Eccentric Vault: All About the Alljoy Hotel
(Written for the Bluffton Eccentric by Betsy Thayer (circa 1988)
It was the summer of 1921, and 10-year-old Jones Henry Columbus All was camping with his family at Estill beach on the May River. JC's mother fell in love with a beautiful area and brought her children back next month. She rented Mr. Lawton’s house and bought a large field from him for a very special dream that she had for her family and for Bluffton
The first building on the hotel was built in 1923, using wood cut off Ulmer land, cut in the Ulmer Sawmill built by the Ulmer “boys.” The 12-room summer hotel overlooked Brighton Beach and, what is now kind-of public land. There were six guest rooms upstairs and six below, along with a big dining room, kitchen and office. The two screened-in porches served as living rooms complete with long rows of rocking chairs.
The Alljoy Hotel was opened from June through August and had all the modern conveniences of the day. A big wood stove for cooking and gas lamps. There were flowered China bowls and pitchers on each washstand, a chamber pot beneath every bed. For cooling purposes, the adjoining guest rooms were open to the ceiling above seven-foot partitions that ushered the breeze. There were several small outhouses over two ditches that were nicknamed “Fiddlersville” and a big hand pump over the well that served for showers if one didn't want to bathe in the river.
JC All's wife, Sarita, described the food. Mrs. All brought cooks with her from Allendale, and they kept the long tables in the dining room filled with big platters, piled high with deviled crab and shrimp. There were steaming bowls of fresh vegetables from farms in the area and loaves of homemade bread. The price of this daily feast was 50 cents.
The ice was delivered by steamer, three times a week, and the Sunday chicken was raised in coops near the house.
The hotel was so successful that a second building was built. It was very similar to the first, except there were 12 guest rooms on the second floor. The first floor housed a bigger kitchen and a much bigger dining room for the people that flocked to eat there.
It became JC All's duty to catch the seafood for this thriving resort and he said, “If I didn't get enough in the daytime, mother sent me back out at night. I could row up to the Mengledorf dock and drift back to Pine Island and get 40 to 50 fish. We didn't have rods and reels, but bottom fished, using two hooks on each line baited with shrimp. I caught whiting, croaker and summer trout. The seabass were so big that you had to be careful that they didn't snatch you out of the boat! At night we went striking (gigging) four flounder and got all we needed from the mud flats nearby.”
“Some of the guests would go out on the river with me in the bateau boat made from 1-inch-thick pine boards,” JC said. Others spent the day by the river sunning or swimming out to the two-tiered diving platform, paddle kayaks made from green pine or went sailing. The baseball field was close by and there were games of horseshoes and croquet. “We had so many guests come to stay from all over — even one family from Japan — and they all loved it here!”
After supper, the guests gathered on the porches to talk or to sing. Ghost stories were a favorite subject and sometimes Annette All would suddenly appear in a white sheet to add a little ghostly spice at the right moment. One night, she was so convincing that a believer ran through the porch door, taking out the screen as he fled.
A group of college boys spent one summer, returning the service of their band for room and board, and they provided music for dancing on the weekends. JC smiled and said, “But with all the things we had for the guests to do all day, combined with the good food and the salt air, no one partied too much. They were usually ready to go to bed.”
Twelve years later, during the winter of 1935, there was a fire. Both buildings of the hotel, and two summer homes that had been built nearby, burned to the ground.
Although Annette All was unable to rebuild the hotel, she continued to return to Bluffton every summer. She sold the land where the hotel had stood and bought a small lot near the water to erect an old army barracks on pilings as a summer house for her family.
JC retired, leaving his Red and White grocery store in Allendale behind, to make Bluffton his permanent home. He and Sarita sit on their front porch and look out over the same site that once was the hotel and JC still goes out on the river for the seafood that made the food at the hotel famous.
The memories of the Alljoy Hotel remain. You may have realized where the name All came from, but now you know the rest of the story — the joy behind the Alls
Postscript comments shared on Bluffton Then and Now that add to the story:
From Harry All II: Bailey All, JC‘s brother, took the guests out on the boat for a little crabbing for a feast at the motel that evening. Everyone was throwing the crabs in the middle of the boat in a wash tub. Dr. Lafitte‘s wife from Allendale brought her own bucket. She was throwing her crabs in her bucket. Bailey All (which is my daddy) told her she had to throw the crabs in the middle bucket. She said, “No I want my crabs in my bucket.” So Daddy told her, “If you don’t want to abide by the captain’s rules, you can get out and walk back to the motel.”
She replied, “Well let me out,” and he did. She had to walk back along the edge in the mud and shells to get back. LOL! The story was told to me by Miss Lafitte, this is the story she told me while she was getting her hair cut by my sister Dale All in Allendale. Miss Lafitte, she’s the one that witnessed the fishing trip with Bailey All. There’s a story that nobody knows but Miss Lafitte and who she told. 
You can find more golden nuggets of Bluffton history by joining the Bluffton Then and Now Facebook public group. Have a story like this you’d like to tell to add to Lowcountry Chronicle? Please email me at Ptollefson800@gmail.com.
