A Collection of Vignettes

“A Collection of Vignettes”
The Englewood Telephone Exchange
Member Lora Snell shared historic family photos with the society. It shows the
Englewood telephone exchange which was in a small building attached to the corner of the
Snell home on U.S. Rt. 40 at 105 South Main Street in Englewood. According to a newspaper
article dated 1952, Lora’s mother, Mrs. Marguerite Leon Snell, started as the Englewood
switchboard operator in 1918 when the exchanges were located at the northwest corner of Rts.
40/48 in the Farmers State Bank. She took time off to raise a family in the 1920s but went back
to work in 1939 when the exchange was built onto her residence. (This may have been
necessary when the bank building burned.) She continued to serve as switchboard operator
until dial service reached Englewood in 1952. That same year, John Bergman who was
Randolph Twp. fire chief, asked Mrs. Snell to stay on as the emergency fire dispatch operator
for the village. A special incoming-line only and fire siren switch were put into the building.
When fire calls came in, Mrs. Snell or her daughter Jean could activate the siren at any one (or
all) of four stations: Englewood, Union, Clayton and Irvington. The dispatch operations cost
$3,000 per year. The small building that housed the telephone exchange was taken down and
the house remodeled later by Jean Snell Rohr and her husband Roscoe Rohr.
A Brief History of the Engle Family
Jim Oren relates that his grandparents, Harvey and Minnie Denlinger Engle, married in
1896, first owned a 50-acre farm on St. Rt. 48 now occupied by the Stillwater Center. They sold
that farm when the county expanded the Stillwater TB Sanatorium and Harvey built a new
house south of Little York. Before the family could move, the 1913 flood wreaked its havoc and
even though the new house was not damaged, Minnie refused to move there in fear of another
flood. Harvey then bought about 37 acres on the south edge of Englewood and built a frame
and stone farmhouse and outbuildings. The family moved there about 1915 and continued to
farm the land and stand market in Dayton for many years. The house is gone now but the Villas
of Englewood Apartments (previously Canterbury Runn) now occupy the site at 507 South Main
Street.
Welcome to the Kern Motel
The only motel known to exist along the old National Road in Randolph Township stood
at the northeast corner of Fox Road and U.S. Rt. 40. The farm was purchased about 1948 by
Joseph and Hazel Kern from Dayton. The house that stood on the corner was moved to the east
and a chicken house on the farm was relocated to the corner and remodeled into a small frame
motel with rooms for about eight overnight guests. The house kitchen served as the rental
office when the motel opened about 1950. Joseph died in 1959 and Hazel continued to run the
motel for a while. In later years, the motel rooms were rented out to boarders. In 1965, Hazel
sold the property to the Clayton EUB Church and the motel eventually was torn down.