CUMBERLAND — The Windsor Hotel, which was built between 1842 and 1845 at the northwest corner of George and Baltimore streets, has had important guests over the years. A reception for President Zachary Taylor was held there in 1949. In February 1865, McNeill’s Rangers kidnapped two Union generals from Cumberland. One of them, Benjamin Kelley, was staying in the Windsor Hotel, which was called Barnum House at the time. Two future presidents, Brig. Gen. Rutherford B. Hayes and Maj. William McKinley, were both staying in the Barnum House at the time.
However, the hotel’s most unusual guest wasn’t famous at all. S.S. Smith of Bedford, Pa., had had a rough day. He might have been stressed, tired or simply extremely fatigued. Whatever the reason, when he went to sleep in his bed in the room he was staying in at the Windsor Hotel in September 1875, it was a troubled sleep.
The Catoctin Clarion, a newspaper in Thurmont in Frederick County, reported on a story in the Cumberland Evening Times that Smith “retired at night, and next morning awoke and found himself lying on the floor of an adjoining building.” That building was the S.T. Little Jewelry store.
Smith had been sleepwalking. Though it usually strikes children, adults have been known to have the problem, too. The Mayo Clinic website notes, “However, sleepwalking can occur at any age and may involve unusual, even dangerous behaviors, such as climbing out a window or urinating in closets or trash cans.”
It occurs during a deep, dreamless sleep even though the sleeper may have his eyes open. It can be caused by any number of factors, such as sleep deprivation, stress, fever, medications or sleeping in unfamiliar surroundings.
Though the reasons aren’t known, Smith’s sleepwalking may have been caused by trying to sleep in a hotel room rather than his own bed.
Once Smith returned to the hotel, an investigation was started to find out how he got from one building to the other without anyone seeing him leave the hotel. Sometime during the night, he apparently got up from his bed and climbed out his window or rather leapt from his window, since there was no ledge and the roof of the Little building was 6 feet away. Then he walked along the roof and climbed in a second-floor window of the building.
“In making his way in he laid hold of a piece of wood loosely fastened in the wall, and it gave way precipitating him to the floor, the fall not hurting him, but thoroughly awaking him,” the Catoctin Clarion reported.
Smith woke up astonished and not knowing where he was. It then took him an hour to find his way out of Little’s building and back to the Windsor Hotel.
The Windsor Hotel eventually had a newsstand and barbershop on the first floor and was a part of downtown Cumberland until the building was demolished in 1959.
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Related Photos
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In 1875, a sleepwalker found himself on the second floor of the S.T. Little Jewelry store with no recollection of how he had gotten there. Herman and Stacia Miller Collection photo courtesy of the mayor and City Council of Cumberland
Looking Back 1875: Windsor Hotel guest takes nighttime walk
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