1928 Sunday Dinner at The Glen Haven Tea Room

In 1928 our Delmar family may have had dinner at the Glen Haven Tea Room at the intersection of East Williams street and East Main in Salisbury.  After dinner they may have continued down Mt Herman road to Minksville and Powellville or some equally exciting place for their Sunday drive.

In 1926 the Glen Haven Development Corporation started to develop their subdivision.  It mostly on the north side of the Salisbury park.  Benjamin Johnson and Curtis Long were the owners. 

In 1928 Charles Oland Phillips, his wife and Mrs. Henry E Sweet opened the Glen Haven Filling Station and Glen Haven Tea Room.  The restaurant was located east of the large shirt factory building that today is The Country House. The tea room and gas station set on the point.

1931 Samborn Map - yellow building outline is Glen Haven Tea Room

 

C. Oland Phillips (1889-1948) was a machinist who originally was from Denton, who worked at the Salisbury ship yard and was superintendent of the machinist at the Salisbury shipyard. During WW2 he would be a naval architect for an army base in Brooklyn that built small ships.   His wife was Mollie Marion Steffens Phillips (1894-1979) who was from Chincoteague.  After the tea room she would go to work for E S Adkins as a Bookkeeper in Salisbury.

Mrs Heny Edwin Sweet was Lillian Mae Carter Sweet (1892 - ), the wife of Henry Edwin Sweet (1889-1965).  The couple was from Rhode Island and would winter in Salisbury or stay in Salisbury when Mr. Sweet had work in the area.  Henry Sweet was referred to as Commander as he had a motor ship called the “USMV Siwash” that he leased out to various government entities and he would captain it. The Coast guard used the ship often for law enforcement.

The Sweets were the apple pie of Salisbury society and no doubt the Sweets and the Phillips knew one another from the shipyard connection.    

The Glen Haven was only a mile from the Courthouse in Salisbury but unlike the restaurants by the courthouse the Glen Haven Tea Room had little foot traffic customers.  It was a place you drove to. It main attraction was it had dances. It was also a venue for card parties and receptions.

In the fall of 1929 E. M Willis and his wife bought the gas station and tea room.  Naomi A. Williams ran the Tea room.  First I have no information on Naomi Williams.  Newspaper clippings however says E M Willis and wife came from Jacksonville Florida where they ran a similar operation. 

The closest match I have for E. M Willis is Earl Moore Willis (1907-1963) and his wife Daisy Batson Willis (1908-1984). Even that is questionable.  Mr. Willis was an auto mechanic in 1930 and lived in Miami Florida, the difficulty in making him fit with the E M . Willis in Salisbury is his age of 21 in 1930.  He would not be old enough to have a liquor license.  NOTE: due to a brain freeze I did not consider that prohibition was still in effect so there would be no need for a liquor license. So we are not sure who E M Willis is.  

By December 1929 The Glen Haven had cut back to Saturday and Sunday Dinners.

In 1930 E M Willis ran an advertisement he was selling off his gasoline.  It may not have been just a promotion but a going-out-of-business sale.

After that advertising for the Glen Haven stopped and in 1935 Bill’s Seafood Restaurant (William J Ahtes) moved into the building.

To see the location where the restaurant was - the roof of it is shown in the lower right corner in this aerial photo of the intersection of Williams and East Main.