By 1808Delaware
Driving south on Sunbury Road, just before the land falls away toward Hoover Reservoir, it’s easy to miss the brick house that once anchored a very different landscape. The Marcus Curtiss Inn stood beside the old Yankee Street crossing long before there was a reservoir or a township boundary. In 1822, when the building took shape, the road outside carried coaches, riders, and wagons instead of commuters.
The inn’s two-and-a-half-story form is simple at first glance. That modesty is part of its appeal. Its hand-made bricks were dried in the sun on the property. Its timbers were hewn from the farm around it. Taken together, the place is an unusually intact example of early roadside architecture in central Ohio.
A Settler with Ambition
Marcus Curtiss didn’t drift into Delaware County. He arrived with a plan. Born in Connecticut in 1780, he married Caty Newell in 1804, then headed west with his brother Jeremiah’s family four years later. By 1809, he was living in a log cabin near Big Walnut Creek on land he later bought from Col. Moses Byxbe, one of Delaware’s founders.
Curtiss served a short military stint during the War of 1812, then returned to the work he clearly preferred: building a farm and shaping a small community around it. By the 1820s he owned more than 680 acres. He made bricks, cut timber, and began imagining something bigger than a homestead.
A Tavern, a Post Office, and a Lifeline on the Road
In October 1825, Ohio and Delaware County licensed Curtiss to operate a tavern for a year. That license, combined with his appointment as postmaster, turned the house into a small regional hub. He filed reports as early as 1826 and was still handling mail in 1834 when Galena attempted to launch its own office.
Stagecoaches between Mt. Vernon and Columbus stopped at the house twice a day. It wasn’t glamorous. Travelers followed rules that feel half-charming and half-practical today: no smoking in the coach, take turns using the water jug, and if you get stuck in the mud, everyone climbs out and pushes. Even so, those stops brought life and trade to the area in a time when Ohio’s transportation network relied on rough roads, scattered inns, and personal resilience.
Inside, guests ate and slept among cherry, walnut, and ash finishes, details that hint at Curtiss’s skill and resources. Genoa Township later recognized the building as its first brick house, its first inn, and its first post office.
Legends, Tall Tales, and the Lafayette Question
Family stories claim that the Marquis de Lafayette visited the inn and left behind a gold-handled cane as a token of thanks. It’s a great story, but it collapses under scrutiny. Lafayette never traveled into interior Ohio on his 1824–25 tour. The myth persists because people want their landmarks tied to big names. In this case, the truth is still plenty interesting without the embroidery.
From Yankee Street to Sunbury Road
The inn once overlooked the original course of Big Walnut Creek. When Hoover Reservoir was created, the landscape changed, though the building stayed put. Its orientation still makes sense only if you imagine the old road alignment and the river before the valley was flooded.
In 1967, the Delaware County Historical Society marked the property as significant. Nine years later, it earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places. Today, it remains a private residence, which has probably helped preserve its outward character.
A Window into Early Genoa
What makes the Curtiss Inn worth remembering isn’t fame or grandeur. It’s the way the building ties together threads of early settlement: the Byxbe connection, the shift from frontier farms to organized townships, the role of small taverns in stitching Ohio together during the canal and early road era, and the emergence of local institutions like post offices.
Curtiss’s surviving papers, held by the Delaware County Historical Society, show a man who handled mail, sold goods, kept daybooks, and ran a business in a period when one person often wore five or six hats without thinking twice. The inn reflects that spirit. It was practical. It was ambitious. And it was built to serve people moving through a young region finding its footing.
Photo: Creative Commons License
