Stage-coach and Tavern Days

“Portsmouth, April, 1761.”

A picture and account of the Stavers Inn are given on page 176.

These stages ran throughout the winter, except in bad weather, and the fare was then three dollars a trip. This winter trip was often a hard one. We read at one time of the ferries being so frozen over that travellers had to make a hundred-mile circuit round by Cambridge. This line of stages prospered; and two years later “The Portsmouth Flying Stage-coach,” which held six “insides,” ran with four or six horses. The fare was the same.

On this Stavers line were placed the first mail-coaches under the English crown. When Finlay (the post-office surveyor just referred to) examined the mail-service in the year 1773, he found these mail-coaches running between Boston and Portsmouth. Mr. Ernst says, “The Stavers mail-coach was stunning, used six horses in bad weather, and never was late.” These coaches were built by Paddock, the Boston coach-builder and Tory. Stavers also was a Tory, and during the Revolution both fled to England, and may have carried the notion of the mail-coach across the sea. At any rate the first English mail-coach was not put on the road till 1784; it ran between Bristol and London. It was started by a theatrical manager named Palmer, office work or coaching. The service was very imperfect and far from speedy.

Herbert Joyce, historian of the British post-office, says, “In 1813 there was not a single town in the British kingdom at the post-office of which absolutely certain information could have been obtained as to the charge to which a letter addressed to any other town would be subject.” The charge was regulated by the distance; but distances seemed movable, and the letter-sender was wholly at the mercy of the postmaster. The government of the United States early saw the injustice of doubt in these matters, and Congress ordered a careful topographical survey, in 1811-12, of the post-road from Passamaquoddy to St. Mary’s, and also established our peerless corps of topographical engineers. Foreigners were much impressed with the value of this survey, and an old handkerchief, printed in 1815 by R. Gillespie, at “Anderston Printfield near Glasgow,” proves that the practical effects of the survey were known in England before the English people had a similar service.

This handkerchief gives an interesting statement of postal rates and routes at the beginning of this century. Around the edge is a floral border, with the arms of the United States, the front and reverse of the dollar of 1815, a quartette of ships of war, and portraits of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and “Maddison” intertwined.

Its title is “A Geographical View of All the Post Towns in the United States of America and Their Distance from Each Other According to the Establishment of the Postmaster General in the Year 1815.” By an ingenious arrangement of the towns on the main coast line and those on the cross post-roads, the distance from one of these points to any other could easily be ascertained. The “main line of post towns” extended “from Passamaquoddy in the District of Maine to Sunbury in the State of Georgia.”

The object in publishing such a table as this was to make a durable record by which it was possible for the people to compute easily and with a handy helper what the cost of postage on letters would be. The following “rates of postage” are given on the old handkerchief: —

“Single Letter conveyed by land for any distance not exceeding 10 miles, 6 cents.

Double letters are charged double; and triple letters, three times these rates, and a packet weighing one ounce avoirdupois at the rate of four single letters.

Let us compare conditions in these matters in America with those in Scotland. While England had, in the first half of the eighteenth century, coaches in enough number that country folk knew what they looked like, Scotland was barren not only of coaches but of carriages. In 1720 there were no chariots or chaises north of the Tay. Not till 1749 was there a coach between Edinburgh and Glasgow; this journey of forty-six miles could, by the end of the century, be done in twelve hours. In 1754 there was once a month a coach from Edinburgh to London; it took twelve to sixteen days to accomplish this journey, and was so perilous that travellers made their wills before setting out. There were few carts and no such splendid wagons as our Conestogas. Cadgers carried creels of goods on horseback; and sledges, or creels borne on the backs of women, were the means of transportation in northern Scotland until the end of the eighteenth century. These sledges had tumbling wheels of solid wood a foot and a half in diameter, revolving with the wooden axletree, and held little more than a wheelbarrow.

Scotch inns were as bad as the roads; “mean hovels with dirty rooms, dirty food, dirty attendants.” Servants without shoes or stockings, greasy tables with no cloths, butter thick with cows’ hairs, no knives and forks, a single drinking-cup for all at the table, filthy smells and sights, were universal; and this when English inns were the pleasantest places on earth.

Mail-carriage was even worse than personal transportation; hence letter-writing was not popular. In 1746 the London mail-bag once carried but a single letter from Edinburgh. So little attention was paid to the post that as late as 1728 the letters were sometimes not taken from the mail bag, and were brought back to their original starting place. Scotland was in a miserable state of isolation and gloom until the Turnpike Road Act was passed; the building of good roads made a complete revolution of all economic conditions there, as it has everywhere.

The first railway in America was the Quincy Railroad, or the “Experiment” Railroad, built to carry stones to Bunker Hill Monument. A tavern-pitcher, commemorative of this Quincy road, is shown here. Two views of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, printed on plates and platters in rich dark blue, are familiar to china collectors. One shows a stationary engine at the top of a hill with a number of little freight cars at a very singular angle going down a steep grade. The other displays a primitive locomotive with coachlike passenger cars.

All the first rail-cars were run by horse-power.

Peter Parley’s First Book on History says, in the chapter on Maryland: —

“The people are building what is called a railroad. This consists of iron bars laid down along the ground and made fast, so that carriages with small wheels may run upon them with facility. In this way one horse will be able to draw as much as ten horses on a common road. A part of the railroad is already done, and if you choose to take a ride upon it you can do so. You enter a car something like a stage, and then you will be drawn along by two horses at a speed of twelve miles per hour.”

The horse-car system, in its perfection, did not prevail until many years after the establishment of steam cars. It is curious to note how suddenly, in our own day, the horse cars were banished by cars run by electricity; as speedily as were stage-coaches cast aside by steam. A short time ago a little child of eight years came running to me in much excitement over an unusual sight she had seen in a visit to a small town – “a trolley car dragged by horses.”

Many strange plans were advanced for the new railways. I have seen a wood-cut of a railway-coach rigged with masts and sails gayly running on a track. I don’t know whether the inventor of this wind-car ever rigged his car-boat and tried to run it. Another much-derided suggestion was that the motive power should be a long rope or chain, and the notion was scorned, but we have lived to see many successful lines of cars run by cable.

Kites and balloons also were seriously suggested as motive powers. It was believed that in a short time any person would be permitted to run his own private car or carriage over the tracks, by paying toll, as a coach did on a turnpike.

The body of the stage-coach furnished the model for the first passenger cars on the railway. A copy is here given of an old print of a train on the Veazie Railroad, which began to run from Bangor, Maine, in 1836. The road had two locomotives of Stevenson’s make from England. They had no cabs when they arrived here, but rude ones were attached. They burned wood. The cars were also English; a box resembling a stage-coach was placed on a rude platform. Each coach carried eight people. The passengers entered the side. The train ran about twelve miles in forty minutes. The rails, like those of other railroads at the time, were of strap-iron spiked down. These spikes soon rattled loose, so each engine carried a man with a sledge hammer, who watched the track, and when he spied a spike sticking up he would reach down and drive it home. These “snake heads,” as the rolled-up ends of the strap-iron were called, sometimes were forced up through the cars and did great damage. “Snake heads” were as common in railway travel as snags in the river in early steamboating.

The Boston and Lowell, Boston and Providence, and Boston and Worcester railroads were all opened in 1835. The locomotive used on the Boston and Worcester road was called the Meteor. The cars were coach-shaped and ran on single trucks. The freight cars were short vans or wagon-bodies covered with canvas like a Conestoga wagon. A picturesque view of an old railway train is given opposite page 288 (#Page_288) in the picture painted by Mr. Edward Lamson Henry, called “The Arrival of the Train.” It shows a train at a way station between Harrisburg and Lancaster, in the year 1839, and a comparison between the coaches on the track and the coach and horses waiting near by will show that the same model served for both.

Accidents were many on these early roads; some were fatal, some were ridiculous. The clumsy locomotive often broke down, and horses and oxen had to be impressed to drag the cars to the nearest station and repair shop. An old print showing “Uncle Ame Morris’s” oxen serving as a locomotive on a railroad near Danbury, Connecticut, is given on page 289 (#Page_289). Coaching accidents had seldom been fatal, and ancient citizens were appalled at the deaths on the rail. Never was the cry of “the good old times” so loudly heard as in the early days of the railroad. Especially were the injuries by escaping steam and by communicated fire deemed horrible and unbearable. An old-school blood thus summarized all these sentiments: “You got upset in a coach – and there you were! You get upset in a rail-car – and, damme, where are you?”

The roadbed of the track was laid thus, as shown in the words of a State Report made to the Massachusetts Legislature on January 16, 1829: —

“A continuous stone wall, laid so deep in the ground as not to be moved by the effects of the frost; and surmounted by a rail of split granite about a foot in thickness and depth, with a bar of iron on top of it of sufficient thickness for the carriage wheels to run.”

My father, who rode on one of these rock-bedded railways, told me that the jarring was inexpressibly tiring and even distressing. They were in use but a short time. But the cars had no springs, and the jarring continued to some degree. It produced headaches and an incessant itching of the skin. The primitive brake-power was a hand or foot brake, and a car stopped with a jolting which was almost as severe as the shock felt to-day in a collision. A more primitive brake-power was in vogue on the Newcastle and Frenchtown Railroad, where the engineer would open his safety valve at each station and several strong negroes would seize the end of the train and hold it back while the station agent thrust sticks of wood through the wheel-spokes. Crooked roads were favored, so the engineer and conductor could “look back and see if the train was all right.” These were easily managed with the short coach-like railway carriages.

It would be impossible to repeat all the objections against the establishment of the railroads, besides the loss of life. These objections far outnumbered those made against coaches centuries previous. The farmers would be ruined. Horses would have to be killed because wholly useless. There would therefore be no market for oats or hay. Hens would not lay eggs on account of the noise. It would cause insanity. There would be constant fires from the sparks from the engine. It was declared that no car could ever advance against the wind. The Boston Courier of June 27, 1827, said in an editorial: —

“The project of a railroad from Boston to Albany is impracticable, as every one knows who knows the simplest rule of arithmetic, and the expense would be little less than the market value of the whole territory of Massachusetts; and which, if practicable, every person of common sense knows would be as useless as a railroad from Boston to the moon.”

Captain Basil Hall rode by stage-coach in 1829 over the present route of the Boston and Albany Railroad. He described the hills, ravines, and rivers, and said, “Those Yankees talk of constructing a railroad over this route; as a practical engineer, I pronounce it simply impossible.”

All the sentimental objections of all the sentimental objectors may be summed up in the words of the best beloved of all coachmen, Tony Weller: —

“I consider that the rail is unconstitutional, and a inwader o’ privileges. As to the comfort – as an old coachman I may say it – veres the comfort o’ sitting in a harm-chair, a lookin’ at brick walls, and heaps o’ mud, never comin’ to a public ’ouse, never seein’ a glass o’ ale, never goin’ thro’ a pike, never meetin’ a change o’ no kind (hosses or otherwise) but always comin’ to a place ven you comes to vun at all, the werry picter o’ the last! As to the honor and dignity o’ travellin’, vere can that be vithout a coachman, and vats the rail to sich coachmen as is sometimes forced to go by it, but a outrage and a insult! And as to the ingen, a nasty, wheezin’, creakin’, gaspin’, puffin’, bustin’ monster always out o’ breath, with a shiny green and gold back like a onpleasant beetle; as to the ingen as is alvays a pourin’ out red-hot coals at night and black smoke in the day, the sensiblest thing it does, in my opinion, is ven there’s somethin’ in the vay, and it sets up that ’ere frightful scream vich seems to say, ‘now ’eres two hundred and forty passengers in the werry greatest extremity o’ danger, and ’eres their two hundred and forty screams in vun!’”

CHAPTER XIII

TWO STAGE VETERANS OF MASSACHUSETTS

There still stands in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, at the junction of the Westborough road with the old “King’s Highway,” a weatherbeaten but dignified house, the Pease Tavern; it is shown on page 292. This house was for many years a popular resort for the teamsters and travellers who passed back and forth on what was then an important road. Behind the house was originally a large shed with roof and open sides for the protection from rain or snow of the great numbers of loaded wagons. In another covered shed at the side of the house were chairs and tables for the teamsters and shelves for any baggage they took from their wagons. This shed for the accommodation of the teamsters would indicate to me that they were not so unreservedly welcome at this tavern as at many others on the route. Miss Ward, in her entertaining book, Old Times in Shrewsbury, says that under this shed, in the side boards of the house, slight holes were cut one above the other to a window in the second story. These holes were large enough to hold on by, and to admit the toe of a man’s boot; by dexterous use of hands and feet the teamsters were expected to climb up the outside wall to the window, and thus reach their sleeping apartments without passing through the hall and interior of the house. This was, it was asserted, for the convenience both of the family and the travellers. In the Wayside Inn at Sudbury a small special staircase winding in the corner of the taproom led to the four “drivers’ bedrooms” above. One of the upper rooms in the Pease Tavern was a dancing hall. Across this hall from wall to wall was a swing partition which could be hooked up to the ceiling when a dance was given, but at other times divided the hall into two large bedrooms. This was a common appurtenance of the old-time tavern.

Major John Farrar, an officer in the Revolution, first kept this Shrewsbury inn, and greatly rejoiced when Washington visited it in his triumphal journey through the country. His successor as landlord, Levi Pease, was a man of note in the history of travel and transportation systems in Massachusetts. He was a Shrewsbury blacksmith who served through the entire Revolutionary War in a special function – which might be entitled a confidential transportation agent: he transferred important papers, carried special news, purchased horses and stores, foraged for the army, and enjoyed the full confidence of the leaders, especially of Lafayette. In 1783, when peace was established, he planned to establish a line of stages between Boston and Hartford, and thus turn his knowledge of roads and transportation to account. Wholly without funds, he found no one ready to embark in the daring project and work with him, save one young stage-driver, Reuben Sykes or Sikes, who braved parental opposition, as well as universal discouragement, and started with a stage-wagon from Hartford to Boston at the same hour that Captain Pease set out from Boston to Hartford. Each made the allotted trip in four days. The fare was ten dollars a trip. Empty stages were soon succeeded by prosperous trips, and in two years the penniless stage agent owned the Boston Inn opposite the Common, in Boston, on the spot where St. Paul’s Church now stands. The line was soon extended to New York.

Josiah Quincy gives a far from alluring picture of Pease’s coaches in the earliest days: —

“I set out from Boston in the line of stages lately established by an enterprising Yankee, Pease by name, which at that day was considered a method of transportation of wonderful expedition. The journey to New York took up a week. The carriages were old and shackling, and much of the harness made of ropes. One pair of horses carried the stage eighteen miles. We generally reached our resting place for the night, if no accident intervened, at ten o’clock, and after a frugal supper went to bed with a notice that we should be called at three the next morning, which generally proved to be half-past two. Then, whether it snowed or rained, the traveller must rise and make ready by the help of a horn-lantern and a farthing candle, and proceed on his way over bad roads, sometimes with a driver showing no doubtful symptoms of drunkenness, which good-hearted passengers never fail to improve at every stopping place by urging upon him another glass of toddy. Thus we travelled, eighteen miles a stage, sometimes obliged to get out and help the coachman lift the coach out of a quagmire or rut, and arrived at New York after a week’s hard travelling, wondering at the ease as well as expedition of our journey.”

It should be added to this tale that young Quincy was in love, and on his way to see his sweetheart, which may have added to his impatience.

This condition of affairs was not permitted to remain long. Captain Pease bought better horses and more comfortable wagons, and he persuaded townships to repair the roads; and he thus advertised in the Massachusetts Spy, or the Worcester Gazette, under date of January 5, 1786: —

“Stages from Portsmouth in New Hampshire, to Savannah in Georgia.

“There is now a line of Stages established from New Hampshire to Georgia, which go and return regularly, and carry the several Mails, by order and permission of Congress.

“The stages from Boston to Hartford in Connecticut, set out, during the winter season, from the house of Levi Pease, at the Sign of the New York Stage, opposite the Mall, in Boston, every Monday and Thursday morning, precisely at five o’clock, go as far as Worcester on the evenings of those days, and on the days following proceed to Palmer, and on the third day reach Hartford; the first Stage reaches the city of New York on Saturday evening, and the other on the Wednesday evening following.

“The stages from New York for Boston, set out on the same days, and reach Hartford at the same time as the Boston Stages.

“The stages from Boston exchange passengers with the stages from Hartford at Spencer, and the Hartford Stages exchange with those from New York at Hartford. Passengers are again exchanged at Stratford Ferry, and not again until their arrival at New York.

“By the present regulation of the stages, it is certainly the most convenient and expeditious way of travelling that can possibly be had in America, and in order to make it the cheapest, the proprietors of the stages have lowered their price from four pence to three pence a mile, with liberty to passengers to carry fourteen pounds baggage.

“In the summer season the stages are to run with the mail three times in a week instead of twice in the winter, by which means those who take passage at Boston in the stage which sets off on Monday morning, may arrive at New York on the Thursday evening following, and all the mails during that season are to be but four days going from Boston to New York, and so from New York to Boston.

“Those who intend taking passage in the stages must leave their names and baggage the evening preceding the morning that the stages set off, at the several places where the stages put up, and pay one-half of their passage to the place where the first exchange of passengers is made, if bound so far, and if not, one-half of their passage so far as they are bound.

“N. B. Way passengers will be accommodated when the stages are not full, at the same rate, viz. three pence only per mile.

“Said PEASE keeps good lodging, &c. for gentlemen travellers, and stabling for horses.

“Boston, Jan. 2nd, 1786.”