One hundred and one years ago this week James A. McCaig, night watchman at the Bon Air Hotel, saw something he didn’t want to see – a fire.
Augusta’s grand hotel, a celebrated destination for wealthy winter guests, was burning and the blaze was spreading.
McCaig roused the alarm, gathered others and helped move the hotel’s 260 registered guests to safety in “an orderly fashion.”
Some found comfort in other hotels. Some found a room in local boarding houses. Some were welcomed into nearby Summerville homes, among the city’s finest.
Some probably watched from a distance as the hotel burned to the ground. This shouldn’t have been a surprise because the original Bon Air was mostly wood.
There was a reason for that.
When Dr. William Tutt, who made a fortune in the patent medicine business, began to build it he led his neighbors to believe he was just building a new house. Or perhaps a large mansion, perched proudly on the hill overlooking Augusta.
They might have complained when he opened it as a luxury hotel in 1889, but soon it began to fill not only with Northern guests, but titans of industry, celebrities, political movers and shakers. President-Elect Warren G. Harding was said to be planning a visit just before his 1921 inauguration.
The Bon Air was a stunning success that not only brought tourists to town but developed Augusta’s reputation for hospitality and an affinity for the sport of golf available at nearby hotel-connected courses.
All that was threatened in February 1921 when flames took over. The hotel’s owners lost a lucrative property, estimated at $1.5 million.
The city and region lost a grand hotel and the visitors and traditions it had encouraged.
Winter golfers had lost their connection to a growing sport.
Fortunately, we know, those aspects of Augusta’s attraction and reputation would return.
What we don’t know is what happened to the loss of Mrs. John Dumont. of Plainfield, N.J., who had been staying in the Bon Air’s Room 196.
Mrs. Dumont – “Annie” to her friends – was well known in New York and New Jersey society. She had previously been married to the successful J. Parker Mason, and when he died, she married the even more successful widower John Brokaw Dumont.
Dumont was perhaps the most famous man in Plainfield, N.J., where his family traced itself back several generations. He was a railroad executive and a longtime member of the New York Stock Exchange Board of Governors. He was past president of his city’s Common Council, director of the public library, vestryman at the Episcopal church and member of the local tennis and golf club.
Annie was known for her generous charitable efforts to hospitals and the poor. She loved needlework and gardening.
She survived the Bon Air fire, but the following week she began running small advertisements in The Augusta Chronicle offering a reward for anyone who might find her pearls, which had been left in her room as she was being hustled to safety.
There was no picture or description provided. There was no estimate of the jewelry’s worth.
What we do know is she was offering a $5,000 reward.
That’s generous today, but in 1921 it was a small fortune. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates it at about $70,000 in today’s money. In 1921, $5,000 was twice the average annual salary.
The ads stopped after three weeks, but we don’t know if the pearls were found. We don’t know if the reward was paid.
We do know that when Mrs. Dumont died in 1945, a New Jersey newspaper legal ad dealing with dispersal of her estate, mentioned several valuable items, but nothing about pearls.
We also know that the adventure of the Bon Air fire in 1921 did not dissuade the Dumont family’s trips to Augusta.
In fact, when John Dumont died at age 85 in 1928, his obituary in The New York Times noted that he had succumbed to pneumonia in Augusta while staying at the Bon Air Hotel, which had reopened new and improved on New Year’s Day 1923.
Bill Kirby has reported, photographed and commented on life in Augusta and Georgia for 45 years.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Monday Mystery: The mystery of what was turned up missing in Room 196