History & local legend
The former Inn 422 on Cumberland Street in Lebanon has a ghost tradition associated with Ann Coleman, the daughter of ironmaster Robert Coleman and the former fiancée of future president James Buchanan. Stories from the inn describe pillows rearranged on beds and windows or doors opening and closing without an apparent cause.
Coleman and Buchanan became engaged in 1819, when he was a young Lancaster lawyer. Their relationship ended later that year, and Coleman died while visiting Philadelphia. Buchanan wrote to her father after learning of her death, asking to attend the funeral. The loss became an enduring part of the story of a president who never married.
Later storytellers connected that unhappy romance with the Lebanon property. The Victorian building known as Inn 422 was constructed after Coleman’s lifetime.
Sources
- Visit Lebanon Valley, Ann Coleman’s ghost at the former Inn 422 on Cumberland Street
- Outta the Way, 2011 report of the inn’s room and window traditions
- George Ticknor Curtis, Life of James Buchanan, vol. 1, includes Buchanan’s December 1819 letter to Robert Coleman
- Philip Shriver Klein, James Buchanan and Ann Coleman, Pennsylvania History
- Dickinson College, Ann Coleman’s death in Philadelphia
