19 Old Wayne Street, Bethany Henry Drinker, a wealthy Philadelphia Quaker, gave nearly one thousand acres of his large land holdings to the Trustees of Wayne County when Bethany was named county seat in 1800. "Three adjoining lots on Plan of the Town of Bethany. #54,55,56," became the homestead property of Ephraim W. Hamlin during the late 1820s. Mr. Hamlin came from Salem to Bethany in 1822 and married Damaris Day in 1826. Mathews' History of Wayne. Pike, and Monroe notes that Damaris, in 1886. was still living in the house where she and her husband began housekeeping sixty years before. Ephraim Hamlin served as Bethany Postmaster, was elected to the State Legislature, and in 1851 to the State Senate. He was a founder of the Grace Episcopal Church in Honesdale and a Vestryman for over fifty years. He was also an original incorporator of the Honesdale Bank and an organizer of the Wayne County Agricultural Society. Hon. Edward O. Hamlin, the only surviving son, with his wife Ella, gave the house to the Bethany Presbyterian Church in 1893 and it was then used as the manse. Ernie Paynter, longtime mayor of Bethany. remembers playing with some of the children who lived there. Mason and Rosalie Currey of Asheville, NC bought the property in 1985 and sold it to Dennis and Donna Corrigan who did extensive work on the house. In 1997 Jan and Valray Cheripko purchased this historic property. The side-gabled two-story frame house has a symmetrical facade and a full-length front porch with turned columns. The double entry door with beveled glass above the wood panels projects out from the house and has unusual side windows at an angle to the door. The bay window on the second floor above it repeats the shape. The house has the original wood floors, old woodwork, and wainscoting in the dining room and kitchen. An unusual transom with spindles above double doors separate the two main rooms. Old fashioned flowers, herbs and stonewalls enhance this charming home.

From 1993 through 2008 the Honesdale National Bank published an annual wall calendar, each featured 13 historic sites. The sites were chosen and researched by a committee of the historical society and artwork was commissioned to Judy Hunt and William Amptman by the bank.

This page was one month of the calendar and was made possible through the Wayne County Commissioners and a Tourism Promotion Committee’s Tourism Grant.