Sadler-Swindell-Lupton Buildings

The building with the people standing on the front porch is the Sadler, Swindell & Lupton Hotel. The center building is a cabin used by S.S. Mann for a law office. The downstairs of the building on the right was a general store and the upstairs was the Lodge Hall for Masons, Eastern Star, Odd Fellows and Rebekahs.

What have been claimed to be the first tourist cabins in the United States were built over 100 years ago near the Swan Quarter courthouse by W. Benners Swindell for lawyers and judges. There were five or six cabins, each with two rooms with private entrances and a connecting chimney.

When Sam Sadler acquired the property in 1872, he moved the cabins across the road in front of what is now the front entrance to the Agricultural Building. Later, Swindell purchased the property which included the line of cabins, a large house, which he operated as Swindell Hotel, and a store building. These buildings were located on the corner of Landing Road and Courthouse Square.

In conjunction with the hotel, Swindell ran a livery stable, which was located where the telephone exchange building stands today.

In 1906 Silas Swain Lupton purchased the Swindell property. He continued to run the livery stable and to operate the hotel, which he called Lupton Hotel.

In 1916 Mr. Lupton moved his mercantile business from Sladesville, where it had been established in the late 1800's, to Swan Quarter. He located the business in the store building and operated a general store including groceries, shoes, dry goods, notions and patent medicines.

From 1933-1937 William I. Cochran ran the Economy Store in the Lupton Building. He sold groceries and meats.

The two-room houses on the Lupton property served a number of purposes other than for traveling lawyers and judges and law offices of S.S. Mann. Sanford Brinn's Barber Shop, operated in the early 1900's, was in the cabin next to the livery stable.

Miss Zulinka Swindell, daughter of Benners Swindell, taught private school in one of the cabins, Clement Credle and Annie Credle, brother and sister of Mrs. Marriotte Berry, were among the 1904 graduates.

Dick Lupton, one of the Lupton heirs, is still using one of the cabins for storage. Mrs. Eloise Lupton Credle, another heir, remodeled one of the cabins for a utility house. These two cabins and the hotel are all that remain of the Sadler, Swindell, and Lupton Buildings.

(Photo and information from Hyde County History published by the Hyde County Historical Society in 1976.)