Mystery solved: same building, new purpose on National Pike
Martin’s Tavern in Pancake, as it appeared about 100 years ago
Nichol Funeral Home, as it appears now
In 1825, a few years after he came to the village just east of Washington, Jonathan Martin built a brick building that he intended to be a tavern and hotel along the busy National Pike.
That building still exists today, although its purpose has changed. The name of the village in South Strabane Township has changed, as well. Originally called Pancake, for tavern owner George Pancake, it was known as Martinsburg during Jonathan’s life. The name was never popular, however, and reverted to Pancake. The signs on Interstate 79, confusingly, read “Laboratory,” a name referring to a patent medicine manufacturer once in business there.
Martin’s Tavern thrived while the National Road did. The Rev. Alexander Campbell, founder of the Disciples of Christ, was a frequent visitor, and Andrew Jackson, seventh U.S. president, spent the night in one of its eight upstairs rooms.
The identification of the building in the week’s Mystery Photo was a difficult one for many of our readers because the design of the house is such a common one. We received several email messages from readers who recognized the structure in many places: on Route 40 west of Washington, on Route 844 in Buffalo Village, in West Middletown and Meadow Lands. Ken Armstrong was quite sure it was his neighbor’s house on South Johnson Road in Houston, and for good reason. The design of the house, its windows, doors and chimneys are the same.
But so, too, are many other buildings of that period in the area. The Century Inn, which operated as a tavern and hotel on the National Road at the same time as Martin’s Tavern, is designed the same, although it is made of stone rather than brick.
The house that Martin built became a private residence in the late 1800s. It was a duplex when purchased in the early 1980s by Marianna funeral director E. Richard Nichol. The Nichol family restored the building and attached the neighboring frame structure to it, opening it in 1985 as a funeral home.
Dona Cundall Hamilton recognized the building as the Nichol Funeral Home right away. “The Plants family lived in the small house in the 1960s. There used to be a large barn where the parking lot is now that was used as a slaughterhouse in the 1930s and ’40s; my uncle worked there as a young man.”
Definitive proof that the Mystery Photo is Martin’s Tavern can be found in “Preserving our Past,” published by the Washington County History and Landmarks Foundation in 1975. There is a picture in that book of the tavern before it was restored and the neighboring house absorbed. The porch posts and trim are identical.
One curious difference can be seen in the chimneys. Originally, there were just two chimneys. When they deteriorated, they were each replaced by dual chimneys that no longer joined at the top of the roof, above the two small attic windows.
“Martin was a genial landlord and made money at tavern keeping. A short distance back from the tavern he had a horse-powered grist mill and carding machine which he operated for a number of years,” wrote Thomas Brownfield Searight in “The Old Pike: A History of the National Road.”