Legend had it then that this was where the county’s crazy people were locked away, tortured, and then discarded if shock therapy failed to smack them back to reality. It was an insane asylum. Oh yes, and it was haunted. Anyone who dared visit this unmarked and isolated area just off of U.S. Route 40 near Valley Grove in Ohio County, would be chased off by the ghosts of deranged souls intent on revenge for the archaic treatments they had suffered. If the dead demons didn’t scare you away, a crazed man with a shotgun would.

The medical facility was constructed and operated by the state of West Virginia. Initially the staff concentrated on the tuberculosis outbreak, and then it was transitioned into a mental health facility. State officials, however, handed over the facility to the Ohio County Commission, and the county soon closed the hospital in 1972 because of the structure’s condition. After tuberculosis patients were no longer being treated, drug addicts, alcoholics, and the clinically insane received treatments at the former state hospital, a type of facility that was common in the 1950s and 1960s, according to Ohio County Commissioner Orphy Klempa.

Former Ohio County Sheriff’s Deputy Charlie Murphy was frequently dispatched to Roney’s Point between 1978 and 1987, and he has lived his entire life in this area of Ohio County. Many continue to believe the Schmulbach Mansion was used at one time as the sanitarium for tuberculosis patients, but Murphy confirmed that is merely urban myth. “To the best of my knowledge, and I was born in 1955, the mansion was never used as a hospital,” he said.”

His name was Cecil Tominack, a local coal miner whose family resided in the former nurses’ quarters near the hospital. Soon after Cecil was laid off from a local coal mine in 1986, his father, John Tominack, then a county commissioner, hired him to maintain and supervise the grounds. Cecil received zero compensation, but the Tominack family was permitted to move into the former nurses’ house. So Cecil and his wife, Donna Lou, moved their three children (Jeremy, Olivia, and Lindsey) to Roney’s Point.

“The road going up the hill was a yellow-brick road, so that’s what my dad used to make us look forward to living there,” explained Cecil’s middle child, Olivia Litman. “And the house was a really nice place once my parents fixed it up. We had six bedrooms and five bathrooms all on one level. Because it’s where the nurses used to live, there were numbers on the door. No. 4 was where my mother did her sewing, No. 7 was our guest room, and No. 6 was the one Santa visited,” she recalled. “It was a great house, but then there was always that view out of our window of the old asylum, and that was always creepy to me.”

So creepy that Olivia slept with a large, white stick.

“The whole place was like a scary movie, so I had that stick with me until I hit my father so hard with it, he took it away, and he burned it,” she said.

“He was coming into my bedroom to be the tooth fairy, and I whacked him really, really hard. It didn’t matter that my parents always told us that the ghosts up there were friendly ghosts because we were there taking care of their home,” Olivia continued. “There was always some kind of sounds coming from the asylum that sounded like slamming doors. Now I realize it was probably the ceiling collapsing, but when I was a kid, it sounded like unhappy ghosts.”

Olivia and her brother and sister did enter the former hospital, and her parents staged Halloween parties inside. She said when the county closed the facility, a plethora of supplies were left behind.

“I remember seeing a bloody handprint in the operating room, and there were straightjackets lying around everywhere,” she said. “And the basement was filled with nothing but cages and colored rooms. There was a blue room that I was told was used to calm down the patients. There was a red room that was supposed to help patients feel some kind of emotion. There was another room that had nothing but restraints in it, and one entire wall was lined with cages with steel bars and locks on them. It looked like a prison,” Olivia said.

By the time Olivia was in ninth grade at Wheeling Park High School, she realized her fellow students were telling tales about her father and his methods of clearing the grounds of trespassers. Cecil, at times, would fire a warning shot from his shotgun to scatter the high school and college kids. What she heard from her classmates was that if one dared to venture to Roney’s Point, a crazed man would find you and shoot you.

But that was because a homicide took place near the Schmulbach Mansion in the late 1970s. “Soon after I became a deputy, I responded to the scene where a man had shot and killed another man with a shotgun,” Murphy reported. “The shooter found his daughter in the car with this man, and apparently he didn’t like that very much. He shot the man in the left shoulder area, and then put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. And he was tried and convicted for that murder.”

The Tominacks lived in that house until the summer of 1993, when her parents were finished constructing a log cabin. Olivia has returned to the ground only once since. “I had some friends who wanted to take a ghost tour up there, so I got us the permission to go up,” she said. “We walked around it, and the others were pretty scared. But I wasn’t. I just kept pointing out where me and my brother and sister used to play.”

Gone is the yellow-brick road as well as most of the aligned trees that once lined the roadway. On the way to the hilltop a new road has been cut by Chesapeake Energy for fracking per the agreement signed by the Ohio County Commission. The commission signed the deal in 2010 for the county farm’s 490 acres.

No other neighborhood in Wheeling is similar to the Elm Grove section and no other neighborhood has evolved in the manner it has during the past century, and no other possesses the amount of amenities it contains today. Residents of “The Grove” appreciate the convenience factor, and they appreciate the historical importance the neighborhood has had on the story of the Friendly City. “I like to say Elm Grove is where the real people live,” said Gene Fahey, Wheeling’s vice mayor and Sixth Ward council representative. “There are no pretenses here. We are who we are, and we do what we do. “This neighborhood is packed with good people who are willing to fight for improvement and to keep our streets safe for our children. These folks want to take care of each other, and it shows,” he said. “A lot of changes have taken place over the years in Elm Grove, but because of the people. Our residents are the reason why there’s no need to reinvent this area like so many others are in Wheeling.

It was during the 1960s when Elm Grove was sliced and diced by the construction of Interstate 70. The city section lost more than 200 homes and businesses at the time and also an industrial area where the Elm Grove Crossing Mall is currently located. The railroad once ran through it too, but that changed in during the 1980s. The drive-in closed decades ago, and the bowling alley recently vanished from the East Cove Avenue landscape.

“By the turn of the century, the B. & O. Railroad, Elm Grove Coal Mine, and a variety of factories provided jobs for immigrants, primarily from Sicily, some of whose children – notably the Figarettis and Zambitos – became prominent Wheeling restaurateurs. Elm Grove remains a vital community, having transitioned into a retail hub,” author Sean Duffy, program director at the Ohio County Public Library explained.

What has not changed in Elm Grove is the level of convenience in the most eastern part of Wheeling. More than 30 businesses operate along National Road, the Crossing Mall features Riesbeck’s, Family Dollar and Tractor Supply Co., and the Elm Terrace Shopping Plaza offers Ben Franklin, Dollar Zone and Dollar General, as well as a deli and a Hallmark store. The Elm Terrace Shopping Plaza has been

attracting consumers since the 1960s, and still does today. Through the years businesses like Banov Sporting Goods, Stone & Thomas, and Louis Hot Dog have been cornerstone businesses, and the Newmeyer family continues to keep the retail plaza packed with shopping options.

“Elm Grove is all about convenience; it really is,” said lifelong resident Dave Palmer. “Almost everything we need is just a few minutes away in a car, or we can walk where we need to go. “If we can’t get something we need, we’re located just four miles away from downtown Wheeling and only four miles away from The Highlands,”^[4] he continued. “It’s easy-on and easy-off as far as the interstate is concerned, and there are a lot of restaurants, taverns, gas stations, and car dealers. We even have our own DiCarlo’s Pizza.”

Wheeling’s Vice-Mayor and Sixth Ward council representative Gene Fahey said the Kruger Street-U.S. 40 intersection is one of the busiest in the city of Wheeling, but an expected expansion project by the West Virginia Division of Highways (WVDOH) has been delayed for several years. Fahey will continue his efforts to ensure the project takes place in the near future.

The oldest bridge in West Virginia, the Monument Place Bridge, is also in need of attention. A consultant, according to Dave Sada with WVDOH, has been hired, but again Fahey has heard nothing more about addressing the issues of the 1817 span despite the fact it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981. “The DOH is doing nothing proactive right now. Everything is reactive, and that has to change,” the councilman said. “The city even had to come up with the plan to get it restored, and they even liked our plan for the detour. Since then, nothing.”

The citizens of the Grove also are very engaging when it comes to the crimes that take place within the neighborhood. Fahey explain that he attended the community’s monthly crime watch meetings and that an average of 40 residents attend each gathering. “Our streets are quiet, and our kids are safe, and the people here want to make sure it stays that way,” he said. “Violent crimes are very, very rare, but nuisance crimes do take place, so we address those issues. “The people are paying attention, and that’s because they love where they live,” Fahey added. “This neighborhood offers nice, average-priced homes and a lot of affordable rental properties. In fact, Elm Grove could stand as its own community, and I don’t think that can be said about any other area in our city.”

In 1787, the same year in which the convention that framed our National Constitution sat in Philadelphia and in which the unbroken wilderness lying northwest of the Ohio river, was organized into the great Northwest Territory, the “Forks of Wheeling” commonly known as “The Old Stone Church” was organized, one year prior to the organization of “The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America.”

This church, with West Alexander and West Liberty, are known as the eldest church organizations in this community, and like West Alexander has the unusual record of being only in the fifth pastorate after so long a time. During the century and two decades of her history the church as an organization has seen the territorial lines of the Synod, with the church she has been connected, changed seven times and that of the Presbytery four times.

The early pioneers gathered from their cabins in the wilderness, first as a congregation, to worship God, under the wide spreading branches of the venerable oak tree still standing in front of the “Old Stone Church,” and here, seated on rudely constructed seats, they listened, perhaps, to the first public proclamations of the Gospel as it broke the silence of the preceding ages from the lips of Rev. John Brice, who received his theological training from Rev. Joseph Smith of Upper Buffalo – the Rev. Smith of New Orleans flour fame.

Those were the days when it required bravery as well as piety to meet in holy convocation, when Bibles and Psalm books were for devotion and rifles for protection. An old congregational minute book gives this record: “Ohio County no sooner began to be settled than the settlers provided for themselves a place of public worship obtained the preached gospel even in perilous times, receiving the Spiritual Bread with the weapons of defense in their hands to protect themselves from a ruthless savage.”

Rev. Brice was frequently escorted from West Alexander to Elm Grove by armed men of his congregation and as they assembled for worship, at first in the woods and later in a church building, it was with stacked arms and sentries to guard that they listened to the Word preached, but what a change has occurred during the last six score years of the life of that stately old oak that towers above the entrance of that historic edifice, “The Stone Church?” It has afforded peaceful shade for the babe as the anxious mother tarries for a moment, bearing it to be dedicated to God in baptism to the church within, and after a long life of usefulness as friends bear the tenantless body of the loved one to the cemetery beyond, its rustling eaves suggest the moving of angel wings as they bear the spirit to God who gave it. Men have come and gone and still it grows in strength and beauty.

Soon after the organization, Mr. Brice was called as pastor and divided his labors between Forks of Wheeling and Three Ridges – now West Alexander – and continued as pastor over both fields until his death.

Shepherd Hall, as it was known to its builders, or Monument Place, as it is known in modern times, is apparently the oldest house still standing in Wheeling, having been built in 1798, and is closely linked to the history of a prominent pioneer family and to the history of the National Road, which reached Wheeling in 1818.

The builder was Moses Shepherd, and his wife, who with him survived the 1782 attack on Fort Henry, sometimes referred to as the last battle of the Revolutionary War, was Lydia Boggs. She lived until after the Civil War, dying in 1867.

Moses Shepherd was the great great-grandson of the Indian trader Jan Van Metre, who penetrated present West Virginia about 1725; the great-grandson of John Van Metre, who obtained a huge grant of land in the eastern Panhandle in 1730; the grandson of Thomas Shepherd, founder of Shepherdstown, West Virginia; and the son of Colonel David Shepherd, builder of Fort Shepherd on the grounds of Shepherd Hall, and commandant of Fort Henry in Wheeling. Shepherd’s fort was burned by the Indians.

Moses Shepherd became prominent in his own right as Colonel in the War of 1812 and as bridge builder on the National Road from Wheeling to the Pennsylvania line. It is traditionally related that it was the friendship of Henry Clay with the Shepherds that led to a slight deviation in the National Road across Wheeling Creek and back again to accommodate Moses and Lydia. A room assigned to Henry Clay in Shepherd Hall is still pointed out to visitors by the present owners–the Osiris Temple of The Shrine.

Other illustrious statesmen to visit Shepherd Hall included Andrew Jackson, Thomas Hart Benton and family, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Daniel Webster, and Lafayette.

While securing the bridge contract and later trying to obtain $72,000 still owing him for the two extra bridges, the Shepherds frequented Washington. During this period to show their appreciation of Henry Clay’s efforts as champion of the National Road which united the east and west and greatly encouraged immigration, the Shepherds erected an elaborate monument to him on their grounds and it was unveiled in his presence in 1820.

The Shepherds developed a plantation which included a large grist mill, sawmill, distillery, general store, and on completion of the National Road, a tavern. While overseeing and developing this enormous estate, Moses Shepherd was also a prominent citizen, serving as a town councilman and mayor of Wheeling.

After the death of Moses Shepherd, Lydia married General Daniel Cruger, a Congressman from New York State who then came to live in Wheeling. Living to the age of 101, Lydia became a legend in her own time.

When the extensive plantation was sold in lots , after Lydia’s death, it became the district of Elm Grove. Major Alonzo Loring purchased t h e Shepherd house and renamed it Monument Place. Major Loring was a prominent citizen.

The third owner in the long history of Shepherd Hall is The Osiris Temple, which purchased the home from the Loring heirs in 1926.

Shepherd Hall today occupies a terrace in a wooded tract of approximately five acres at the intersection of Route 88 and Cruger Street in Elm Grove, a suburb of Wheeling. The only other structure is a cottage standing to the left of Shepherd Hall, built by the Lorings nearly a century ago, for the rearing of their five children. It has undergone some exterior alterations in style.

At an early point in the mansion’s history a porch was added to the east side, built of stone in complete harmony with the original. It has now been altered and enclosed.

The Osiris Temple has added extensively to the rear of the house, building with buff brick to supply meeting rooms and large areas for banquets and dances. This addition is visible only from the rear of the building.

In the mansion itself the principal original features are still preserved: the large hallway and fine stairway with fine woodwork; the library; ballroom across the second floor front, now used as administrative offices, and bedrooms, including the one often used by Henry Clay.

On the grounds during the days of the Shepherds were other buildings now gone–a stone barn, guest house, detached kitchen, and a long row of negro quarters. Two notable pieces of sandstone sculpture–an elaborate sundial and the Clay monument–are no longer in existence except for fragments of the latter.

More than 150 years ago, Lydia Boggs-Shepherd cast a captivating presence as she fluttered through her Wheeling mansion, entertaining such dignitaries as Henry Clay and future presidents Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk.

She died in 1867 at age 101, but some who have visited or worked in Shepherd’s grand home — known as Monument Place in Elm Grove — say they have witnessed her spirit still roaming its halls.

Monument Place has been owned by the Osiris Shrine since 1926, and the Shriners have compiled a written history of a number of ghostly happenings experienced in the mansion. One of these depicts an incident in 1982, when a guest attending a dance at Monument Place had one of the more notable experiences with a spirit in the mansion.

The guest had gone to the cloak room, only to notice the regular attendant was not present. But she did see one person in the room — an older woman in a rocking chair wearing a long dark dress and a lace dust cap. The guest asked the woman in the chair where the attendant was, but the woman looked up at her annoyed and motioned for her to leave the room. She left the room. The guest next passed the attendant in the hallway, and she asked her who was the woman in the rocking chair. They looked into the cloak room and saw no woman or rocking chair. They later learned the cloak room was once the bedroom of Shepherd.

In the early 1990s, former caretakers reported seeing what they believed to be Shepherd awaiting their return inside the front door. According to accounts, the husband was preparing to unlock the front door, when both he and his wife noticed movement in the window to their right. A woman’s hand reached through the curtains to move them aside as if to observe happenings outside. The husband quickly opened the door to find who might be inside the mansion at such a late hour, but no one was found.

Not long after, the same caretakers had other ghostly experiences. The wife noticed what appeared to be smoke in the basement of the mansion, and she went to investigate. The unusual smoke — described as perhaps being “a mist” — had no odor, but the temperature in the room quickly turned colder before the mist disappeared.

On another occasion, the husband was downstairs working when he experienced the same unusual mist. Again, the mist had no odor, and the room became chilly. The former caretakers also reported their dog Daisy would not enter the basement room where the mist was witnessed.

A later caretaker told of her experience happening late one night. She was working in the home at about 3 a.m. when she heard music playing upstairs. As she climbed the stairs, she heard a “swishing sound” described as that made by a woman’s silk gown. She proceeded to the ballroom, and listened to the music coming from behind the doors. She opened the door to reveal an empty silent room. The music stopped, and there were now no sounds in the house. She went back to continue her work when she heard the music again. Upon opening the door a second time, the house again went silent. After this, she closed up the mansion and left for home.

Also reportedly having experiences with ghosts in the ballroom was Kris Yost, the wife of State Sen. Jack Yost, D-Brooke, a past potentate with the Osiris Shirine. Kris Yost was on her way up to her husband’s office on the second floor when she passed the ballroom, which had been turned into an administrative office. She saw a man inside the room standing at a piece of office equipment and believed it to be her husband. But after proceeding on to the office, she found him sitting at his desk. She glanced back and saw there was now no one in the former ballroom.

The story begins in St. Louis in the early 1900s, when a group of women there, members of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, decided that the pioneer migration route from east to west – the old Santa Fe Trail – should somehow be recognized. Also engaged in the project was the National Old Trails Association, formed in 1912 with Judge Harry Truman, of Independence, MO, as its president. Initially, small cast-iron markers were proposed to designate the route. In 1924, however, that plan was changed and the DAR agreed on 12 large monuments.

Three years later, August Leimbach, a German immigrant who was living in St. Louis at the time, was chosen as the sculptor for the mammoth piece of public art, which rises 18 feet above the ground and which he called: “The Madonna of the Trail.”  In the summer 1928 issue of The Federal Illustrator Magazine, Leimbach described his work:

“The idea I had, when I modeled the design was this. The pioneer mother with her children was waiting for the father in their blockhouse in the Wild West, for the father did not come home.

She, believing him to be in danger, put her little child in a blanket, grasped the gun and with the boy ran out in the field to look for the father. The gun is sketched from the gun of Daniel Boone, with his carvings on the shaft. On the ground is prairie grass and cactus brushes, also arrowheads, and on one side in the shadows, there is visible in the original, a rattle snake, partly covered by grass.”

“When I was a schoolboy in the old country, the American history of the pioneer days made a deep impression on me. I thought often of those who has left the old home and all that was dear to them and had come to this country to find a field for their ambition. When I came to America, I often saw these people of the pioneer type, strong and brave and always ready to protect themselves against any danger. Asked to make a sketch model for a monument of a woman of pioneer days, I was inspired by my own impressions of these people I had met, and the Madonna of the Trail is the result.”

Leimbach was born February 12, 1882, in Eberfeld, Germany, and even in grade school he was utilizing his artistic talents. He had big plans to take his trade and talent to the Orient when his brother, then living in St. Louis, suggested he come to the U.S. instead. Leimbach took him up on it, arriving in the United States in May 1910 at age 28. He stayed only two months in St. Louis before finding work as an architectural sculptor with a firm in Waco, Texas.

His reputation grows quickly in the U.S.A. within the circle of monument, terra cotta, and architectural companies, and in 1915 he takes a lead role at the San Francisco World’s Fair and Exhibition, creating ornate architectural embellishments for the fair’s buildings and structures.

In 1927 the DAR’s plan to mark the Old Trails Route with a monument was coming into fruition. Arlene Nichols Moss, DAR St. Louis Chapter Chair, envisioned the concept and a St. Louis monument company had been selected to create the monuments. Unfortunately, the monument committee was having difficulty finding a capable artist. August was never considered initially because he was well known only for architectural endeavors. The owner of the monument company suggested that he create a model and after only three days, Mrs Moss was standing in August’s St. Louis studio admiring his clay interpretation of the Madonna of the Trail. The model was shipped to DAR headquarters in Washington, D.C., and the rest, as they say, is history.

August and his wife Frieda eventually returned to Germany while three of his grown children remained in the States. Initially they settled back in Kaltennordheim, which was also Frieda’s birth place. August was so respected in Kaltennordheim that in 1945 the Mayor issued a certified letter authorizing August to assume full duties as mayor in his absence. They moved one last time to Michelstadt in December of 1952. August died on December 18, 1965 and Frieda on September 19, 1967. They were buried together, but after years of trying to locate family, the grave site was dismantled by the town of Michelstadt for reasons of inattention and remains unmarked to this day.

Samuel McColloch, one of four brothers who emigrated from the South Branch of the Potomac to Wheeling in 1770, is remembered as the courageous horseman who leaped with his horse from Wheeling Hill, 300 feet to the bottom, to escape Indians.

Early on the morning of September 1, 1777, Indians appeared at the crest of Wheeling Hill. Believing that the enemy force consisted of only a few warriors, the militia of Fort Henry pursued, under the command of Capt. Samuel Mason. After following the Indian trail down to Wheeling Creek, they were suddenly ambushed by a large Indian war party and most of the militia were killed. A few survivors hastened to the neighboring forts with the news of the assault upon Fort Henry.

One of those forts was Van Meter’s, located on Short Creek several miles to the north, and commanded by Maj. Samuel McColloch. He hastily assembled two or three men and rode to the relief of Fort Henry, but upon his approach he was cut off by a small party of warriors. Turning his horse, and closely pursued by the Indians, he managed to gain the crest of Wheeling Hill, only to be cut off once more. McColloch spurred his horse to the edge of the precipice and leaped to the waters of Wheeling Creek far below.

Surprisingly, McColloch survived the leap with nothing more than a few scratches and bruises, and his horse survived as well. McColloch returned to Van Meter’s and gathered together a force of about forty militia. On the following day they rode to the relief of Fort Henry, only to find that the Indians had lifted their siege a few hours earlier.

McColloch later lost his left arm in a hunting accident and was killed in another Indian ambush in 1782. Today a granite monument on U.S. 40 marks the site of the heroic leap of Samuel McColloch.