John Heilig and Christina Miller Heilig raised their five children on a plantation located on Crane Creek where they ran a mill and owned a grist mill. The family prospered and owned hundreds of acres in the county as well as lots in Salisbury in the area known as the "Great East Square".

In 1863 their daughter Sophia and her husband John Lentz bought the Mount Pleasant Hotel which had been built 10 years earlier. It was known as the Lentz Hotel until 1928. It is now listed on the National Register of Historical Places.

John left his estate to Christina and his children with the stipulation that she would relinquish her share to the children if she remarried. This she did when she married Dawalt Lentz who had previosly had been married to her niece.