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| Treber Inn |
When the United States was brand new, the area we now know as Ohio was considered to be part of the Northwest Territory. To facilitate travel and encourage settlement, Congress commissioned Col. Ebeneezer Zane in 1796 to build a road between Wheeling WV and Limestone (now Maysville) KY. Initially no more than a tomahawk blazed trail, over the years Zane’s Trace was widened and eventually paved to become Ohio State Highway 41 today.
Travel by foot or horseback along the narrow trail was slow on the early Trace,
and inns sprang up about every 6 miles.
One was built in 1797 and operated as “Travelers Rest” by Russ’
Great-great-great-grandfather, John Treber. The hewn log building still stands beside Route 41 today.
Not much is known about John Treber's early years. The Trebers were of Dutch ancestry and came to the colonies in the early 18th century. John Treber is said to have fought in the American Revolutionary War. He first appears in official records for his son Jacob’s birth in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in 1779. He, his wife Mary Campbell, Russ' Great-great-great-grandmother and their children floated on barges down the Ohio River to Limestone KY, where Mary died in 1795. John traveled overland to settle in Adams County where he married Mary Ann Earl in 1797. They built and operated the Treber Inn. Mary Anne died in 1818.
Eventually, John and his third wife Catherine Williams retired from
innkeeping/farming and “swapped farms” with his second son, Jacob (Russ’ Great-great-grandfather)
and Jacob’s first wife Jane Thoroman. Apparently, Jane’s delicious biscuits were a draw for travelers. Together they had thirteen children.
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| Politicians gave speeches from this porch |
Politicians often stayed at the Inn on their way East, meeting with local voters and giving speeches from the front porch. Henry Clay (who is said to have coined the phrase “Self Made Man”) was one of these. Andrew Jackson and his entourage stayed at the inn while traveling to his inauguration in 1828.
When Jane passed, Jacob married Mary Ann Freeland, and they had six more children, including Russ’ Great-grandfather Lafayette Traber.
The first time that Jacob voted for president, he voted for Thomas Jefferson. He subsequently named one of his sons (by Jane) Thomas Jefferson Treber, and he named another son (by Mary Ann) after Jefferson's friend the Marquis de Lafayette. His son Lafayette changed the spelling of his last name to Traber with an "a", the spelling that Russ’ branch of the family uses. We hope to meet up with Lafayette again at the end of our trip when we pass through Kansas City, MO.
The Treber Inn is one of the oldest structures in Ohio today. It is privately owned and not open to the
public. There is a monument erected near it by
the Adams County Historical Society with information about it and Zane’s Trace.
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| The entrance to the Treber Cemetery |
The Treber Cemetery is located behind the Inn. It is marked by stone walls on either side of
its drive. It is not only the resting
place of the early Trebers, but there are recent Trebers buried there as
well. Some of the older gravestones are
missing, and there are more recent stone markers erected to commemorate those
individuals, along with cedar trees planted to mark their graves. From Jacob’s actual gravestone, we
learned that he lived to be 97 years old, which is quite impressive for that
time. He fought in the War of 1812. On a sad note, the cemetery also contains the graves of infants who did not survive. One marked the baby as having survived only 24 days.
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| Treber Cemetery |
The stream that passes by the house is called Treber Run on
the map.
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| Jacob Treber b. 1779 - d. 1875 |
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