Just beyond the borough line on the road to Mill Creek and Port Carbon Would be built, the establishment of twenty-nine-old, Irish-born Martin Dormer and thirty-nine-year-old, Irish-born Thomas Canfield. The Dormer-Canfield place was a large brick building, located in virtually perpetual shade on the downhill corner of the intersection, and included a "saloon" in addition to the usual attached hotel, and a brewery; on the hillside across the street, Dormer later laid out Dormers Park, a grove where groups could rent space for picnics, concerts, dances, and other entertainments. Dormer's Hotel would later become notorious in St.Clair as a reputed hangout of the Molly Maguires, who allegedly met there on there travels between Port Carbon and Shenandoah. Martin Dormer's older brother Patrick, who operated a hotel in Pottsville in the 1870's (soon moving back to St. Clair to manage the hotel there), would figure prominently in the testimony of Pinkerton detective James McParlan at the trials of the accused Mollies. The Dormer brothers in the 1850's were young pillars of the community- members of the St. Bonifacius congregation and public servants, Martin serving for a time as postmaster of St. Clair, and Patrick as county commissioner. Indeed, if we look over the "taverns" and "hotels" of St.Clair in 1850, we do not find them to be rip-roaring saloons. Rather, they appear to have been more on the order of boardinghouses where a respectable resident family cared for permanent guests, mostly temporarily unattached males, females or widowers with children. In two instances (Johnson and Shirk) the male residents were all professional persons, merchants, or Tradesman; Daniel Frack's male boarders were a painter and laborer. In the case of the German-born proprietor, the guests were German-born miners. But the Dormer-Canfield place was another story. At the beginning Dormer owned and operated the brewery and Canfield the hotel and saloon. Canfield, however, was by trade a canal boatman, often absent from home, and during his absences his wife, Catherine, managed the saloon and hotel. Their tavern did not conform to the pattern of the quiet, respectable inn. Being just outside the borough line, it was safe from the local magistrate's jurisdiction, but not from the county’s and in 1856 Catherine Canfield was prosecuted by the district attorney and convicted of keeping a "disorderly house." The Canfield conviction reminds us that there was still a third kind of drinking place: the so-called "disorderly house." The "disorderly house" was invariably kept by a woman (although the property owner might be her husband) and the late hours provided "nice young men" with drinks and the social services of a small bevy of female boarders. "Disorderly house" was, in fact, the legal euphemism for brothel.

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Anthony Wallace is University Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania.  He is the author of six other books, for which he received the Bancroft Prize.  In the next column and following page are excerpts from the book "St. Clair" that directly reference history that occurred at the building of 1 West Caroline Ave. Saint Clair PA.  Today the building is owned by James and Jessica Croley who operate The Wooden Keg Tavern.