Local Historian Showcases Lucy Camp Armstrong Moltz
In the summer of 1997, J. Robert Ferrari, a local resident and history buff, published a short treatise about the life of Lucy Camp Armstrong Moltz. and the Transylvania Times followed it up with a cover story about both the work and the woman.
We thought it made a great bookend to our blog series about “The Grand Lady of Lake Toxaway” (where parts of the work were cited) and have published it in its entirety here. If you missed the first two parts, read them here: Part 1 and Part 2.
LUCY MOLTZ SHAPED PART OF TOXAWAY’S HISTORY
Transylvania Times, July 28, 1997
By Tyler Johnson, Staff Writer
A recently published historical booklet on the “matriarch” of Lake Toxaway, Lucy Camp Armstrong Moltz, revives some of the area’s bygone days and explains part of the process that has led to Lake Toxaway’s revival as a thriving community again and the success of the former Moltz mansion—the Greystone Inn.
The booklet, “A Grand Lady Of Lake Toxaway And Savannah: The Life, Times, And Legacy Of Lucy Camp Armstrong Moltz,” was written by J. Robert Ferrari who is also a resident of both Lake Toxaway and Savannah.
Lucy Camp became acquainted with Lake Toxaway after marrying George Armstrong, a Savannah shipping magnate, in 1905 when she was 22 years old. The couple lived in Savannah, but often stayed at the nationally known Lake Toxaway Inn that, during its brief, 13-year life from 1903-1916, hosted the nation’s elite.
Tim Lovelace, owner of the Greystone Inn, has collected history from the Lake Toxaway area for approximately 17 years and said the Toxaway Inn drew visitors from throughout the country.
“The Inn had at least 150 rooms, although some say 250, and it was one of the top three or four finest hotels in the nation at the time,” said Lovelace. “A full orchestra would play every night and would play for people having picnics during the day on an island in front of the Inn. The rates at that time were $6 a day. 99 percent of the guests came by rail.”
Ferrari consulted a 1916 train schedule for the Toxaway stop and discovered that trains connecting to Toxaway originated from New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Richmond, New Orleans, Charleston, Jacksonville, and other cities.
The Inn was part of six resorts in the Western North Carolina area developed by the Toxaway Company.
“By far the most spectacular was the Toxaway Inn which offered its guests the ultimate in conveniences, cuisine, service, and activities for its day and established itself as one of the finest resorts in the East,” writes Ferrari. “The Inn even featured a nine-hole golf course winding through the mountains which measured 1,869 yards, short by today’s standards, and each hole had an American Indian name. An early 1900s brochure said the golf course ‘…could be reached from the Toxaway Inn by launch, rowboat or carriage, by walking or on horseback.’”
The Inn’s guests included such American icons as Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, R.J. Reynolds, Harvey Firestone, George Vanderbilt, John Muir, the Dukes, the Wanamakers, and other notable figures and families of the time.
At a recent presentation, Lovelace showed a slide of a photograph taken at Mills Creek on the Lake Toxaway property of Harvey Firestone, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and John Muir posing beside a water wheel.
From her summer visits, Lucy Armstrong decided she wanted a residence built on the lake while plans were continuing for a mansion in Savannah that she would later donate in 1936 to the City of Savannah after her husband’s death.
The Armstrong Mansion became the home for Savannah’s first institution for higher learning, known as the Armstrong Memorial Junior College. Eventually, the school outgrew the mansion and has since moved to another location in the city, but has become, according to Ferrari, “a first-rate institution within Georgia’s State College System and is now called Armstrong Atlantic State University.”
In 1912, Lucy purchased property on Lake Toxaway to build a permanent home. “…at the urging of her husband, she camped out there that first summer to see if she liked the location well enough to build a house, writes Ferrari. Even camping she did with elegance, bringing with her a small entourage of servants and equipment and supplies to provide most amenities. The tent she lived in had a wooden floor as did the kitchen tent.
After this trial visit ‘roughing it’, work began on a Swiss chalet-style house which when completed was a splendid 30-room, six-level, 16,000 square foot mansion, surrounded on three sides by water. The entire estate, including riding stables and beautiful landscaping and gardens, was completed in 1915 and she called it ‘Hillmont.’
Probably the most distinctive room in the main house was Mrs. Armstrong’s library, a high-ceilinged room of 840 square feet that eventually would be filled with many first editions and other valuable books.” The house was completed in 1915.
Unfortunately, the very next year Lake Toxaway would disappear down the mountain into South Carolina, taking much of the area’s vitality with it.
Heavy rains in August of 1916 caused flooding throughout Western North Carolina, 23 inches of water on one particular day, that caused the Lake Toxaway dam to break and send five billion gallons of water down the Toxaway River gorge into South Carolina.
“When the dam broke, more than 5 billion gallons of water went crashing over Toxaway Falls, creating a solid wall of water 30 feet high that thundered down the 16-mile gorge toward South Carolina,” writes Ferrari.
Advance warnings had been issued that the dam might break which probably explains why the only casualty was a mule killed in the surge. There was extensive property damage, however, and an ensuing storm of litigation, along with considerable investment required to restore the lake, discouraged any plans to immediately rebuild the dam.
Driving over the Toxaway Falls today on Highway 64, one can still see the torrent’s imprint. Before the dam broke, the trees that line Toxaway Falls grew all the way down to the water. Now, the falls flow over exposed rock that stretches up the hill close to where the watermark was when the dam broke.
The lake stood empty for 45 years and the glory days of the Toxaway Inn were closed as the resort faced the empty lakebed.
But, Lucy Armstrong continued to visit Hillmont often while maintaining her life in Savannah.
In 1924, George Armstrong died at the age of 55 after a long illness and left his considerable estate, over $2 million, to his wife and daughter, also named Lucy.
The two came to live permanently at Hillmont and, in 1930, Lucy Armstrong (mother) married Carl Jerome Moltz, who it is rumored came to Hillmont initially to call on the younger Lucy.
Moltz was well-established in the lumber industry in the Lake Toxaway and extended rail lines to further his enterprise.
Hillmont became known as the Moltz Mansion and Lucy became known for her personality and generosity, in particular with her employees.
“I’ve spoken with four or five people who said Mrs. Moltz paid for their entire college education,” said Lovelace. “She had an understanding with her employees that she would pay for their first year of college and, if they maintained a B average, she would continue to pay, and would pay for their entire education provided they made the grades.”
“During the 1930s, Lucy reportedly created temporary jobs on her estate to provide work during the tough depression years,” writes Ferrari.
“Newspaper stories and personal accounts of local people suggest that her financial assistance enabled more than two dozen young persons to attend institutions of higher learning.”
Carl and Lucy Moltz traveled extensively and pictures hang today in the Greystone Inn of the couple in front of the Acropolis in Greece, the Taj Mahal, and atop elephants in India. By all accounts, her marriage to Moltz was a blessed one.
In 1955, the Lake Toxaway Company, a group of South Carolina investors led by Reginald Heinitsh, purchased 9,000 acres of Lake Toxaway property and began extensive development projects in the area, including rebuilding the dam.
In 1961, the lake was filled after the heavily vegetated lakebed was cleared of abandoned houseboats and timber.
During that summer, Carl Moltz died and Lucy lived on in the Moltz Mansion before selling it to the Lake Toxaway Company in 1963. Lucy, then nearly 80 years old, moved across the lake to a smaller home, Robin Hill, where she lived peacefully until her death in 1970 at the age of 87.
“I’ve been around the world twice, and I’ve found there’s no place more beautiful than the Sapphire country, Transylvania County particularly,” said Lucy Moltz in a 1965 interview with The Transylvania Times. “I want to help it (the area) along. This is the loveliest place in the world.”
The Moltz Mansion changed hands several times and faced demolition in 1982 before coming under the ownership of Tim Lovelace in 1984. Lovelace did extensive renovation to the neglected house and now operates the Greystone Inn as one of the premier inns in the country. A well-known golf course beside the inn also draws visitors from afar.
The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has visitors from throughout the country and abroad.
“We’ve worked real hard to preserve the historical integrity here,” said Lovelace. “We try to take people back in time when life was simpler.”
The Lake Toxaway Company, now under the direction of Reginald Heinitsh, Jr., continues to manage the majority of the development in the thriving Lake Toxaway area.
Lake Toxaway’s history is relatively young which lends an air of immediacy to the area — pictures hanging in the Greystone Inn are not complete strangers, but distant acquaintances that walked the same halls not long ago. Lake Toxaway’s glory days in the early 1900s were cut short by natural disaster, but the area, secluded from the demands and time constraints of the outside world, is once again bustling with activity and may have entered another golden age to end the 1900s.
A copy of Ferrari’s historical booklet is available at Transylvania County Library.
Click here to read about the evolution of the Moltz Mansion on Lake Toxaway.
