EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of a weekly series on our region’s history coordinated by the Trumbull County Historical Society.

Submitted photo / Emily Webster Love
The sign for the Kinsman Golf Club graces a wall at the Stone Cottage Suites at the Peter Allen Inn in Kinsman. Its journey started with an auction house in New Hampshire and then went to antique dealers in Maine. It was on display at an automotive / antiques show in Carlisle, Pa., where it was spotted by Kinsman residents Dave and Monica McKnight, who were aware of Dick and Rhonda Thompson’s passion for Kinsman memorabilia and brought it to the couple’s attention.

The Great Depression intervened, but for a time Kinsman residents did get to enjoy their own nine-hole golf course on the property. Local businessmen tried to get enough subscriptions to build the club, complete with club house, golf course and pool, but there is no evidence that their dream was ever realized.

We do know, however, that a group of those original planners did succeed in building the golf course on the land, half of which was donated by the Lakeland corporation, and the balance purchased from Arthur Garlock. Construction began on Dec. 1, 1929, less than two months after the devastating Wall Street crash that triggered the Great Depression.

The private course was a project of the Kinsman Golf Land Company, led by A.G. Birrell, F.A. Roberts, L.A. Hanson and R.H. McLain, and was launched with $5,000 in cash and planned sales of 50 shares at $100 each. The land was pronounced ideal for the construction of a “sporty nine-hole course,” and the pay-as-you-play course was patterned after similar courses all over the country, which the incorporators declared were “making money very rapidly … no course of this kind has ever failed to return a handsome profit on the money invested.”

The course opened in the spring of 1930 and was graced with a full-color sign inviting players. Stockholders enjoyed golf privileges for only $25 per year — for a while. The golf course succumbed to the Depression in only three years, but the sign survived.

It was claimed by the family of R. H. McLain, who had been the company’s treasurer, and passed through several generations, ending with his great-niece, Kinsman resident Diane Stevens. At an auction of the Stevens estate, the sign passed to an antiques “picker,” who resold it at the New Hampshire Summer Antiques Show; from there it went to dealers in Maine.

In turn displayed at an automotive / antiques show in Carlisle, Pa., it was spotted by Kinsman residents Dave and Monica McKnight, who were aware of Dick and Rhonda Thompson’s passion for Kinsman memorabilia and brought it to the couple’s attention.

It now graces a fireplace wall in the newly restored Stone Cottage suites on the grounds of the Thompsons’ Peter Allen Inn resort complex.