Stage-coach and Tavern Days

Captain Basil Hall, a much-quoted English traveller who came to America in 1827, designated a Salem landlord as the person who most pleased him in his extended visit. Sad to say he gives neither the name of the tavern nor the host who was “so devoid of prejudice, so willing to take all matters on their favourable side, so well informed about everything in his own and other countries, so ready to impart his knowledge to others; had such mirthfulness of fancy, such genuine heartiness of good-humour,” etc.

In 1828 a series of very instructive and entertaining letters on the United States was published under the title, Notions of the Americans. They are accredited to James Fenimore Cooper, and were addressed to various foreigners of distinction. The travels took place in 1824, at the same time as the visit of Lafayette, and frequently in his company. Naturally inns, hotels, and modes of travel receive much attention. He speaks thus lucidly and pleasantly of the landlords: —

“The innkeeper of Old England and the innkeeper of New England form the very extremes of their class. The former is obsequious to the rich; the other unmoved and often apparently cold. The first seems to calculate at a glance the amount of profit you are likely to leave behind you, while his opposite appears to calculate only in what manner he can most contribute to your comfort without materially impairing his own… He is often a magistrate, the chief of a battalion of militia or even a member of a state legislature. He is almost always a man of character, for it is difficult for any other to obtain a license to exercise the calling.”

John Adams thus described the host and hostess of the Ipswich Inn: —

“Landlord and landlady are some of the grandest people alive, landlady is the great-granddaughter of Governor Endicott and has all the notions of high family that you find in the Winslows, Hutchinsons, Quincys, Saltonstalls, Chandlers, Otises, Learneds, and as you might find with more propriety in the Winthrops. 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, but the contemplation of his farm and his sons, his house and pasture and cows, his sound judgment as he thinks, and his great holiness as well as that of his wife, keep him as erect in his thoughts as a noble or a prince.”

The curiosity and inquisitiveness of many landlords was a standing jest.

“I have heard Dr. Franklin relate with great pleasantry,” said one of his friends, “that in travelling when he was young, the first step he took for his tranquillity and to obtain immediate attention at the inns, was to anticipate inquiry by saying, ‘My name is Benjamin Franklin. I was born in Boston. I am a printer by profession, am travelling to Philadelphia, shall have to return at such a time, and have no news. Now, what can you give me for dinner?’”

The landlord was usually a politician, sometimes a rank demagogue. He often held public office, was selectman, road commissioner, tax assessor, tax collector, constable, or town moderator; occasionally he performed all these duties. John Adams wrote bitterly that at public houses men sat drinking heavily while “plotting with the landlord to get him at the next town-meeting an election either for selectman or representative.”

They were most frequently soldiers, either officers in the militia or brave fighters who had served in the army. It was a favorite calling for Revolutionary soldiers who lived till times of peace. They were usually cheerful men; a gloomy landlord made customers disappear like flowers before a frost. And these cheery hosts were fond of practical jokes.

One of the old hotels with the long piazza across the entire front was owned by a jesting landlord who never failed to spring an April-fool joke on his forgetful customers each year. The tavern had two doors, and every winter these were protected by portable storm porches the width of the door and about four feet deep. On the first day of April the landlord moved the porches a few feet down the piazza, so they opened upon the blank wall of the house. The house and piazza sat at such an angle with the walk from the street that the uncovered front doors were not visible to the visitor, so the delusion was complete. Grocerymen, butchers, bakers, travellers, even the tavern servants, invariably fell into the trap, thrust open the door, which swung with a slam and left them facing the blank wall. Any tavern frequenter, caught early in the day, was always ready to tole in a group of victims. As they walked up the steps he would say, “Come, boys, let’s all pile into the office in a bunch and holler, ‘Hullo, old Jed,’ all together.” All agreed and charged with a rush into the 4 x 6 storm box, while the plotter of the trick went in the real door and sat coolly sipping a rum punch as the confused and angry contingent came in with battered hats and bruised elbows, after its scuffle in the trap.

One landlord had the name of frequently tricking travellers who stopped for a single meal by having the driver call out “Stage is ready” before they could eat the dinner they had ordered and paid for. A Yankee passenger disregarded this hasty summons and leisurely ate his dinner while the stage drove off without him. He finished the roast and called at last for a bowl of bread and milk to top off with as dessert. Not a spoon could be found for this dish, though plenty of silver spoons had been on the table when the stage stopped. To the distracted landlord the Yankee drawled out, “Do you think them passengers was going away without something for their money? I could p’int out the man that took them spoons.” A stable boy on a fleet horse was promptly despatched after the stage, and overtook it two miles down the road. A low-spoken explanation and request to the driver caused him to turn quickly around and drive back to the tavern door with all the angry protesting passengers. The excited landlord called out to the Yankee as the coach stopped, “You just p’int out the man that took them spoons.” – “Sartainly, Squire,” said he, as he climbed into the coach, “I’ll p’int him out. I took ’em myself. You’ll find ’em all in the big coffee pot on the table. Hurry up, driver, I’ve had my dinner. All aboard.”

Grant Thorburn quaintly tells of this custom at another tavern: —

“At Providence coaches were ready: on flew through the dust and sweat of the day like Jehus. At the tavern dinner was ready, but there was no contract for time to eat; after grace from Dr. Cox (too long for the occasion) we begun to eat. Scarcely had I swallowed half my first course when in came driver hallowing “All ready.” I thought there was a stable-yard understanding between him and the landlord, for while we were brushing the dust from our clothes, mustering and saying grace, he was eating and drinking as fast as he could, and I did not observe that he paid anything. We arrived at the Eagle Tavern (Boston) about sundown; the ladies’ hats and frocks which had shewed colours enough to have decked fifteen rainbows were now one, viz.: ashes on ashes and dust on dust.”

The graceless modern reader might suspect that the “stable-yard understanding” included the parson.

A very amusing and original landlord was “Devil” Dave Miller, of the old General Washington Tavern which stood on East King Street, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He was very stout and was generally seen in public bestriding an unusually small horse, which he would ride into his barroom to get a drink for both. When he wished to dismount, he rode to the doorway and hung on the frame of the door with his hands. The horse would walk from under him and go unguided to the stable. An old print of this tavern marked D. Miller’s Hotel, is shown on page 73 (#Page_73). The various vehicles standing in front of the hotel are interesting in shape, – old chaises, chairs, and a coach.

An old landlord named Ramsay had a spacious and popular inn on a much-travelled turnpike road, and was the proprietor of a prosperous line of stage-coaches. He waxed rich, but though looked up to by all in the community, plainly showed by the precarious condition of his health in his advancing years that he partook too freely of his own “pure old rye.” His family and friends, though thoroughly alarmed, did not dare to caution the high-spirited old gentleman against this over-indulgence; and the family doctor was deputed to deal with the squire in the most delicate and tactful manner possible. The doctor determined to employ a parable, as did Nathan to David, and felt confident of success; and to deliver his metaphorical dose he entered the taproom and cheerfully engaged the squire in conversation upon an ever favorite topic, the stage-coach. He finally ran on to know how long a well-built coach would last on the road, and then said: “Now, Squire, if you had a fine well-built old coach that had done good service, but showed age by being a little shackling, being sprung a little, having the seams open, would you hitch it up with young horses and put it on a rough road, or would you favor it with steady old stagers and the smoothest road you could find?” – “Well, Doctor,” answered the squire, “if I had such a coach as that I would soak it.” And that seemed to bring the doctor’s parable to a somewhat sudden and unprofitable ending.

CHAPTER IV

TAVERN FARE AND TAVERN WAYS

In the year 1704 a Boston widow named Sarah Knights journeyed “by post,” that is, went on horseback, in the company of the government postman, from Boston to New York, and returned a few months later. She kept a journal of her trip, and as she was a shrewd woman with a sharp eye and sharper tongue, her record is of interest. She stopped at the various hostelries on the route, some of which were well-established taverns, others miserable makeshifts; and she gives us some glimpses of rather rude fare. On the first night of her journey she rode late to “overtake the post,” and this is the account of her reception at her first lodging-place: —

“My guide dismounted and very complasently shewed the door signing to me to Go in, which I Gladly did. But had not gone many steps into the room ere I was interrogated by a young Lady with these or words to this purpose, viz., Law for mee – what in the world brings you here this time-a-night? I never see a Woman on the Rode so Late in all my Varsall Life! Who are you? Where are you goeing? Im scar’d out of my witts… She then turned agen to mee and fell anew into her silly questions without asking mee to sit down. I told her she treated me very Rudely and I did not think it my duty to answer her unmannerly questions. But to get ridd of them I told her I come there to have the Posts company with me to morrow on my journey.”

She thus describes one stopping-place: —

“I pray’d her to show me where I must lodge. Shee conducted mee to a parlour in a little back Lento, which was almost filled with the bedstead, which was so high that I was forced to climb on a chair to gitt up to ye wretched bed that lay on it, on which having Strecht my tired Limbs and lay’d my Head on a Sad-coloured pillow, I began to think on the transactions of ye past day.”

At another place she complained that the dinner had been boiled in the dye-kettle, that the black slaves ate at the table with their master, “and into the dish goes the black hoof as freely as the white hand…” Again she says: —

“We would have eat a morsell, but the Pumpkin and Indian-mixt Bread had such an aspect, and the Bare-legg’d Punch so awkerd or rather awfull a sound that we left both.”

At Rye, New York, she lodged at an ordinary kept by a Frenchman. She thus writes: —

“Being very hungry I desired a Fricassee which the landlord undertaking managed so contrary to my notion of Cookery that I hastened to Bed superless. Being shew’d the way up a pair of Stairs which had such a narrow passage that I had almost stopt by the Bulk of my Body; But arriving at my Apartment found it to be a little Lento Chamber furnisht among other Rubbish with a High Bedd and a Low one, a Long Table, a Bench and a Bottomless Chair. Little Miss went to scratch up my Kennell whch Russelled as if shee’d bin in the Barn among the Husks and supose such was the contents of the Tickin – nevertheless being exceedingly weary down I laid my poor Carkes never more tired and found my Covering as scanty as my bed was hard. Anon I heard another Russelling noise in the room – called to know the matter – Little Miss said she was making a bed for the men; who when they were in Bed complain’d their Leggs lay out of it by reason of its shortness – my poor bones complained bitterly not being used to such Lodgings, and so did the man who was with us; and poor I made but one Grone which was from the time I went to bed to the time I riss which was about three in the morning Setting up by the fire till light.”

Manners were rude enough at many country taverns until well into the century. There could be no putting on of airs, no exclusiveness. All travellers sat at the same table. Many of the rooms were double-bedded, and four who were strangers to each other often slept in each other’s company.

An English officer wrote of this custom in America: —

“The general custom of having two or three beds in a room to be sure is very disagreeable; it arises from the great increase of travelling within the last few years, and the smallness of their houses, which were not built for houses of entertainment.”

Mr. Twining said that after you were asleep the landlord entered, candle in hand, and escorted a stranger to your side, and he calmly shared the bed till morning. Thurlow Weed said that any one who objected to a stranger as a bedfellow was regarded as obnoxious and as unreasonably fastidious. Still Captain Basil Hall declared that even at remote taverns his family had exclusive apartments; while in crowded inns it was never even suggested to him that other travellers should share his quarters.

Many old tavern account-books and bills exist to show us the price of tavern fare at various dates.

Mr. Field gives a bill of board at the Bowen Inn at Barrington, Rhode Island. John Tripp and his wife put up at the inn on the 11th of May, 1776.

I suppose the quarter bowls of toddy were for Madam Tripp.

The house known for many years as the Ellery Tavern is still standing in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and is a very good example of the overhanging second story, as is shown in the front view of it given on page 79 (#Page_79); and also of the lean-to, or sloping-roofed ell, which is shown by the picture on page 83 of the rear of the house. This house was built by Parson White in 1707, and afterward kept as a tavern by James Stevens till 1740; then it came into the hands of Landlord Ellery. As in scores of other taverns in other towns, the selectmen of the town held their meetings within its doors. There were five selectmen in 1744, and their annual salary for transacting the town’s business was five dollars apiece. The tavern charges, however, for their entertainment amounted to £30, old tenor. It is not surprising, therefore, to read in the town records of the following year that the citizens voted the selectmen a salary of £5, old tenor, apiece, and “to find themselves.” Nevertheless, in 1749, there was another bill from the Ellery Tavern of £78, old tenor, for the selectmen who had been sworn in the year previously and thus welcomed, “Expense for selectmen and Licker, £3. 18s.” The Ellery Tavern has seen many another meeting of good cheer since those days.

The selectmen of the town of Cambridge, Massachusetts, met at the Blue Anchor Tavern, which was established as an ordinary as early as 1652. Their bill for 1769 runs thus: —

“The Selectmen of the Town of Cambridge to Ebenezer Bradish, Dr. 1769:

“Ordination Day” was almost as great a day for the tavern as for the meeting-house. The visiting ministers who came to assist at the religious service of ordination of a new minister were usually entertained at the tavern. Often a specially good beer was brewed called “ordination beer,” and in Connecticut an “ordination ball” was given at the tavern – this with the sanction of the parsons. The bills for entertaining the visitors, for the dinner and lodging at the local taverns, are in many cases preserved. One of the most characteristic was at a Hartford ordination. It runs: —

The bill is endorsed with unconscious humor, “This all paid for except the Ministers Rum.”

The book already referred to, called Notions of the Americans, tells of taverns during the triumphal tour of Lafayette in 1824. The author writes thus of the stage-house, or tavern, on the regular stage line. He said he stopped at fifty such, some not quite so good and some better than the one he chooses to describe, namely, Bispham’s at Trenton, New Jersey.

“We were received by the landlord with perfect civility, but without the slightest shade of obsequiousness. The deportment of the innkeeper was manly, courteous, and even kind; but there was that in his air which sufficiently proved that both parties were expected to manifest the same qualities. We were asked if we all formed one party, or whether the gentlemen who alighted from stage number one wished to be by themselves. We were shown into a neat well-furnished little parlour, where our supper made its appearance in the course of twenty minutes. The table contained many little delicacies, such as game, oysters, and choice fish, and several things were named to us as at hand if needed. The tea was excellent, the coffee as usual indifferent enough. The papers of New York and Philadelphia were brought at our request, and we sat with our two candles before a cheerful fire reading them as long as we pleased. Our bed-chambers were spacious, well-furnished, and as neat as possible; the beds as good as one usually finds them out of France. Now for these accommodations, which were just as good with one solitary exception (sanitary) as you would meet in the better order of English provincial inns, and much better in the quality and abundance of the food, we paid the sum of 4s. 6d. each.”

A copy is given opposite page 86 (#Page_87) of a bill of the “O. Cromwell’s Head Tavern” of Boston, which was made from a plate engraved by Paul Revere. This tavern was kept for over half a century by members of the Brackett family. It was distinctly the tavern of the gentry, and many a distinguished guest had “board, lodging, and eating” within its walls, as well as the wine, punch, porter, and liquor named on the bill. It will be noted that the ancient measure – a pottle – is here used. Twenty years before the Revolutionary War, and just after the crushing defeat of the British general, Braddock, in what was then the West, an intelligent young Virginian named George Washington, said to be a good engineer and soldier, lodged at the Cromwell’s Head Tavern, while he conferred with Governor Shirley, the great war Governor of the day, on military affairs and projects. When this same Virginian soldier entered Boston at the head of a victorious army, he quartered his troops in Governor Shirley’s mansion and grounds.

The sign-board of this tavern bore a portrait of the Lord Protector, and it is said it was hung so low that all who passed under it had to make a necessary reverence.

While British martial law prevailed in Boston, the grim head of Cromwell became distasteful to Tories, who turned one side rather than walk under the shadow of the sign-board, and at last Landlord Brackett had to take down and hide the obnoxious symbol.

The English traveller Melish was loud in his praise of the taverns throughout New York State as early as 1806. He noted at Little Falls, then in the backwoods, and two hundred miles from New York, that on the breakfast table were “table-cloth, tea tray, tea-pots, milk-pot, bowls, cups, sugar-tongs, teaspoons, casters, plates, knives, forks, tea, sugar, cream, bread, butter, steak, eggs, cheese, potatoes, beets, salt, vinegar, pepper,” and all for twenty-five cents. He said Johnstown had but sixty houses, of which nine were taverns.

Another English traveller told of the fare in American hotels in 1807. While in Albany at “Gregory’s,” which he said was equal to many of the London hotels, he wrote: —

“It is the custom in all American taverns, from the highest to the lowest, to have a sort of public table at which the inmates of the house and travellers dine together at a certain hour. It is also frequented by many single gentlemen belonging to the town. At Gregory’s upwards of thirty sat down to dinner, though there were not more than a dozen who resided in the house. A stranger is thus soon introduced to an acquaintance with the people, and if he is travelling alone he will find at these tables some relief from the ennui of his situation. At the better sort of American taverns very excellent dinners are provided, consisting of almost everything in season. The hour is from two to three o’clock, and there are three meals in the day. They breakfast at eight o’clock upon rump steaks, fish, eggs, and a variety of cakes with tea or coffee. The last meal is at seven in the evening, and consists of as substantial fare as the breakfast, with the addition of cold fowl, ham, &c. The price of boarding at these houses is from a dollar and a half to two dollars per day. Brandy, hollands, and other spirits are allowed at dinner, but every other liquor is paid for extra. English breakfasts and teas, generally speaking, are meagre repasts compared with those of America, and as far as I observed the people live with respect to eating in a much more luxurious manner than we do. Many private families live in the same style as at these houses; and have as great variety. Formerly pies, puddings, and cyder used to grace the breakfast table, but now they are discarded from the genteeler houses, and are found only in the small taverns and farm-houses in the country.”

In spite of the vast number of inns in Philadelphia, another English gentleman bore testimony in 1823 that he deemed the city ill-provided with hostelries. This gentleman “put up” at the Mansion House, which was the splendid Bingham Mansion on Third Street. He wrote: —

“The tavern-keepers will not receive you on any other terms except boarded at so much a day or week; you cannot have your meals by yourself, or at your own hours. This custom of boarding I disliked very much. The terms are, however, very moderate, only ten dollars per week. The table is always spread with the greatest profusion and variety, even at breakfast, supper, and tea; all of which meals indeed were it not for the absence of wine and soup, might be called so many dinners.”

There lies before me a collection of twoscore old hotel bills of fare about a half century old. They are of dates when stage-coaching had reached its highest point of perfection, and the coaching tavern its glory. There were railroads, – comparatively few lines, however, – but they had not destroyed the constant use of coaches.

These hotels were the best of their kind in the country, such as the United States Hotel of Philadelphia, Foley’s National Hotel of Norfolk, Virginia, Union Place Hotel and New York Hotel of New York, Union Hotel of Richmond, Virginia, American House of Springfield, Massachusetts, Dorsey’s Exchange Hotel and Barnum’s City Hotel of Baltimore, Maryland, the Troy House, the Tremont House of Boston, Massachusetts, etc. At this time all have become hotels and houses, not a tavern nor an inn is among them.