Est. 1800 · Anne Coleman · James Buchanan Connection · 19th Century Lebanon County History · Presidential History
Robert Coleman was among Pennsylvania's wealthiest men in the early 19th century, having built a fortune in the iron industry. He built the house at 1800 Cumberland Street for his daughter Anne as a graduation gift after she attended Dickinson College. The Coleman family had emigrated from England and established themselves firmly in the Pennsylvania merchant class, with Robert having strong opinions about the social standing appropriate for his daughter.
In 1819, Anne Coleman became engaged to James Buchanan, a young Lancaster attorney with ambition but without the family wealth Robert Coleman deemed necessary. Robert forced the engagement's dissolution, reportedly having received reports that Buchanan was using the relationship opportunistically. Anne traveled to Philadelphia to stay with relatives.
On December 9, 1819, Anne died at her relatives' home. The cause was recorded as a laudanum overdose; whether she intentionally took a fatal dose or miscalculated is a question that was never definitively answered. She was 23 years old. Buchanan was reportedly devastated and wrote to Robert Coleman requesting permission to attend the funeral — Coleman refused. Buchanan never married. He served as the 15th President of the United States from 1857 to 1861.
The house subsequently passed through various owners and eventually became a restaurant operating as Inn 422. In 2019 — exactly 200 years after Anne Coleman's death — the Inn 422 closed and the building was purchased and converted into Misago Bistro, a Japanese restaurant that underwent significant interior renovations. As of 2024-2025 the restaurant remains in operation.
Sources
- http://hauntsandhistory.blogspot.com/2007/12/inn-422.html
- https://lebtown.com/2019/07/26/take-a-look-at-lebanons-new-japanese-restaurant-misago-bistro/
- https://lebtown.com/2020/06/09/column-our-town-a-love-story-lost-in-time/
ApparitionsPhantom sounds
The building's paranormal reputation rests almost entirely on Anne Coleman — a woman whose documented death at 23 after a broken engagement to a future president gives the location a genuinely historical foundation that most reported hauntings lack.
The accounts from Inn 422's operational years described Anne's presence as a general atmospheric quality concentrated in the upper floors, where staff reported unexplained sounds and a sense of being observed. Nothing was documented with the specificity of dates or named witnesses in sources available for review.
What distinguishes this location from generic haunted-house folklore is the historical record: the engagement, the family's interference, the December 1819 death, and Buchanan's lifelong bachelorhood are all documented through contemporary letters, newspaper accounts, and historical scholarship. Whether any of that translates into a paranormal presence is a matter of what each visitor brings to the building.
Notable Entities
Anne Coleman
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