Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 3, 1991 TAG: 9101310191
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The town was named for Gen. Andrew Lewis, the Indian- and redcoat-fighter buried in Salem. Lewis, who was living in Augusta County at the time, first came to Greenbrier County on a surveying expedition in 1751. Twenty-three years later, he embarked from what was to become Lewisburg to defeat Cornstalk and the Shawnee Indians at the battle of Point Pleasant.
The grateful citizens of the frontier community named the town for Lewis, but the bold general decided to spend the last 10 years of his life in the Richfield area west of Salem.
Nevertheless, Lewisburg prides itself on the general's adventures in the area, just as it does on its many 18th- and 19th-century buildings and its deep sense of history.
"Lewisburg has been preserved rather than restored," says Jim Morgan.
Morgan and his wife, Mary Noel Morgan, own the General Lewis Inn, a warm and comfortable hotel chock full of antiques. The oldest section of the General Lewis, which overlooks Washington Street, was built in 1834. It opened as an inn in 1929 when Mary Noel's parents began the business.
The Morgans retired to Lewisburg from New Jersey, where Jim worked for du Pont, to operate the inn. That was more than eight years ago.
Its lobby boasts beamed ceilings and a working fireplace. Candlesticks and Windsor-style chairs give the dining room period atmosphere, and the menu includes such entrees as roast duck, grilled swordfish and lamb chops. A sign taped to the inn's front door asks guests to wipe their feet and to please not let the cat in.
The interior of the inn has changed little since Mary Noel's parents first opened its doors to the public. In fact, the whole town is much the same.
"I first came to Lewisburg in 1942, and there has been very little change," Jim Morgan says. "The storefronts retain the same facades they had then."
The centerpiece of the town's historic architecture is the Presbyterian Old Stone Church, a simple but impressive limestone structure that has been in continuous use since 1796. Elegantly shaped folk-art gravestones in the adjoining cemetery testify to the skill of an early 19th-century carver. During the Battle of Lewisburg in the Civil War, the church served as an emergency hospital.
After the Union victory, Col. George Crook refused to allow the Southern sympathizers in the town to bury the 95 Confederate dead. They were piled in a mass grave without ceremony in the Old Stone Church's cemetery. After the war, they were moved to an area nearby and given their own cemetery.
The church and cemeteries are just part of a historic complex that includes the former Greenbrier College for Women campus and the North House, an 1820 structure that houses the Greenbrier Historical Society's museum.
Lewisburg offers more than you'd expect in a town of 3,700 residents. It has two bookshops, several antiques stores, a tea and coffee emporium, a movie theater that serves soup and sandwiches in its balcony and a Quilts Unlimited store where it's not unusual to find prices on new handmade quilts above the $1,000 mark.
In a crafts store, a man with a ponytail to his waist talks about the Sumerian Empire, while at the Blue Moon Cafe next door carefully barbered golfers talk about their game.
Because it's a county seat, Lewisburg has more than its share of lawyers as well as doctors from the staff of a neighboring hospital.
But the 1960s drew homesteaders to the area, many with an arts background, says Vivian Conly who serves as executive director of the town's Carnegie Hall. Their influences can be seen in the craft stores and galleries up and down the main drag.
The town's specialty stores and historic buildings bring tourists off of Interstate 64 and draw weekenders from Charleston two hours away.
"Our tourism has quadrupled in the last couple of years," says Marty Roark of the visitors' bureau.
Sandy Carter, who operates the popular Blue Moon Cafe with his wife, Lisa, has had an opportunity to take the pulse of the tourist industry.
"There has been an increase in traffic on I-64, and we're a good stopping point," Carter says.
"I know from talking to customers that Lewisburg strikes them as something you only see in movies. It's an active small town. It's not a dying small town.
"The human psyche responds to continuity, and that you can find in Lewisburg."
by CNB