As renovations at the Deer's Head Inn continue here, bits and pieces of memorabilia are stowed above the construction zone.

The inn's history boasts famous guests who stayed there.

Mary Brown, the widow of abolitionist John Brown, spent the night of Dec. 6, 1859, en route with his funeral cortege.

History claims that U.S. Presidents Grover Cleveland (a former governor of New York) and Benjamin Harrison stayed at the inn, which was much bigger in its heyday.

What is now known as the Deer's Head was an annex to the former three-story hotel. It was the smaller section that was heated and kept open year-round.

It has held its place on "The Plains" of Elizabethtown for more than two centuries.

It was the site of a raucous counterfeit money raid on July 27 in 1818 when Miss Lucy Willard was innkeeper, according to George Brown's account in the book "Pleasant Valley," published in 1905.

Inn guest Isaac Hogle was arrested for possessing counterfeit money.

But Willard ran out the back door as investigators came through the front. She raced on foot up the Boquet River to Azel Abel's farm and married him the next day.

I guess sometimes crime DOES pay. -Editor

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History surfaces as old inn is restored (www.pressrepublican.com/news/local_news/history-surfaces-as-old-inn-is-restored/article_aae1bd3a-6448-5e53-9946-731004c91b34.html)