Page 14 - Tattnall County

them with baths and the most comfortable beds that can be bought!”

The name of Glennwanis Hotel was the name selected for the new hotel, chosen by the hotel company committee after advertising and offering $5.00 in gold as a prize for the most suitable name, which was suggested by Miss Roxanne Hughes. (The name obviously borrows from the town’s name coupled with the Kiwanis Club that promoted the building of the hotel.) The Glennwanis Hotel was frst managed by Dr. and Mrs. J.M. Hughes, who sold their residence on Caswell Street, now known as The Hughes House, to C.A. Nobles for $5000.00. The Hughes’ managed the hotel until September 1, 1928, when W.A. Abercrombie of Athens, Georgia assumed management. Dr. Hughes said he “wanted to spend his entire time practicing medicine.” However, Mr. Abercrombie obviously did not manage the hotel except for a year. The September 29, 1929, edition of The

Glennville Sentinel mentioned: “The Glennwanis Hotel, Glennville’s leading hostelry, is under new management. Mr. J.E. Cabler of Chipley, Florida, has arrived and is in charge of the hotel. Mr. Abercrombie, who operated the hotel before

Mr. Cabler’s arrival, has leased the Cherokee Hotel in Athens and is now operating it.” October 29, 1929, Black Friday, the New York Stock Exchange crashed and plunged America into that long night that we now know as the Great Depression. The old Glennwanis Hotel weathered that economic storm and never closed its doors.

Mr. Cabler’s time at the hotel was obviously a short period because reports mention that by December of 1929, Ola and Grady Trapnell began operating the hotel. Their daughter, Betty Trapnell Burns, was fve years old when the photo on the opposite page was taken. She is the young girl standing on the corner next to the hotel. Betty also had a sister, Etwinda, who was fve years older than she at the time. “It was run strictly as a hotel, but we had regular boarders, too. We lived in the frst two rooms as you entered the hotel, to the right. The frst one was Mama and Daddy’s, and the second one was mine and my sister’s room,” recalled Betty in a September 3, 2009 interview.

“These were the Depression years, really hard ones. Even as a child, I recognized that I was living in the biggest brick house in

ABOVE This photo was taken inside the Glennwanis Hotel in 1960 at a birthday celebration for Dr. A.C. Colson. L to R: Mrs. Ida Tootle, Mr. Dasher (Hal Mann’s wife’s father), Dr. J.M Hughes, Mrs. Edna Tootle, Dr. Charles H. Drake, Mrs. Colson (Dr. Colson’s daughter-in-law,) Dr. A.C. Colson, Col. John Colson (Dr. Colson’s son), Mrs. Maggie Colson, Judge C.L. Cowart (Dan and Carroll’s father), Mrs. Lillian Kennedy, Mr. Ozzie Davis (printer), Mrs. Davis (Marvin Giradeau’s mother), Mrs. Jim Dubberly, and Mrs. Minnie Banks.