Campbell Flannagan Murrell House Museum on Summers Street is the oldest standing residence in the historic district of Hinton. It was built in 1875 by well-off railroader Edgar Campbell and remained owned by his descendants for two generations.
Campbell opened a dry goods store in the basement and deeded the home to his daughter and her husband, John Flannagan, the following year. They in turn gifted the home to their daughter, Mildred, and her husband, Robert Murrell. Mildred died in 1986.
The next owner was the city of Hinton.
In 1990, a grassroots group got together, formed a board of directors, and has been doing all the maintenance and repairs with grants from the WV Department of Culture and History for a new roof, wiring, insulation and everything needed to preserve the actual structure.
CFM board member Julia Gaitor said that most recently they have been restoring interior rooms, removing and replacing Victorian-era wallpaper and old broken plaster. The interior has been painted, each room has a different Victorian color, and many rooms feature different eras in the life of the house.
When people come to tour the Campbell Flannagan Murrell House they enter through the basement — the site of the former dry goods shop. The stairs lead into the front parlor where everything is decorated to tell the story of Edgar Campbell and his family from Highland County, Va.
Campbell’s daughter married, John Flannagan, and as visitors enter the dining area the Victorian décor tells the story of the Flannagan years. Flannagan was a C&O railroad steam engineer on the Fast Flying Virginian, where he and his fireman met their traumatic death from the steam in an accident in 1905.
Flannagan’s wife remained in the home, which was handed down to their daughter, Mildred, who married Robert Murrell. Murrell was a famous athlete brought from his job with the railroad to play with the C&O baseball team in Hinton. The family’s Hinton home then became known as the Campbell Flannagan Murrell house. Inside the historic home, Victorian furnishings and many artifacts from the late 1880s through the 1920s are on display, among them sports uniforms and leather postcards.
Hinton was a major C&O railroad hub when Campbell built the house and opened the general store. In those days, railroad tracks ran up 5th Avenue and merchandise could easily be delivered to the store. C&O had its own baseball team and big-league teams would travel the rails to games. At one point the C&O team was selected to play an exhibition game against the Cincinnati Reds — and won. The uniform that Murrell wore in 1897 can be seen today in Hinton’s Railroad Museum.
Hinton was a huge depot because of the roundhouse and turntable for steam engines. Over the years, the railroads began to be taxed by the amount of rail line they had and many of the rails now lay buried under 5th Avenue and other roads in Hinton and Summers County.
The Campbell Flannagan Murrell House remains a work in progress. Board President Carol Jackson and new member Linda Lancaster have started talking about creating a Summers County Black History exhibit in the house. The display would also serve as a traveling exhibit that could be used in classrooms upon request.
Jackson says this project is in its early stages of planning but the exhibit is expected to address Black history, what jobs were available to, and what life was like for the Black population.
The Campbell Flannagan Murrell House Museum offers memberships, a calendar and all the latest news and information about the historic organization. Additional information about tours can be found on the museum’s website or its page on Facebook.
