Emmitt was an entrepreneuer who became Pike County's first millionaire. His money was earned largely from a distillery which he used to make whiskey and "Emmitt's Discovery," a snake oil cure-all he "discovered" when a mule kicked a can of fuel oil into a vat of spirits. (What made him want to drink it is anyone's guess.) He served two terms in the US Senate and died in 1893, at the age of 87.

Emmitt used his influence to have the county seat moved to Waverly from Piketon, and also had the Ohio & Erie Canal route changed between the two towns. He then built the Emmitt House along the canal in 1861, even though railroads had displaced the canal by then. His hotel did a brisk business with travelling salesmen and other people who passed through.

For the rest of the building's history employees smelled James E. Emmitt's cigar smoke, and they sometimes saw a woman in an old-fashioned "granny apron" cleaning things when no one should have been there. Two ghostly children roamed the building, possibly members of the Harper family (nearly wiped out by smallpox while staying at the hotel). And basement workers often encountered the ghosts of slaves who may have died there en route on the Underground Railroad. They sometimes made loud noises or, more helpfully, changed the syrups on the soda fountain--which any bar employee can tell you is a gross job.