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.”
Pease obtained the first Government contract within the new United States for carrying the mails; and the first mail in this new service passed through Worcester on the 7th of January, 1786 – such changes had three short years brought.
All was not ease for him even then; he still drove the stage, and endured heat and cold; and when New England snowstorms could not be overcome by the mail-coach, like many another of his drivers, he shouldered the mail-bag and carried the mail on snowshoes to Boston town. He died in 1824, after having received from the Government the first charter granted in Massachusetts for a turnpike. It was laid out in 1808 from Boston through South Shrewsbury to Worcester, nearly parallel to the old road. It transformed travel in that vicinity and, indeed, served to alter all town relations and conditions. This grant and his many incessant efforts to establish turnpikes conferred on Levi Pease the title of the “Father of the Turnpike.”
Many other charters were soon granted, and the state was covered with a network of turnpikes which were in general thronged with vehicles and livestock, and were therefore vastly profitable. From the prospectus of the Sixth Massachusetts Turnpike Company, incorporated in 1799 to build a road from Amherst to a point near Shrewsbury, we learn that the turnpike from Northampton to Pittsfield paid twelve per cent dividend.
On these great, bustling, living thoroughfares a sad change has fallen. In Bedford, Raystown, Somerset, Greensbury, in scores of towns, weeds and grass grow in the ruts of the turnpike. The taverns are silent; some are turned into comfortless farm-houses, others are closed and unoccupied, sad and deserted widows of the old “pikes,” far gone in melancholy decline.
Many of the methods familiar to us in railroad service to-day were invented by Pease, and were crudely in practice by him. He introduced the general ticket office in 1795, and no railroad office to-day sells tickets to all the points served by Pease. His stage office was in State Street, Boston. He evolved what we now term the “limited” and “accommodation” service of railroads; in fact, the term “limited” originated with mail-coaches limiting passengers to a specific number. Pease’s fast mail line took but four passengers in each coach, and ran to New York three times a week with the mails. The slower line charging lower prices ran the other days of the week and took all applicants, putting on extra coaches if required. This service began in 1793. Tolls were commuted on Massachusetts turnpikes before 1800, so that condition of railroad travel is a century old.
Not far from this Pease Tavern is a sulphur spring which has some medicinal repute, and which attracted visitors. To reach it at one time you passed close to the house of the Indian, Old Brazil, and his wife Nancy, and this was always a ticklish experience. Miss Ward tells their blood-curdling story. His real name was the gentle title Basil, but he had been a pirate on the high seas, and Brazil was more appropriate. He and his wife thriftily ran their little farm and industriously wove charming baskets and peddled them around the neighboring towns. These last leaves on the tree were, for all the perceptions of Shrewsbury folk, peaceful creatures as they were honest; but when Brazil had been treated to a good mug of hard cider at tavern or farm-house (and no one would fail thus to treat him) he told of his past life with such fierce voice and horrid gesture as made him equally a delight and a terror to the children and to many older folk as well.
He had been a bloodthirsty villain; scores, perhaps hundreds, of helpless souls on captured craft had perished at his gory hands. He detailed to the gaping loungers at the tavern with a realism worthy a modern novelist how he split the heads of his victims open with his broadaxe – exactly in the middle – “one half would fall on one shoulder, tother half on tother shoulder! ugh! ugh!” and with another pull of cider, husband and wife trotted contentedly home. About 1850 they died as they had lived, close – and loving – companions. As a fitting testimonial to the pirate’s end, the village boys put a charge of gunpowder in the brick oven of the peaceful little kitchen and blew the pirate’s house in fragments.
At a time when he could not afford to pay high Boston rents, Pease made Shrewsbury his headquarters. This may account for the large number of old taverns in the town, several of which are portrayed in these pages, – the Old Arcade on page 294, Harrington’s Tavern on page 299, Balch Tavern on page 301.
The Exchange Hotel, still standing and still in use as a public house, was the stage office for Pease’s stage line in Worcester. This interesting old landmark, built in 1784, was owned by Colonel Reuben Sykes, the partner of Pease; and other coach lines than theirs centred at the Exchange, and made it gay with arrival and departure. As the United States Arms, Sykes’s Coffee-house, Sykes’s Stage-house, Thomas Exchange Coffee-house, and Thomas Temperance Exchange in the days of the Washingtonian movement, this hotel has had an interesting existence. President Washington in 1789 “stopped at the United States Arms where he took breakfast, and then proceeded on his journey. To gratify the inhabitants he politely passed through town on horseback. He was dressed in a brown suit, and pleasure glowed in every countenance as he came along.” Lafayette was also a guest; and through its situation opposite the Worcester court-houses on Court Hill the tavern has seen within its walls a vast succession of men noted in law and in lawsuits.
From 1830 to 1846 a brilliant comet flashed its way through the stage-driving world of New England; it was Hon. Ginery Twichell, who was successively and successfully post-rider, stage-driver, stage proprietor, most noted express rider of his times, railroad superintendent, president of the Boston and Worcester Railroad, and member of Congress. Some thirty years ago or more a small child sat in the “operating room” of a photographer’s gallery in Worcester. Her feet and hands were laboriously placed in a tentatively graceful attitude and the back of her head firmly fastened in that iron “branks-without-a-gag” fixture which then prevailed in photographers’ rooms and may still, for all that I know. A sudden dashing inroad from an adjoining room of the photographer’s assistant with the loud and excited exclamation, “Ginery’s coming, Ginery’s coming,” led to the immediate and unceremonious unveiling of the artist from the heavy black cloth that had enveloped his head while he was peeping wisely through the instrument at his juvenile sitter, and to his violent exit; he was followed with equal haste and lack of explanation by my own attendant. Thus basely deserted I sat for some minutes wondering what a Ginery could be, for there was to me a sort of menagerie-circus-like ring in the word, and I deemed it some strange wild beast like the Pygarg once exhibited at the old Salem Tavern. At last, though fully convinced that my moving would break the camera, I boldly disengaged myself from the claws of the branks, ran to a front window, and hung peering out at the Ginery over the heads of the other occupants of the gallery, who regarded with eager delight no wild or strange beast, but a great stage-coach with six horses which stood reeking, foaming, pawing, in front of the Baystate House across the street. A dignified and self-contained old man, ruddy of face, and dressed in a heavy greatcoat and tall silk hat, sat erect on the coachman’s seat, reins well in hand – and suddenly Ginery and his six horses were off with rattle of wheels and blowing of horn and cheers of the crowd; but not before there was imprinted forever in unfading colors on my young brain a clear picture of the dashing coaching life of olden days. It was an anniversary of some memorable event, and the member of Congress celebrated it by once more driving over his old-time coaching route to meet the cheers and admiration of all beholders.
The predecessor of Baystate House, the old Central Hotel, was the headquarters of Twichell’s stage line during the sixteen years of his connection with it. It was built in 1722, and rooms in it served various purposes besides those of good cheer – one being used as a county jail.
I do not doubt that the coach which I saw was the one thus referred to in the Boston Traveller of June 1, 1867, as Mr. Twichell occasionally drove it until the year of his death: —
“The venerable coach built by Moses T. Breck of Worcester, and used 30 years ago in the heart of the Commonwealth by Hon. Ginery Twichell for special occasions before railroads were fairly in vogue, passed through our Boston streets on Friday. The vehicle was of a most substantial pattern; no repairs have been needed through all these years except an occasional coat of varnish and new upholstering. In 1840, by request of the citizens of the town of Barre, seats were added on the top of the vehicle, so that a party of 32 persons could be accommodated (12 inside and 20 outside). The largest load ever carried by the ponderous carriage was a party of (62) sixty-two young ladies of Worcester who, uniformly dressed, were driven on a blackberry excursion to the suburbs by Mr. Twichell himself, eight matched horses being required on the occasion. During the exciting Presidential Campaign of 1840, the staunch vehicle was used for conveying the sovereigns to and from political gatherings in the town surrounding old Quinsigamond.”
There is still living in Boston, at an advanced age, but of vigorous mental powers, Mr. Henry S. Miner, the last stage-driver of Ginery Twichell’s stage-route, perhaps the last person living who was connected with it. He has scores of tales of stage-coach days which he has capacity to frame in interesting language. I am indebted to him for many letters full of information and interest. He says:
“Ginery Twichell was a shrewd, quiet, persevering man of but few words, and those to the point; his voice was clear and low, never raised to horses or men. Affable, sociable, he was a man that would make friends and hold them. He was smooth-shaven and red-faced, but strictly temperate. He had one habit of rubbing his hands rapidly when in earnest conversation. He had but a common school education and might be called a self-made man. Before through railroads were completed, Mr. Twichell collected the November election votes on horseback, from Greenfield to Worcester, 54 miles, covering the distance in four and one-half hours. He had relays of horses and men every 6 to 10 miles. As the work always came in the night, he was many times thrown by his horse stumbling, but always came out all right. At one time he slept in his clothes with buckskin underwear, at the American House in Worcester, in wait for despatches from English steamers. He had men and horses on the road to Norwich for one week waiting also. When the dispatches arrived he mounted his horse and started for Norwich; he met the boat, and the despatches were in New York hours ahead of any other line. I am the only one of his drivers living, and one hostler is living.”
A friend who remembers riding with Twichell eulogizes him in the warmest terms for his accommodating spirit and happy faculty of making all his passengers as comfortable as possible. He had an inexhaustible fund of racy anecdotes which he would tell so well that it was a perfect treat to ride upon the box with him. He was a general favorite, especially with the country folks, and the boys and girls on the road, and with these he always had a joke to crack whenever it came his way to do so, to the infinite amusement of the travellers whom he had in charge. He carried many small and valuable parcels, and executed commissions for the people like an expressman. After a period of self-denial in early life, throughout which he had saved his liberal earnings carefully, he was enabled to purchase from Mr. Stockwell the stage and two horses which he drove between Athol and Barre. About 1837 he started with Mr. Burt and Mr. Billings a stage line from Brattleboro to Worcester.
In 1843 he was engaged in driving a stage of his own between Barre and Worcester. Not long afterwards he was sole owner of a line from Greenfield, Massachusetts, to Brattleboro, Vermont. The Postmaster-general about this time advertised for mail contracts, and Ginery Twichell went to Washington. It was supposed by the owners of the other lines, who knew he had gone thither, that he would not undertake to execute more than one contract, but his own private views, it appears, were somewhat broader, for he contracted with the Government to carry the mails upon a number of routes, greatly to the astonishment of others in the business; and what was better still, he accomplished what he had undertaken very satisfactorily to the Postmaster-general, and came to be regarded as a sort of Napoleon among mail contractors. He became the owner of a large number of fine stages and horses. He ran a line from Worcester to Northfield, sixty miles, three times a week; from Worcester to Winchester, fifty-five miles, daily; from Worcester to Keene, fifty-four miles, three times a week; to Templeton twenty-five miles, daily; from Templeton to Greenfield, forty-eight miles, daily; from Barre to Worcester, forty-four miles, daily. In all this was two hundred and eighty-six miles of stage-route, and it took a hundred and fifty-six horses to do the work.
The picture shown on page 306 is from a lithograph published in 1850, entitled, —
“The Unrivaled Express Rider, Ginery Twichell, who rode from Worcester to Hartford, a distance of Sixty miles in Three hours and Twenty minutes through a deep snow, January 23, 1846.”
It commemorates an exploit of his which was much talked of at the time it took place.