The "The Neffsville Hotel" Story

The trolley has just stopped at the Neffsville Hotel in this photograph
taken about 1907.  This hotel was built in 1812 by Leonard Fiddler and
later owned and operated by my neighbor Sam Sherman. 

It was an ordinary day.  Talking with the secretary at the Landis Run Inter- mediate School in Neffsville, PA.  I do their yearbook as well as the in-house printing for the school.  She mentioned that she saw me standing in the square in Neffsville taking photos this morning.  Told her that I was writing a story about Hauck's Store that used to stand on the corner and also managed to snap a few photos of the old Neffsville Hotel which was katy-corner from Hauck's.  When Carol and I purchased our first home in the Grandview Heights neighborhood of Lancaster, we lived a few doors from a fellow named Sam Sherman and his wife, Beatrice, and their daughter Estelle.  Sam was quite a few years older than me and we never got to know each other very well, but I did talk to him a few times about the hotel and bar that he ran called the Neffsville Hotel. Seems that Neffsville was originally called "Fiddler's Green."  In 1812 Leonard Fiddler built the first hotel on the square in Neffsville on the northwest corner of the intersection.  He was said to have played his violin regularly under a green tree next to the hotel, thus the name of "Fiddler's Green."  

This is what the same corner looks like today.  The old hotel
is now a flower shop.  It opened in 2003 on the square.

The hotel functioned as such for many years, under different manage- ment, until it was finally purchased and turned into a flower shop. Sam ran the hotel and bar throughout the time that I can remember being a student at the nearby Manheim Township Jr. HIgh and High School.  He eventually closed the hotel and it sat vacant for close to six years before the flower shop added an addition on the south side of the building and opened their store.  The flower shop is still in operation today.  Sam and his wife have since died, but many in Neffsville still remember the glory days of the Neffsville Hotel when Sam ran the place.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.