Johnathan Trout

*"God is all around us. In fact, God saw you take two bits from the collection plate, Emerson Blakely!" - Johnathan Trout*

**Johnathan Elisha Trout** was a former Evangelical preacher in Ashford Falls and desk manager to the Winchester Hotel.

Not much is known about Trout's life, and what is known about him maybe erroneous or apocryphal. According to one account,he was the son of Charles Montgomery Trout, an English immigrant from a village called Trewhitt in the county of Northumbria, England. Originally living in Fall River, Massachusetts, later moving to Ashford Falls in 1899 with his wife, June Montgomery, and getting a job as a desk manager at the newly built Winchester Hotel in 1903. This timing of these events is suspect as well as his time at the Winchester. Trout was noticeably younger than his employer, Gage Winchester, and his daughters are known to have been born in 1900, possibly placing these events further back in history.

Devoutly religious, Trout also worked as a preacher on the side, giving sermons in a tent not far from the town square, somewhere in the vicinity of Ashford Falls Presbyterian Church, but it seems parishioners actually came to hear the angelic voices of his three daughters, Elizabeth ("Lizzie"), Carolyn ("Carrie") and Deirdre ("Dee") Trout, who sang Biblical songs to the throngs of people who came to visit. Eventually, people began to hire the three girls to sing at family outings, state fairs and city gatherings. Trout was also heavily into the Spiritualist Movement of the 1890s to 1930s and often went around holding séances and ceremonies to contact the spirits of deceased loved ones, his daughters often in attendance singing hymns. "Amazing Grace" and "Old Rugged Cross" were among their favorite songs. Their mother having passed on from influenza in 1911, the three girls soon grew up into three beautiful young women courted by every young man in the area, but they snubbed all advances from the opposite sex to take care of their father.

In time, Trout was making more money from setting up concerts with his daughters and getting paid to have them attend local functions. He had the First Evangelical Church of Ashford Falls built in or around 1912 (later becoming the Ashford Falls Presbyterian Church) and a family home in the former community of Wyckoff when his daughters were twelve years old and at the height of their singing careers. It was their home from around 1912 to 1934.

Reportedly, Trout was making so much money traveling around the area singing and hosting with his daughters that he could afford to leave his job at the hotel, but according to Monica Hedison, during the Thirties, Trout was aiming the hotel toward a more affluent clientele, a change that also attracted mobsters and a criminal element during Prohibition with Gage eventually replacing him ten years after the fact in 1939 with Howard Marcus, who later became his closest friend and later his hotel manager.

Trout reportedly had passed in 1929, and was buried in Kirkeby. In his absence, the triplets were quickly left to their own devices, carrying on with young men, sharing each other's boyfriends, throwing wild parties and going on expensive shopping sprees in New York City. Their activity almost definitely tainted their reputations and singing engagements soon fell far and few between. Within a few years, they were left almost entirely bankrupt, having spent almost the modern equivalent of two million dollars within three years. With the mansion growing neglected around them and falling apart and owing a small fortune to their creditors, they once again took to singing door-to-door to pay the bills, but at thirty-four years old and wracked by their hard-partying, they were no longer the young angels they once were. Unsubstantiated rumors about them were numerous. Lizzie was speculated to be an alcoholic, Carrie was carrying on with several young men, having had three abortions in one year, and Dee, reportedly the worst and most incorrigible of the three, was considered a chronic shoplifter fluent in profanity while carrying on with the son of the mayor. Despite their angelic appearances as children, they graduated to public mischief as adults. As two of them sang at the door, Dee would slip into the house through the back door or upstairs window and steal food or anything else she could carry, taking food, clothes, jewelry and once, even a turkey dinner and all the silverware. Their influence in city hall meant charges were never prosecuted, and for ten years, they were a major annoyance in the area. Uncontrolled by their father, they indulged in drinking, sexual debauchery, shoplifting, public mischief and unconfirmed accounts of arson. (Carrie reportedly burned down a bridge to misdirect travelers into staying as guests at their house; apparently while trying to establish themselves as a bed and breakfast.)

On June 11, 1934, Ashford Falls native Louise Davies told her eight-year-old son, William ("Billy") Davies, to stay in the house as she delivered dinner to a sickly neighbor down the street. She wasn't planning on being away for too long, but five minutes stretched to ten, and when she finally returned home after an hour, she found her front door open, and William missing. She searched the house, the yard and at the neighbors, but no trace of him was found. William's father, Jack Davies, a police officer, also searched the neighborhood door-to-door with several of his friends from the police department and heard that the Trout Sisters had been seen on the street singing house-to-house. Dee was known to had an "unclean obsession" with young boys, and they were immediately considered suspects. However, as Jack Davies accompanied by a crowd of curious on-lookers went to talk to them, they discovered the Trout Mansion fallen into worst neglect than they had expected. The house was filled with trash, the girls had been sleeping in the foyer around a burning metal drum for heat, newspapers covered once grand windows to keep out the cold, the staircase was covered with debris and stacks of soiled books, stray cats roamed through the house, dead birds littered the upstairs, once beautiful dresses were used to plug leaking pipes, large metal barrels caught water leaking through the roof and most of the furniture had been sold off to buy food. It was a horrifying state of living for three beautiful brunette little girls who once delighted crowds of people, but there was no trace of Lizzie, Carrie or Dee. No trace of the three girls was ever found or of William Davies. Rumors are Deirdre, who preferred to answer to Dee more often than Deirdre, had abducted the boy, or that he had discovered the girls helping themselves to home in his house as they were wont to do. It was well known that the Trout Triplets liked to make themselves to home in the houses of neighbors away on long trips then hurriedly move out when the owners came home. Perhaps Billy had heard them in the kitchen helping themselves to food or trying on his mother's clothes and had surprised them. It's rumored that Dee or Lizzie might have killed the boy by accident or design and had carried off his remains to dump them in the river. On the other hand, it's speculated that Jack Davies ended up at the mansion looking for his son, found his remains then killed the sisters himself out of grief and disposed of them, coming back later to establish an alibi with the rest of the police station. Unfortunately, there's no evidence to support any of these rumors. The later whereabouts of Lizzie, Carrie and Dee Trout as well as that of William Davies has never been revealed. The house, however, has since been gutted and heavily rebuilt along with most of the area and no longer resembles the Tudor structure it once was.

According to one rumor, the girls had actually found fame and fortune again on the carnival circuit, singing for crowds around the country under the name, the Borden Sisters, but this rumor is not generally believed. The general consensus in this long passed about legend in Ashford Falls is that the girls kept Billy Davies around as one of their own, treating him as Dee's son for the years they traveled incognito. Their final whereabouts are unknown.