In the Words of Amelia Swilley Bingham

Raised in Hicksville, Amelia Swilley Bingham found her way to fame as an world renowned actress.  But she always treasured her small town roots, visiting her mother in Hicksville in Defiance County, Ohio, every year. Becoming an actress in the early 20th century was more scandalous than acceptable in small town society, so initially, those visits were difficult.

An interview that ran in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on April 21, 1901, was reprinted in the Defiance Democrat on May 2, 1901.  In the interview, Amelia revealed, in her own words, some of her thoughts on her home town and her fame:

 "By Amelia Bingham

All my people for generations have lived and died in or near Hicksville.

My father was a strict Methodist and I was brought up to believe that outside of the church and Sunday school, salvation was not to be thought of.  I don't believe a member of my immediate family had ever been to the theatre, much less known an actor, before I almost broke the heart of the town by marrying an actor.

It was a terrible blow to Hicksville, but I knew what I wanted and I won my mother's consent only after she had satisfied herself as to Mr. Bingham's character.  It cut me to the quick to have the neighbors turn against me as they did when I married.  My brothers and sisters are sweet, country people - the salt of the earth, don't you know.  They didn't understand me either, and I could not tell them how I longed for a bigger, freer life than ours from the time that I was a tot.  Now I knew I was to get out into the open and find something to do in the live world I had dreamed of.

My sisters were all good domestic women.  I never tried to cook or sew or do anything in the house that I did not make a flat failure of it.  I have shed oceans of tears trying to learn to cook.  The Hicksville housewives, I fear, didn't think much of the future of Amelia Swilley's husband and family.

When I left at the time of my marriage, I was under a deep, big, black cloud, I can tell you.  A Hicksville girl and a member of the Methodist church to marry an actor!  Nothing could be worse.  But I promised my mother when I married that no matter what happened, I would come back home once a year so long as she lived.

Home of Amelia Swilley, the Swilley Hotel.  Later, new owner Earl Limpert called it the Amelia Bingham Hotel.

Those first visits were painful.  People turned their heads as I walked down the streets - my best schoolgirl friend, my lifelong chum, passed me and looked me square in the face as though I were a stranger.  My old Sunday school teacher had the courage to come see me, and when he went away, he took my hand in his and said: 'Amelia, I hear there are some good men and women in the stage.  I hope so for your sake.'

But as time went on and Mr. Bingham and I went home every season and were as devoted to each other as other husbands and wives, the neighbors became more friendly.  Then one of them got in a hard place financially and he wrote me a pitiful, apologetic note that made everything plain to me.  Well, I helped that neighbor out, and little by little, we began to understand each other, and Hicksville took Amelia Bingham back to its heart, actress though she was.

People laugh at my real estate investments in Hicksville, and they have their amusing side.  I own the only bakery in town and the grocer shop and numbers of houses and lots.  As a business proposition, Hicksville is not such a joke.  I get a fair interest on my property.  My grocery shop and bakery are all right and my houses are all rented.

We name the houses I own in Hicksville.  One is a little, wee home, which we call Bingham Castle, and another one, a story and a half high, is Amelia's Mansion.  The castle was badly in need of paint last summer and Mr. Bingham and I decided we'd paint it ourselves.  We did it and I tell you, it was a wonder when it was done.

My mother is already making preparation for us, and the horse and cow have been told for weeks back that they must get ready to look their best for Amelia."

Check out more on Amelia Swilley Bingham at the Hicksville Historical Society, Dave's History Corner and FindaGrave.