Temperance House

The Temperance House (sometimes called Mackey's Hotel and Mackey's Temperance House) was a hotel located on the northeast corner of Vienna Center owned and operated by Tensard D. Mackey. The building, owned in the twentieth century by members of the Hull family and known as the Hull House, was razed in 1967. One of the first images (pictured below) of the building appears in Combination Atlas Map of Trumbull County, Ohio: Compiled, Drawn and Published from Personal Examinations and Surveys (Chicago: L. H. Everts, 1874).

A product of the national temperance movement throughout the nineteenth century, the hotel did not sell or allow the consumption of intoxicating beverages on its premises after it was constructed (on the site of the Township's first schoolhouse). The building's construction date is 1871, based on a letter to the editor of the Western Reserve Chronicle (below, left) discussing the completion of a new building constructed on the site of Vienna School Number 1.

The Temperance House was called a "new hotel" in a letter from Vienna resident published on July 10, 1872, in the Western Reserve Chronicle (below, right).

The hotel was for a time a stagecoach stop between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. The building accommodated twenty guests. Its livery stable and barn housed housed eight horses (see advertisement below, which appeared in the Western Reserve Chronicle on May 28, 1873).

Owners

The building was financed and constructed by Vienna businessman and entrepreneur Ira B. Mackey, Sr., and was owned and operated for a time by his younger brother Tensard D. Mackey. The hotel changed ownership throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century and was used as a family dwelling and as a restaurant. Besides Ira B. Mackey, Jr. and Tensard D. Mackey, the property's owners included John Roy, William and George Terry, Era H. Mackey, Mary Fuller, Margaret Treat, and James and Jennie Nolan.

Claude Hull eventually purchased the property and opened a restaurant in 1935, calling it the Country Grille. The business served beer and Hull was the cook there. The Hull family owned the business for about thirty-five years. According to his obituary, Claude Hull retired from the business in 1955. He died just a few years later in 1961 (Find a Grave memorial). According to wife Lulu Hull's obituary, the family ran and operated the business from 1934 until 1965.  Their son, Russell Hull, assumed ownership of the business from 1955 until it closed on December 22, 1965. The building was razed in 1967.  During its last years the business was called Hull House.

The Temperance Movement

The temperance movement was one of several national social and religious reform movements sweeping through the United States from the 1820s to the beginning of the Civil War. Moderation, not abstinence, was the immediate goal of the many temperance societies established at that time. Citizens of Trumbull County formed a temperance society in 1826. In January 1853 the Ohio Women's Temperance Society was formed.

Women in particular were advocates of temperance. Alcohol was blamed for crime, illness, poverty, and domestic abuse, and public drunkenness was perceived as a widespread problem and threat to women. Temperance houses, such as Tensard D. Mackey's establishment, were considered safer for families and for women travelers in this era. These businesses also became symbols of middle-class respectability in the communities in which they were located. Indeed, Vienna was one of the stops of the temperance lecturer Sarah A. Shepard in 1857.

The temperance movement lost momentum during the Civil War (1861-1865), but again gained steam during Vienna's coal boom in the late 1860s and 1870s. Some thirty-two saloons, some mere shacks, sprang up around the mines, but other hotels located at Vienna Center had long served alcohol. On January 9, 1867, Reverend Xenophon Betts, minister of the Vienna Presbyterian Church, and Township residents established a temperance association.

The Underground Railroad

No written primary (first-hand) evidence documents the oft-told tale that the Temperance House was used as a "station" for the Underground Railroad, a secret organization of men and women willing to aid slaves from the 1820s through the 1850s in their flights to freedom in Canada. Oral tradition in the late twentieth century (and not traceable to any earlier era) recounts that escaped slaves were hidden in the cellar of the Temperance House or, alternately, in the stable loft. Even local newspapers, such as the Warren Tribune-Chronicle, reported the building's use as an Underground Railroad station and an earlier construction date (see June 9, 1967 article, below). The 1871-1872 construction date of the Temperance House disproves this myth.

Razed in 1967

The National Historic Preservation Act was passed in 1966 but it was too late to save one of the best-known and -loved buildings in Vienna Township.