John M. Huff Hotel Hack

Picture from the book “Milton, Pennsylvania, the 19th Century Town on Limestone Run” by Homer F. Folk, courtesy of the Davis family.    John M. Huff bought the Eagle Hotel on Front Street in 1854. It was a log and frame building at the time. He tore it down and built the Huff House Hotel on the same ground in 1870. He died in 1874, and in 1880 the hotel was destroyed in the great fire. My great-great-grandfather, Abraham Angeny, died behind the hotel in the fire. Read more about it here. In 1890 Benneville K. Haag built the Hotel Haag on the same property, which was located at 31 S. Front Street.

The coach or “hack” shown above was used to carry passengers from the railroad stations on Broadway to the hotel. There is a small trailer wagon attached to the back to carry luggage. John Huff and his granddaughter posed for photographer Wheeland, whose building is behind the hack. W. P. Wheeland & Co. was located on the west side of S. Front Street near Broadway when this picture was taken in 1870. It was across from and just north of the Huff House Hotel.

Wheeland appears in a Milton directory from 1858 as the proprietor of an Ambrotype House. Ambrotype was a process that created a positive photographic image on a sheet of glass using the wet plate collodion process. It was patented in 1854 by James Ambrose Cutting of Boston, and was much less expensive to produce than the daguerreotype.