Chapter 13

In an account of the funeral of Lieutenant Governor Tailor, in 1732, it is mentioned that a "great number of the gentry attended in their coaches and chaises;" but even by that date coaches were of little avail for long journeys. The anxious letters of Waitstill Winthrop to his son in 1717, at the latter's proposal of bringing a coach overland from Boston to New London, show the obstacles of travel. He warns that there are no bridges in Narragansett; he urges him to bring a mounted servant with an axe to "cut bows in the way," "to bring a good pilate that knows the cart ways," to be sure to keep the coachman sober, to have axle and hubs prepared for rough usage--and in every way discourages so rash an endeavor.

Though I have seen a New England inventory of the year 1690 in which a "sley" appears, I do not find that they were frequently used until the second or third decade of the succeeding century, though a few Bostonians had them in the year 1700. They were largely used by the Dutch in New York, and Connecticut folk occasionally followed Dutch fashions.

When sedan-chairs were so fashionable and plentiful in England, they were sure to be used to some extent in New England towns. Governor Winthrop had a very elegant Spanish sedan-chair, which was given him in 1646 by Captain Cromwell, who captured it from a Spanish galleon. This fine chair was worth £50 and was an intended gift of the Viceroy of Mexico to his sister. When Parson Oxenbridge was striken with apoplexy in the pulpit of the First Church in Boston, he was "carried home in a Cedan." On August 3, 1687, Judge Sewall wrote in his diary: "Capt. Gerrish is carried in a Sedan to the Wharf and so takes boat for Salem." Again he writes on May 31, 1715: "The Gov'r comes first to Town, was carried from Mr. Dudleys to the Town-House in Cous. Dumers Sedan; but 'twas too tall for the Stairs, so was fain to be taken out near the top of them." The Governor had had a bad attack of gout.

On September 11, 1706, Sewall writes: "Five Indians carried Mr. Bromfield in a chair." And though I have never seen the sale of a sedan mentioned, several times I have fancied that the reference to the sale of a chair meant a sedan-chair. In the memoirs of Eliza Quincey she speaks of riding in a sedan, and of seeing Dr. Franklin in one in 1789.

At a surprisingly early date, when we consider the limited opportunities for travel, the colonial authorities licensed taverns or ordinaries, and also made strict laws governing them. The landlords could not sell sack or strong water; nor permit games to be played in their precincts; nor allow dancing or singing; nor could tobacco be used within their walls; nor could they sell cakes or buns indiscriminately. Samuel Cole, the Boston comfit-maker, received his license in 1634, though one can hardly understand, with such manifold rules of narrow limit, how he could wish it. Previously other freemen had obtained permission "to draw wine and beer" to sell at retail to their neighbors and to travellers. In New Haven the tavern-keeper had been given twenty acres of land in 1645, in which travellers' horses could be pastured. In Hartford and other river towns the establishment of taverns was compulsory. The ordinaries quickly multiplied in number and increased in pretension. In Boston, in 1651, the King's Arms and its furniture were held to be worth £600. Board was cheap enough. In 1634 the Court set the price of a single meal at sixpence, and an ale quart of beer at a penny. At the Ship Tavern a man had "fire and bed, dyet, wyne and beere betweene meals" for three shillings a day. The wine was limited to "a cupp each man at dynner & supp & no more." Following the English fashion of Shakespeare's time, the inn chambers were each named: The Exchange Chamber, Rose and Sun Chamber, Star Chamber, Court Chamber, Jerusalem Chamber, etc. The names of the inns also followed English nomenclature: The Bunch of Grapes, Dog & Pot, Turk's Head, Green Dragon, Blue Anchor, King's Head, etc. The Good Woman bore on its painted sign the figure of a headless woman. The Ship in Distress had these lines:

"With sorrows I am compassed round, Pray lend a hand--my ship's aground."

Another Boston tavern had this rhyme:

"This is the bird that never flew, This is the tree that never grew, This is the ship that never sails, This is the can that never fails."

The Sun Tavern bore these words:

"The Best Ale and Beer under the Sun."

This tavern was removed to Moon Street, and was kept by Mrs. Milk. Her neighbors' names were Waters, Beer, and Legg. The Salutation Inn, with its sign-board bearing the picture of two men shaking hands, was commonly known as the Two Palaverers.

I know no more attractive picture of olden-time hospitality, nothing better "under the notion of a tavern," than the old Palaverer tavern at Medford. On either side of its front door grew a great tree, and in the spreading branches of each tree was built a platform or balcony. The two were connected by a hanging bridge or scaffolding, and also connected by a similar foot-bridge with the tavern itself. In these leafy tree-arbors, through the sunny summer months, from dawn till twilight, whilom travellers rested and drank their drams, or, perchance, their cups of tea, and watched the arrival and departure of coaches and horsemen at "mine inn."

John Adams wrote frequently of the inns of the time. He said of the Ipswich innkeeper in 1771: "Landlord and Landlady are some of the grandest people alive. Landlady is the great granddaughter of Governor Endicott, and has all the notions of greatest family. As to Landlord, he is as happy, and as big, as proud, as conceited as any nobleman in England, always calm and good-natured and lazy."

Of the Enfield landlord he wrote: "Oated and drank tea at Peases--a smart house and landlord truly; well dressed with his ruffles &c. and upon inquiry I found he was the great man of the town, their representative as well as tavern-keeper." In a paper which he wrote upon licensed houses, Adams stated that "retailers and taverners are generally, in the country, assessors, selectmen, representatives, or esquires."

Members of our best and most respected families throughout New England were innkeepers. The landlord was frequently a local magistrate, a justice of the peace, or a sheriff. Notices of town-meetings, of elections, of new laws and ordinances of administration were posted at the tavern, just as legal notices are printed in the newspapers nowadays. Bills of sales, of auctions, records of transfers were naturally posted therein; the taverns were the original business exchanges. No wonder all the men in the township flocked to the tavern--they had to to know anything of town affairs, to say nothing of local scandals. Distances were given in almanacs of the day, not from town to town, but from tavern to tavern.

Of the good quality of New England inns many travellers testify. Lafayette wrote to his wife in 1777: "Host and hostess sit at the table with you and do the honors of a comfortable meal, and on going away you pay your fare without higgling." Dr. Dwight said the best old-fashioned New England inns were superior to any of the modern ones. Brissot said: "You meet with neatness, dignity and decency, the chambers neat, the beds good, the sheets clean, supper passable, cyder tea punch and all for fourteen pence a head." Alackaday! the good old times.

Next in importance to the landlord came the stage-driver. He was so popular and such a kindly fellow that he had to be prohibited by law from carrying any parcels or letters for persons along the route, else he were overburdened with troublesome and hindering business, detrimental to the postal and carriage income of the government. He was so importuned to drink at each stopping-place that he might have lain drunk the whole year round. He was of so much consequence and so looked up to, that little Jack Mendum, who drove the Salem mail-coach, hardly exaggerated his position when he roared out angrily to a hungry passenger who urged him to drive faster: "While I drive this coach I am the whole United States of America." Stage-driving was an hereditary gift; it went in families. Four Potters, three Ackermans, three Annables drove in Salem. Patch and Peach. Tozzer and Blumpy, Canney and Camp, were well-known stage-driving names.

The stage-agent also, that obsolete functionary, was a man of much local consequence and of many affairs; he was established in many a tavern as a necessary and almost immovable piece of bar-room furniture.

To show the importance of tavern, tavern-keeper, stage-agent, and stage-driver in early Federal days, let me give a single instance. Haverhill was the great staging centre of New Hampshire; six or eight lines of coaches left there each day. There were lines direct to Boston, New York, and Stanstead, Canada. Of course there was a vast bustle and commotion on the arrival and departure of each coach, and a goodly number of passengers were deposited at the tavern that formed the coach office--sometimes one hundred and fifty a day. It can readily be seen what a news centre such a tavern must have been, how much knowledge of the world must have been gathered by its occupants. It must be remembered that our universal modern source of information, the newspaper, did not then exist; there were a few journals, of course, of scant circulation, but of what we now deem news they contained nothing. Information of current events came through hearing and talking, not through reading. Hence it came to be that an innkeeper was not only influential in local affairs, but was universally known as the best-informed man in the place; reporters, so to speak, rendered their accounts to him; items of foreign and local news were sent to him; he was in himself an entire Associated Press.

The earliest roads for travel throughout New England followed the Indian trails or paths, and were but two or three feet wide. The Old Plymouth or Coast Road, of much importance because connecting Boston and Plymouth, the capitals of separate colonies, was provided for by action of the General Court in 1639. It ran through old Braintree. The Old Connecticut Road or Path started from Cambridge, ran to Marlborough, thence to Grafton, Oxford, and Woodstock, and on to Springfield and Albany. It was intersected at Woodstock by the Providence Path, which ran through Narragansett and Providence plantations, and also by the Nipmuck Path which came from Norwich.

The New Connecticut Road ran as did the old road, from Boston to Albany. It was known at a later date as the Post Road. From Boston it ran to Marlborough, thence to Worcester, thence to Brookfield, and so on to Springfield and Albany.

The famous Bay Path, laid out in 1673, left the Old Connecticut Path at Happy Hollow, now Wayland, and ran through Marlborough to Worcester, Oxford, Charlton, and Brookfield, when it separated in two paths, one--the Hadley Path--running to Ware, Belchertown, and Hadley, and the other returning to the Old Connecticut Path and on to Springfield.

An inexplicable charm still attaches itself to these old Indian paths, a delight in attempting to trace their unused and overgrown roadways, as they leave the main road in devious twists and turns till they again join its beaten way. And the halo of early romance and adventure surrounds them. Holland felt the charm when he wrote thus of the Bay Path:

"It was marked by trees a portion of the distance and by slight clearings of brush and thicket for the remainder. No stream was bridged, no hill graded, and no marsh drained. The path led through woods which bore the mark of centuries, over barren hills that had been licked by the Indian hounds of fire, and along the banks of streams that the seine had never dragged. A powerful interest was attached to the Bay Path. It was the channel through which laws were communicated, through which flowed news from distant friends, and through which came long, loving letters and messages. That rough thread of soil chopped by the blades of a hundred streams was a bond that radiated at each terminus into a thousand fibres of love and interest and hope and memory. Every rod had been prayed over by friends on the journey and friends at home."

Hawthorne felt it also and said:

"The forest-track trodden by the hob-nailed shoes of these sturdy and ponderous Englishmen has now a distinctness which it never could have acquired from the light tread of a hundred times as many moccasins. It goes onward from one clearing to another, here plunging into a shadowy strip of woods, there open to the sunshine, but everywhere showing a decided line along which human interests have begun to hold their career.... And the Indians coming from their distant wigwams to view the white man's settlement marvel at the deep track which he makes, and perhaps are saddened by a flitting presentiment that this heavy tread will find its way over all the land, and that the wild woods, the wild wolf, and the wild Indian will alike be trampled beneath it."

For many years these paths were travelled, gradually widening from foot-paths to bridle-ways, to cart-tracks, to carriage-roads, until they became the post-roads, set thick with cheerful country homes. In some portions of New England they still are travelled and form the general thoroughfare, but in many lonely townships the old paths are deserted, and traffic and passage over the post or county road is gone forever. Bushes flourish and meet gloomily across the grass-grown track; forest trees droop heavily over it in summer and fall unheeded across it in winter. On either side moss-grown, winter-killed apple-trees and ancient stunted currant-bushes struggle for life against sturdy young pine and spruce and birch. Many a rod of heavy tumble-down stone wall--New England Stonehenges--may be seen, not as of old dividing cleared and fertile fields, but in the midst of a forest of trees or underbrush:

"Far up on these abandoned mountain farms Now drifting back to forests wild again, The long gray walls extend their clasping arms Pathetic monuments of vanished men."

Or more pathetic monuments still of hard and wasted work. On either side of the way, at too sadly frequent intervals, ruined wells or desolate yawning cellar-holes, with tumbling chimneys standing like Druid ruins, show that fair New England homes once there were found. Flaming orange tiger-lilies, most homely and cheerful bloom of country gardens, have spread from the deserted dooryards, across the untrodden foot-paths, in weedy thickets a-down the hill, and shed their rank odor unheeded on the air.

Some of the old provincial mile-stones, however, remain, and put us closely in touch with the past. In the southern part of New London County, and at Stratford, Conn., on the old post-road--the King's Highway--between Boston and Philadelphia, there are mossgrown stones that were set under the supervision of Benjamin Franklin when he was colonial Postmaster-General. After that highway was laid out, the placing and setting of the mile-stones were entrusted to Franklin, and he transacted the business, as he did everything else, in a thoroughly original way. He drove over the road in a comfortable chaise, followed by a gang of men and heavy teams loaded with the mile-stones. He attached to his chaise a machine which registered by the revolution of the chaise-wheels the number of miles travelled, and he had the mile-stones set by that record, and marked with the distance to the nearest large town. Thus the Stratford stone says: "20 Mls to N. H."--New Haven.

By provincial enactment in Governor Hutchinson's time, mile-stones were set on all the post-roads throughout Massachusetts. Some of these stones are still standing. There is one in the middle of the city of Worcester, on Lincoln Street--the "New Connecticut Path;" it is of red sandstone, and is marked, "42 Mls to Boston, 50 Mls to Springfield, 1771."

In Sutton, on the "Old Connecticut Path," stands still the king of all these 1771 mile-stones. It is of red sandstone, is five feet high, and nearly three feet wide. It is marked, "48 Mls to Boston 1771 B. W." The letters B. W. stand for Bartholomew Woodbury, a jovial and liberal old Sutton tavern-keeper who died in 1775. When the mile-stones were set out by the provincial government, the place for this Sutton stone fell a few rods from Landlord Woodbury's house; but he obtained permission and set up this handsome stone at his own expense, beside his great horse-block under his swinging sign at his open, welcoming door. He fancied, perhaps, that it would attract the attention, and thus cause the halting of travellers. Tavern-keeper and tavern are gone; no vestiges even of cobblestone chimneys or cellar walls remain. The old post-road is now but little travelled, but the great mile-stone and its neighbor, the worn stepping-block, still stand, lonely monuments of past days and past pleasures. On warm summer nights perhaps the silent old mile-stone awakes and sadly tells his companion of the gay coaches that rattled by, and the rollicking bucks and blades, the gallant soldiers that galloped past him in the days of his youth, a century ago. And the stepping-block may tell in turn of the good old days when her broad sunny face was pressed by the feet of fair colonial dames who, with faces hidden in riding-hoods and masks, stepped lightly from saddle or pillion to "board and bait" at Bartholomew Woodbury's cheerful inn.

In Roxbury, Mass., there still stands at the corner of Centre and Washington Streets the famous Roxbury Parting Stone. It is a great square stone, bearing on one face the words: "The Parting Stone 1744. P. Dudley;" on another face the words: "Dedham--Rhode Island," and on a third "Cambridge--Watertown." It has had set on it recently an iron frame or fixture for a gas-lamp. This stone, with many others in Norfolk County, was placed by Paul Dudley at his own expense in the middle of the last century. It has seen the separation or "parting" of many a brave company that had ridden out to it from Boston. Many a distinguished traveller has passed it and glanced at its carved words. Lord Percy's soldiers took counsel of it one hot April morning to find the road to Lexington.

Governor Belcher set out a row of mile-stones from Boston Town House to his home in Milton. Some of them are still standing, the seventh and eighth in Milton, one marked "8 miles to B. Town House. The Lower Way, 1734." The ninth and twelfth stand as historical landmarks in Quincy, on the old Plymouth Road, and bear the dates 1720 and 1727.

In Wenham another mile-stone near the graveyard bears the date 1710, shows the distance to Ipswich and Boston, and gives these words of timely warning: "I know that Thou wilt Bring me to Death and to the house appointed for all Living."

A marked improvement in facilities for travel came in turnpike days. These well laid out and well kept roads fairly changed the face of the country. They sometimes shortened by half the distance to be travelled between two towns. Stock companies were formed to build bridges and grade these turnpikes, and the stock formed a good investment and was also vastly used in speculation. The story of the turnpike is as interesting as that of the Indian path, but cannot be told at length here. They, too, have had their day; in some counties the turnpike is as deserted as the path and seems equally ancient.

New England roads and turnpikes have seen many a gay sight, for the custom of speeding the parting guest "agatewards" for some miles, with an accompanying escort on foot or on horseback, to some ford or natural turning-point or bourn, was a universal mark of interest and affection, and of courtesy as well. Judge Sewall records, on one occasion, with much indignation, that "not one soul rode with us to the ferry." Ere the days of turnpikes, the old Indian paths witnessed many a sad and pathetic parting in the wilderness, such as was recorded in simple language in Parson Thatcher's diary in 1680, when he left Barnstable to go to a new parish:

"A great company of horsemen 7 & 50 horse & 12 of them double, went with us to Sandwich & there got me to go to prayer with them, and I think none of them parted with me with dry eyes."

This is indeed a strong picture for the brush of a painter, the golden September light, nowhere more radiantly beautiful than on

"the narrowing Cape That stretches its shrunk arm out to all the winds, And the relentless smiting of the waves,"

and the sad-faced band in Puritan garb, armed and mounted, gathered around their departing leader in reverent prayer.

Perhaps the turnpike saw no more characteristic scene than the winter ride to market. Though summer and fall were the New England farmer's time of increase, winter was his time of trade and his time of recreation as well. When wintry blasts grew chill, and snow and ice covered deep the desolate fields and country roads, then he prepared with zest and with delight for his gelid time of outing, his Arctic red-letter day, his greatest social pleasure of the entire year. The friendly word was circulated by a kind of estafet from farm to farm, was carried by neighbor or passing traveller, or was discussed and planned and agreed upon in the noon-house, or at the tavern chimney-side on Sunday during the nooning, that on a certain date--unless there set in the tantalizing and swamping January thaw, a thaw which might be pushing and unseasonable enough to rush in in December and quite as often hung off and dawdled into February--that on the appointed date, at break of day, the annual ride to market would begin. Often fifty or sixty neighbors would respond to the call, would start together on the road. For farmers in western Vermont and Massachusetts the market town was Troy or other Hudson valley towns. In Maine, from Bath and Hallowell and neighboring towns, the winter procession rode to Portland. In central Massachusetts some drove to Northampton, Springfield, or Hartford; but the greatest number of farmers and the largest amount of farm produce went to the towns of the Massachusetts coast, to Salem, to Newburyport, and, above all, to Boston.

The two-horse pung or the single-horse pod, shod with steel shoes an inch thick, was closely packed with the accumulated farm wealth--whole pigs, perhaps a deer or two, firkins of butter, casks of cheese, four cheeses in each cask, bags of beans, pease or corn, skins of mink, fox, and fisher-cat that the boys had trapped, birch brooms that the boys had made, yarn that their sisters had spun, and stockings and mittens that they had knitted--in short, anything that a New England farm could produce that would sell to any profit in a New England town. So closely was the sleigh packed, in fact, that the driver could not be seated. The sturdy and hardy farmer stood on a little semicircular step in the rear of the sleigh, his body protected by the high sleigh back against the sharp icy blasts. At times he ran alongside or behind his vehicle to keep his blood in brisk circulation.