The Bluffton Eccentric was the first and only newspaper the town of Bluffton has had in fifty years. We felt such a kinship with them that we asked Graham Bullock, publisher of The Bluffton Eccentric, if we could resurrect articles from previous issues and republish them. Graham graciously gave his permission and loaned us volumes of old papers. It has been a treat for me to read them and it is with great honor that I get to share them with everyone again. So, kick back, relax and get ready for a blast from the past.

The Bluffton Vignette

By Betsy Thayer

t was the summer of 1921 and 10 year-old Jones Henry Columbus All was camping with his family at Estil Beach on the May River, J.C.’s mother fell in love with the beautiful area and brought her children back the next summer. She rented Mr. Lawton’s house and bought a large field from him for a very special dream that she had for her family and for Bluffton.

The first building of the AllJoy Hotel was built in 1923, using wood cut off Ulmer land, cut in the Ulmer sawmill, and built by the Ulmer “boys”. The 12 room summer hotel overlooked Brighton Beach and, what is now, the Public Boat Landing. There were six guest rooms upstairs and six below, along with a big dining room, kitchen, and office. The two screened-in porches served as living rooms, complete with long rows of rocking chairs.

The AllJoy Hotel was open during June, July and August and had all of the modern conveniences of the day...a big wood stove for cooking and gas lamps. There was a flowered china bowl and pitcher on each washstand, a china chamber pot beneath every bed. For cooling purposes, the adjoining guest rooms were open to the ceiling above seven foot partitions to “share” the breeze (to say nothing of the nightly sounds of snores and creaking bed springs). There were several small outhouses over two ditches that were nicknamed “fiddlersville” and a big hand pump over the well that served for showers if one didn’t want to “bathe” in the river.

J.C. All’s wife, Sarita, described the food. “Mrs. All brought cooks with her from Allendale and they kept the long tables in the dining room filled with big platters, piled high with deviled crab, shrimp, and fried flounder. There were steaming bowls of fresh vegetables from farms in the area and loaves of home baked bread. The price of this daily feast was fifty cents.”

The hotel was so successful that a second building was built, similar to the first, except there were 12 guest rooms on the second floor. The first floor housed a bigger kitchen and a much bigger dining room for the people that flocked to eat there.

It became J.C. All’s duty to catch the seafood for this thriving resort and he said, “If I didn’t get enough in the day time, Mother sent me back out at night. The supply was plentiful then. I could row up to the Mengledolf dock and drift back to Pine Island and easily get forty to fifty fish. We didn’t have rods and reels, but bottom fished, using two hooks on each line, baited with shrimp. I caught whiting, croaker, and summer trout. The sea bass were so big that you had to be careful that they didn’t snatch you out the boat.”

“Some of the guests would go out on the river with me in the bateau boat made from one inch thick pine boards,” J.C. said. Others spent the days by the river sunning or swam out to the two tiered diving platform. Some crabbed from a dock made from green pine or went sailing. The baseball field was close by and there were games of horseshoes and croquet. “We had guests come to stay from many places, even one family from Japan,” J.C. remembers, “and they all loved it here.”

After supper the guests gathered on the porches to talk or to sing. Ghost stories were a favorite subject and sometimes, Annette All would suddenly appear in a white sheet to add a little ghostly spice at the right moment. One night, she was so convincing that a “believer” ran through the porch door, taking out the screen as he fled.

During the winter of 1935, there was a fire. Both buildings of the hotel, and two summer homes that had been built nearby, burned to the ground. Although Annette All was unable to rebuild the hotel, she continued to return to Bluffton every summer.

The memories of the AllJoy Hotel remain. You may have realized where the name “All” came from, but now you know the rest of the story...of the “Joy” of Bluffton.