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Hillcrest Hall Country Inn was built about 1910 as a home for the Leadbetter family in the southwest part of Port Hood. Ebenezer Leadbetter's enormous three-storey house is a survivor from the age of coal, and proclaims the prosperity of immigrant miners with Danish and Bulgarian names among the Highland Scots. When the big mine was in operation, the buoyant economy affected the whole area. It is said that the population doubled, with miners attracted from Cumberland and Pictou counties on the mainland, as well as from Europe. Ebenezer Oscar Leadbetter (1877-1955) was born in Port Hood where he grew to be financially shrewd and successful. His parents, David Leadbetter and Mary MacKinnon of Northeast Margaree, left for the U.S. when he was only 14, but Ebenezer stayed. He taught school in 1898 at Glencoe Station, and, when the big mine began operations about 1901, he foresaw a future as a merchant. He first purchased land and built a store and barn on the lower side of the road at Little River, Port Hood, opposite Sam Smith's farm. Both buildings are now gone; erosion by the sea has even altered the coast so that some of the land on which they stood has crumbled and disappeared. Leadbetter's store sold everything from clothing to groceries and feed. In the early days, he lived with his wife above the shop, where their first two hildren, Margaret and Gladys, were born. Gladys said that the house was built in 1909 or 1910, just before the mine closed...