Johannes Jakob Frühauf married Elisabeth Katharina Bank from Hattgenstein in 1840. They bought the mill and rebuilt it in 1860. The lintel above the entrance to the former mill, which has been preserved ever since, bears witness to this and bears the initials IF u KB. The foundations for the further development of the house were laid by Philipp August Frühauf and Katharina Philippina Welker after their marriage in 1876. On 19 August 1878, they applied to the municipality for ‘permission to lay a path and build a residential house with commercial buildings’. On 4 December 1881, the miller August Frühauf addressed the ‘most obedient request … for the granting of a concession to run an inn’ to the Grand Ducal Government of Birkenfeld. The new house directly adjoined the mill that already existed at the time. The family lived from farming, the milling business and the inn.
Their daughter Lydia Frühauf married Rudolf Hofmann from Hattgenstein in 1899. They enlarged the farm, added more stables to the buildings and also ran a bakery. A petrol station was added in 1928.
From the justification of the licence application at the time:
“In addition to a sawmill and four gristmills, many other businesses operate in the village of Schwollen, which means that there is always lively traffic in the village. During the summer, this traffic is particularly increased by the visitors to the Sauerbrunnen well near the village and the removal of wood from the Hochwald forest to the villages on the Nahe and the Kronweiler railway station. The travelling public is offered the opportunity for refreshment in the village of Schwollen by an inn and a pub. However, as the two inns mentioned are located at the lower end of the village, which is about 1 km long, the lack of an inn in the upper part of the village has very often become quite noticeable; indeed, one must say that an inn has become a necessity here, because the sawmill, two other mills and the Sauerbrunnen well, which is very close to the houses, are located in this part of the village and thus the greatest traffic takes place here. The people travelling to the sawmill particularly complain about the lack of a nearby inn, because the people usually arrive there with their logs only after hard work and later than the scheduled time, and then they and their draught animals feel the need for refreshment: Under the present circumstances, however, this need can only be satisfied after travelling a distance of about ten minutes, which causes the person concerned even more trouble and loss of time.”
