There’s been an important name change to note on the Florida Bed & Breakfast trail. Clauser’s Inn in Lake Helen, north of Orlando, is now known as the Ann Stevens House Bed & Breakfast. Ed and Helene Gracy have replaced two of the most active innkeepers in the state — Marge and Tom Clauser. For 15 years they were enthusiastic leaders of the 120-member Florida Bed & Breakfast Inns Association dedicated to preservation and promotion of the highest standards of hospitality, cleanliness and professionalism. Marge also wrote, designed and published Cooking Inn Style, was a key contributor to the book of specialties from Florida’s b&bs;, From Muffins to Margaritas, and tireless in pursuit and promotion of all things pertaining to the neighboring Spiritualist community of Cassadaga. She remains active, retired as innkeeper but living close to her old haunts.
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Cassadaga is the oldest active religious settlement in the Southeastern United States. It was founded in 1895, the year Ann C. Stevens, wealthy believer from Michigan, built a three-story Victorian farmhouse directly behind the Webster Hotel her brother built to house the Spiritualists flocking to the annual meetings. The hotel burned to the ground but the Stevens house survived — in grand style — with a 1994 Carriage House addition on its two acres, all of it beautifully painted and handsomely landscaped thanks to the Gracys.
Two of the rooms are in the main house, six in the Carriage House, each with private bath. The Lancaster Room is authentically Amish and honors the Clauser Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. The Cross Creek Room, filled with wicker, honors Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings; the Laredo Room with a king-size bed and split cedar walls recalls the cowboys of the Wild West; and the Windsor is a real British beauty with a queen (of course) size bed, delicate floral fabrics and English antiques. Sherlock’s is the pub on the premises inspired by Holmes himself and his maker, Arthur Conan Doyle, enthusiastic Spiritualist in his day.
Sherlock’s is where guests congregate for the Friday and Saturday dinners at 6 and 7:30 p.m. Dinners commence with the “Ultimate Caesar Salad,” or a cream of mushroom, potato leek or vegetable beef soup, and continue with blue cheese crowned beef tenderloin, chicken-asparagus risotto, lasagna, salmon steak or “world famous” meat loaf.
Desserts include oven-roasted peaches, apple butter pound cake, carrot and banana crunch cakes, roasted fruit and ice cream and Key lime pie.
Robert Tolf is the author of six books on country inns.
IF YOU GO: THE ANN STEVENS HOUSE
Getting there: Exit 55 on Interstate 4 to Main Street and Lake Helen; turn right on High Street, then left on Ohio and right on the aptly-named Pleasant Street, which leads to East Kicklighter. Turn right again to the inn.
Rates: $120-$160 including complimentary full breakfast.
Information: The Ann Stevens House, 201 E. Kicklighter Road, Lake Helen, FL 32744; Call: 800-220-0310. stevenshouse.com.
