henry and Elenora built their stone house in 1867, near the barn.  This is the house that has recently returned to family ownership.

   Henry and Elenora had six children:  Freddie Robinson, Grace Rosette, Clayton Noah, Evangeline Hortense, Fairy Josephine, and Emory Wells Hyde.  Freddie died of cholera at age 9 months.  Emory died of lockjaw at age 6.  Married daughter, Evangeline “Vangie” Hortense Strong Baxter died on December 22, 1891, at the age of twenty-three under mysterious circumstances.  She was found hung in the apple orchard, a probable suicide which was sensational news in the community.

  Vangie and her two children, Emory Serano Baxter and Mabel Evangeline Baxter, both born in the Strong house, were living with Henry and Elenora before Vangie’s death.  The children’s father, Fred Baxter, was working a mine surveying job in Cripple Creek, Colorado.  It fell to Henry (sixty years old) and Elenora (fifty-six) to take on the responsibility of raising Emory (age 3) and Mabel (age 6 months).

  Mabel grew into the role of grandmother’s helper. “Elenora cooked huge vats of apple butter each fall for both local consumption and shipment.  Later, her granddaughter would work with her and Mabel would remember the autumn air being filled with the sweet, spicy aroma of apple butter bubbling in the large vats.  They would also prepare jars and jars of applesauce each fall, and so, at an early age, Mabel was cooking applesauce—something that she would become famous for some ninety years later.“

   The above quote is from the late Bonnie Jean Hoerner’s family history titled Pioneering on Route 66 and Beyond.  The book is available for sale at the Riley County Historical Museum and may be checked out from the Manhattan Public Library.

   The family applesauce recipe has been adapted for large scale commercial production and Mabel Baxter Hoerner is widely remembered today in the persona of “Grandma Hoerner.”  

   A large highway sign at Interstate 70’s exit 324 directs visitors to Grandma Hoerner’s 37,500 square foot production facility including warehouse, offices, and a retail store.  The company’s success can in large part be attributed to the Strong apple orchard and family applesauce recipe.

   Elenora Strong died in 1917 and Henry in 1922.  The house was sold out of the family in 1924.  Strong descendant Rachelle Routh (great great great granddaughter of Henry and Elenora Strong) and her husband Doug recently purchased the property, reuniting the house with the family.

   On November 7th the Kansas Historic Sites Board of Review placed the Strong House on the Register of Historic Kansas Places.  The Board will consider recommending the house for National Register status at a future meeting.

   The house is now available as a short term rental (nightly, weekly, etc.) subject to the rental regulations of the City of Manhattan.  The designation as a “rental unit” is distinct from that of “bed and breakfast.” 

More information is available on www.stronginn.com.  Rachelle Routh can be reached at 785-313-5167 or  r_routh@hotmail.com. The full version of this December 2009 newsletter article is available at the Manhattan/Riley County Preservation Alliance’s website, www.preservemanhattan.org.