by Anna Doris Shanks
My mother and dad grew up living within 15 miles of each other, but not until they were in their late teens to early twenties did they become acquainted. Irvin said they met at a picnic. Frances said it was a 'froggin' party.' I'm thinking a picnic outing turned into a froggin' party at sunset.
When Irvin and Frances were young the shell of a stone building stood on the banks of Doe Run Creek. Long ago, in 1778 Squire Boone, Daniel Boone's brother, named the creek Doe Run because great numbers of deer were seen. Bison and elk were also attracted to the sulphur and salt licks. Once upon a time it had been a thriving mill that fierce competition in the area forced out of business.
It stood empty until 1897 when new owners improved the neglected structure and opened a fashionable inn where people 'took the waters' to improve their health. Although sulfur wells emit a distinctive rotten-egg smell, the water was thought to have healing properties. Sulphur Wells Hotel was a summer resort and people came from miles away to stay at the inn, drink the water and to take baths in hopes their ailments would be cured.
Hand-hewn timbers and native limestone were the principle building materials, and each wall is over 24” thick. An old record book shows a payment made to Tom Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln’s father), who worked as a stone mason on the newer part of the building. The surrounding area was wooded with a very romantic singing creek roiling in runs and trills. The deserted ruin of the inn was easy ignored, as was the distinctive odor of the surviving wells. Frances grew up just across the road from Doe Run and, along with her cousins and friends, considered the site a magic land to be roamed and explored.
Irvin was a farm boy, the third son in a family with six children. Probably the largest chasm between the possibility of their friendship was religion. Frances people were Baptist and Irvin's were Catholic. The exception to the rule was Frances' Powell cousins. Her uncle had married a resolute Catholic woman, and they had nine children. The five girls were near Frances' age and were probably her favorite people in the world. So she did not consider being Catholic to be in concert with the devil. One of the girls, Jane, had recently graduated from high school with Frances. Jane was Irvin's date on that summer afternoon's picnic that morphed into a froggin' hunt as the sun's rays began to wane. Within Doe Run's overgrown banks there were numerous secluded hidey-holes to invite intimate searches for 'frogs' in the cool of the evening. Flickering lights of fire flies supplied the only illumination, and those growing up just across the road would be familiar with all the best spots.
Frances' admiration for her pretty, vivacious cousin's appeal to the opposite sex might have been tinged with envy's green-eyed monster. Being one of those rowdy Whelan boys, Irvin was very good looking and may have had a certain 'bad boy' appeal. Whatever the attraction was, Irvin and Frances made a connection that continued to grow. Eventually he would journey as far as Kansas in search of steady employment. Frances would follow and they would be married on July 9, 1936.
Sulphur Wells was again opened in 1947 as Doe Run Inn. It's still a beautiful and very romantic setting. I love the restaurant, and I recall the days mom would take us to run in the fields she ran in and to play in the creek where she played as a child. Learning that Mom and Daddy actually met there gave the Inn's property even greater importance in my perspective.