History & local legend
The Stone House near Farmington began as the Fayette Springs Hotel on the National Road. George Titlow bought it in 1909, and Fanny Ross later made it a well-known Italian restaurant. She rose at six each morning to bake bread and prepare pasta and sauce.
In the inn’s stories, Ross treated nighttime footsteps as a staffing problem. Hearing someone walking after hours, she told the invisible visitors to take up a dust rag and help clean—or leave her alone to sleep.
A later server told visiting investigators that she felt someone following her through the dining room and into the kitchen. Another tradition identifies George Titlow in a particular chair near the entrance, still occupying a place in the property he had bought decades before Ross’s restaurant years.
