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October 19, 2007



The Wayside Inn

The Wayside Inn was on the big curve as you come into Toano from Williamsburg. It stayed in business much longer than the Felix Hotel.
Drummers would come down on the train and get off here and Uncle Plum, who ran the Wayside Inn, would have horses and carriages. These drummers would rent the horses and carriages and go around to the different little stores.
A drummer is a salesman or a drummer. He came down on the train, and then he would rent a buggy and sell whatever he had to sell.
No telling when The Wayside Inn was built, but it was still there in the 1960’s. I don’t know when it came down.
When I was a child, we used to go up there every Christmas. There was a great big library and they would have a huge fire in the fireplace. They had dances and parties there.
People stopped there on Sundays. It was like a rest place that you go into besides just being a hotel. There was a great big dining room, and all the way down one side was the huge library with the big fireplace. Upstairs, there were lots of rooms. There was a porch all the way round the front and the side and also a porch all the way around the second story.
Uncle Plum kept a livery stable. They didn’t have cars then. You’d get a horse and buggy to go around in, and then come back and spend the night, and sometimes you’d stay there a week at a time.
They didn’t have a complete bathroom then, but they had toilet facilities upstairs and everybody would use those central ones. Each room had a bowl and pitcher. But way back, they had what they called “slop jars”, and the help carried them out. As soon as plumbing came in, they had bathrooms upstairs.
As told by Mildred Taylor Moody
Tales from James City County, Virginia
Oral Histories
Edited by
Nancy Smith Bradshaw
Published by the James City County Historical
Commission, 1993
Mildred Taylor Moody was born on the Drinking Springs Estate across Route 60 from Olive Branch Christian Church on September 26, 1906 and has lived in James City County all of her life. Her parents were Richard Kemper Taylor, Sr. and Nannie Richardson Taylor who were also raised in James City County. Mrs. Moody graduated from Toano High School and attended the College of William and Mary. She taught school in Barhamsville and Toano. She and her husband Rosser L. Moody, who died on February 9, 1969, operated Moody Oil Company in Toano for twenty-five years. Mrs. Moody lived on School lane in Toano.