Stage-coach and Tavern Days

“Coil up your ropes and anchor here,
Till better weather does appear.”

In Boston the Ship in Distress was a copy of a famous sign-board which hung in Brighton, England, a century ago. Both had the appealing lines: —

“With sorrows I am compassed round,
Pray lend a hand, my ship’s aground.”

Tippling-houses in both Philadelphia and Boston had a sign-board painted with a tree, a bird, a ship, and a can of beer, and these quaint lines, an excellent tavern rhyme: —

“This is the tree that never grew,
This is the bird that never flew,
This is the ship that never sailed,
This is the mug that never failed.”

Other Philadelphia sign-boards of especial allurement to sailors were “The Wounded Tar,” “The Top-Gallant,” “The Brig and Snow,” “The Jolly Sailors,” “The Two Sloops,” “The Boatswain and Call,” and “The Dolphin.” The sign-board of the Poore Tavern (page 405 (#Page_405)) shows a ship under full sail.

In a small Philadelphia alley running from Spruce Street to Lock Street, was a sign-board lettered “A Man Full of Trouble.” It bore also a picture of a man on whose arm a woman was leaning, and a monkey was perched on his shoulder, and a bird, apparently a parrot, stood on his hand. The woman carried a bandbox, on the top of which sat a cat. This sign has a long history. It was copied from the famous sign-board of an old ale-house still in Oxford Street, London; (it is here shown, opposite this page). It is said to have been painted by Hogarth; at any rate, it is valued enough to be specified in the lease of the premises as one of the fixtures. The name by which it is known in London is The Man Loaded with Mischief. The bird is a magpie, and the woman holds a glass of gin in her hand. In the background at one side is a pot-house, at the other a pawnbroker’s shop. The engraving of this sign is signed “Drawn by Experience, Engraved by Sorrow,” and the rhyme: —

“A monkey, a magpie, and a wife
Is the true emblem of strife.”

A similar sign is in Norwich, another in Blewbury, England. One inn is called The Mischief Inn, the other The Load of Mischief. Still another, at Cambridge, England, showed the man and woman fastened together with a chain and padlock. A kindred French sign-board is called Le trio de Malice (the trio being a cat, woman, and monkey).

An old Philadelphia tavern on Sixth Street, below Catherine Street, had the curious name, The Four Alls. The meaning was explained by the painting on the sign, which was a very large one. It represented a palace, on the steps of which stood a king, an officer in uniform, a clergyman in gown and bands, and a laborer in plain dress. The satirical inscription read: —

“1. King – I govern All.
2. General – I fight for All.
3. Minister – I pray for All.
4. Laborer – And I pay for All.”

This is an old historic sign, which may still be seen in the streets of Malta. In Holland, two hundred years ago, there were four figures, – a soldier, parson, lawyer, and farmer. The three said their “All” just as in the Philadelphia sign-board, but the farmer answered: —

“Of gy vecht, of gy bidt, of gy pleyt,
Ik bin de boer die de eyeren layt.”

“You may fight, you may pay, you may plead, but I am the farmer who lays the eggs,” – that is, finds the money for it all. Sometimes the English sign-painters changed the lettering to The Four Awls. There are several epigrams using the word “all”; one, an address to Janus I., is in the Ashmolean Mss. It begins: —

“The Lords craved all,
The Queen granted all,
The Ladies of Honour ruled all,” etc.

A famous old English sign was “The Man Making His Way Through the World.” The design was a terrestrial globe with the head and shoulders of a naked man breaking out like a chick out of an egg-shell; his nakedness betokened extreme poverty. In Holland a similar sign reads, “Thus far have I got through the World.” One in England shows the head coming out in Russia, while the feet stick out at South America. The man says, “Help me through this World.” This sign is sometimes called the Struggling Man. It was displayed in front of a well-known Philadelphia inn, and also on one at the South End in Boston. The story was told by a Revolutionary officer that during that war a forlorn regiment of Continentals halted after a weary march from Providence, in front of the Boston tavern and the Struggling Man. The soldiers were broken with fatigue, covered with mud, and ravenous for food and drink. One glared angrily at the sign-board and at once roared out with derision: “’List, durn ye! ’List, and you’ll get through this world fast enough!”

Both in Philadelphia and Boston was found the sign known as the Good Woman, the Quiet Woman, or the Silent Woman, which was a woman without a head. The sign, originally intended to refer to some saint who had met death by losing her head, was naturally too tempting and apparent a joke to be overlooked. New Chelmsford in England had until recently a sign-board with the Good Woman on one side and King Henry VIII. on the other. In this case the Good Woman may have been Anne Boleyn.

A popular Philadelphia inn was the one which bore the sign of the “Golden Lion,” standing on its hind legs. Lions fell into disrepute at the time of the Revolution, and the gallant animal that was a lion in its youth became the Yellow Cat in middle and old age. It was a vastly popular cat, however, vending beer and porter of highest repute. It was kept in ancient fashion unchanged until its antiquity made it an object alike of dignity and interest – in fact, until our own day. With its worn and sanded floor, tables unpainted, and snowy with daily scrubbing; with tallow candles when gas lighted every “saloon” in the city; with the old-time bar fenced up to the ceiling with rails, it had an old age as golden as its youth. Susan, an ancient maiden of prehistoric age, fetched up the beer in old pewter mugs on a pewter platter, and presented a pretzel with each mug.

The great variety of tavern-signs in Philadelphia was noted even by Englishmen, who were certainly acquainted with variety and number at home. The Englishman Palmer wrote during his visit in 1818: —

“We observed several curious tavern signs in Philadelphia and on the roadside, among others Noah’s Ark; a variety of Apostles; Bunyan’s Pilgrim; a cock on a lion’s back, crowing, with Liberty issuing from his beak; naval engagements in which the British are in a desperate situation; the most common signs are eagles, heads of public characters, Indian Kings, &c.”

There had been so many sign-boards used by business firms in Philadelphia, that they had been declared public nuisances, and in 1770 all sign-boards, save those of innkeepers, had been ordered to be taken down and removed.

From a famous old hostelry in Dedham, swung from the years 1658 to 1730 the sign-board of Lieutenant Joshua Fisher, surveyor, apothecary, innholder, and officer of “ye trayne band,” and his son and successor, Captain Fisher – also Joshua. About 1735 one of the latter’s daughters married Dr. Nathaniel Ames, who had already started that remarkable series of annual publications, familiar now to antiquaries, and once to all New England householders, as Ames’ Almanack. The first of these interesting almanacs had appeared in 1726, when Ames was only seventeen years old, but he was assisted by his astronomer father. After the death successively of his wife and infant child, the doctor entered into a famous lawsuit with the family of his sisters-in-law for the tenure of the land and inn; and the turning-point of the suit hung upon the settlement of the term “next of kin.”

By ancient common law and English law real property never ascended, that is, was never inherited by a father or mother from a child; but in absence of husband, wife, or lineal descendant passed on to the “next of kin,” which might be a distant cousin. By general interpretation the Province Laws substituted the so-called civilian method of counting kinship, by which the father could inherit.

Twice defeated in the courts, Dr. Ames boldly pushed his case in 1748 before the “Superior Court of Judicature, etc., of the Province of Massachusetts Bay,” himself preparing unaided both case and argument, and he triumphed. By the Province Laws he was given full possession of the property inherited by his infant child from the mother – thus the inn became Ames Tavern.

Nervous in temperament, excited by his victory, indignant at the injustice and loss to which he had been subjected; he was loudly intolerant of the law’s delay, and especially of the failure of Chief Justice Dudley and his associate Lynde, to unite with the three other judges, Saltonstall, Sewall, and Cushing, in the verdict; and in anger and derision he had painted for him and his tavern a new and famous sign, and he hung it in front of the tavern in caricature of the court.

The sign is gone long ago; but in that entertaining book, The Almanacks of Nathaniel Ames 1726-1775, the author, Sam Briggs, gives an illustration of the painting from a drawing found among Dr. Ames’ papers after his death, a copy of which is shown on the foregoing page. On the original sketch these words are written: —

“Sir: – I wish could have some talk on ye above subject, being the bearer waits for an answer shal only observe Mr Greenwood thinks yt can not be done under £40 Old Tenor.”

This was a good price to pay to lampoon the court, for the sign represented the whole court sitting in state in big wigs with an open book before them entitled Province Laws. The dissenting judges, Dudley and Lynde, were painted with their backs turned to the book. The court, hearing of the offending sign-board, sent the sheriff from Boston to bring it before them. Dr. Ames was in Boston at the time, heard of the order, rode with speed to Dedham in advance of the sheriff, removed the sign, and it is said had allowance of time sufficient to put up a board for the reception of the officer with this legend, “A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, but there shall no sign be given it.”

The old road house, after this episode in its history, became more famous than ever before; and The Almanac was a convenient method of its advertisement, as it was of its distance from other taverns. In the issue of 1751 is this notice: —

“ADVERTISEMENT

“These are to signify to all Persons that travel the great Post-Road South West from Boston That I keep a house of Public Entertainment Eleven Miles from Boston at the sign of the Sun. If they want Refreshment and see Cause to be my Guests, they shall be well entertained at a reasonable rate.

    N. Ames.”

Here lived the almanac-maker for fifteen years; here were born by a second wife his famous sons, Dr. Nathaniel Ames and Hon. Fisher Ames. Here in 1774 his successor in matrimony and tavern-keeping, one Richard Woodward, kept open house in September, 1774, for the famous Suffolk Convention, where was chosen the committee that drafted the first resolutions in favor of trying the issue with Great Britain with the sword. My great-grandfather was a member of this convention at Ames Tavern, and it has always seemed to me that this was the birthplace of the War for Independence. During the Revolution, as in the French and Indian War, the tavern doors swung open with constant excitement and interest. Washington, Lafayette, Hancock, Adams, and scores of other patriots sat and drank within its walls. It stood through another war, that of 1812, and in 1817 its historic walls were levelled in the dust.

The tavern sign-board was not necessarily or universally one of the elaborate emblems I have described. Often it was only a board painted legibly with the tavern name. It might be attached to a wooden arm projecting from the tavern or a post; it might be hung from a near-by tree. Often a wrought-iron arm, shaped like a fire crane, held the sign-board. The ponderous wooden sign of the Barre Hotel hung from a substantial frame erected on the green in front of the tavern. Two upright poles about twenty feet long were set five feet apart, with a weather-vane on top of each pole. A bar stretched from pole to pole and held the sign-board. A drawing of it from an old print is shown on page 280.

Rarely signs were hung from a beam stretched across the road on upright posts. It is said there are twenty-five such still remaining and now in use in England. A friend saw one at the village of Barley in Herts, the Fox and Hounds. The figures were cut out of plank and nailed to the cross-beam, the fox escaping into the thatch of the inn with hound in full cry and huntsmen following. Silhouetted against the sky, it showed well its inequality of outline. A similar sign of a livery stable in Baltimore shows a row of galloping horses.

Sometimes animals’ heads or skins were nailed on a board and used as a sign. Ox horns and deer horns were set over the door. The Buck Horn Tavern with its pair of branching buck horns is shown on the opposite page. This tavern stood on Broadway and Twenty-second Street, New York.

The proverb “Good wine needs no bush” refers to the ancient sign for a tavern, a green bush set on a pole or nailed to the tavern door. This was obsolete, even in colonial days; but in Western mining camps and towns in modern days this emblem has been used to point out the barroom or grocery whiskey barrel. The name “Green Bush” was never a favorite in America. There was a Green Bush Tavern in Barrington, Rhode Island, with a sign-board painted with a green tree.

CHAPTER VIII

THE TAVERN IN WAR

The tavern has ever played an important part in social, political, and military life, has helped to make history. From the earliest days when men gathered to talk over the terrors of Indian warfare; through the renewal of these fears in the French and Indian War; before and after the glories of Louisburg; and through all the anxious but steadfast years preceding and during the Revolution, these gatherings were held in the ordinaries or taverns. What a scene took place in the Brookfield tavern, the town being then called Quawbaug! The only ordinary, that of Goodman Ayers, was a garrison house as well as tavern, and the sturdy landlord was commander of the train-band. When the outbreak called King Philip’s War took place, things looked black for Quawbaug. Hostile and treacherous Indians set upon the little frontier settlement, and the frightened families retreated from their scarcely cleared farms to the tavern. Many of the men were killed and wounded at the beginning of the fray, but there were eighty-two persons, men, women, and children, shut up within the tavern walls, and soon there were four more, for two women gave birth to twins. The Indians, “like so many wild bulls,” says a witness, shot into the house, piled up hay and wood against the walls, and set it on fire. But the men sallied out and quenched the flames. The next night the savages renewed their attack.

“They used several stratagems to fire us, namely, by wild-fire on cotton and linen rags with brimstone in them, which rags they tied to the piles of their arrows sharp for the purpose and shot them to the roof of our house after they had set them on fire, which would have much endangered in the burning thereof, had we not used means by cutting holes through the roof and otherwise to beat the said arrows down, and God being pleased to prosper our endeavours therein.”

Again they piled hay and flax against the house and fired it; again the brave Englishmen went forth and put out the flames. Then the wily Indians loaded a cart with inflammable material and thrust it down the hill to the tavern. But the Lord sent a rain for the salvation of His people, and when all were exhausted with the smoke, the August heat, the fumes of brimstone, and the burning powder, relief came in a body of men from Groton and one brought by a brave young man who had made his way by stealth from the besieged tavern to Boston. Many of the old garrison houses of New England had, as taverns, a peaceful end of their days.

A centre of events, a centre of alarms, the tavern in many a large city saw the most thrilling acts in our Revolutionary struggle which took place off the battlefields. The tavern was the rendezvous for patriotic bands who listened to the stirring words of American rebels, and mixed dark treason to King George with every bowl of punch they drank. The story of our War for Independence could not be dissociated from the old taverns, they are a part of our national history; and those which still stand are among our most interesting Revolutionary relics.

John Adams left us a good contemporaneous picture of the first notes of dissatisfaction such as were heard in every tavern, in every town, in the years which were leading up to the Revolution. He wrote: —