CHAPTER XIV
A STAGING CENTRE
The story of the tavern and stage life of the town of Haverhill, New Hampshire, may be told as an example of that aspect and era of social history, as developed in a country town. It shows the power the stage-coach was in bringing civilization and prosperity to remote parts of the states, what an illumination, what an education.
Haverhill is on the Connecticut River somewhat more than halfway up the western boundary line of the state of New Hampshire, at the head of the Cohos valley. It is a beautiful fertile tract of land which had been cleared and cultivated by the Indians before the coming of the white man. It is lovely and picturesque with its broad intervales, splendid mountains, and peaceful river winding in the sweeps and reaches of the Oxbow; so lovely that Longfellow declared Haverhill the most beautiful spot he ever had seen. The town has but little colonial history. It had no white settlers till 1761; but the first who did take up land and build there were, as was the case with nearly all New Hampshire towns, men of unusual force of character and energy of purpose; by Revolutionary times the town was well established, and its situation and resources made it the authorized place of rendezvous for the troops destined for Canada. At the end of the war, when the danger of Indian invasion lessened, the town grew rapidly, but there were still only bridle-paths blazed through the woods by which to connect with the world, and until this century its only roads were the river road, the Coventry Road over Morse Hill, and the old Road from Plymouth, New Hampshire.
But the day of the turnpike and vast changes was dawning. In 1805, in this town, still poor and struggling, were men who contributed their share to the building of the old Cohos Turnpike from Plymouth through Warren to Haverhill. The old post-rider, faithful John Balch, who had carried on foot and on horseback the scant letters throughout the dangerous days of the Revolution, was succeeded by Colonel Silas May in a Dutch wagon, carrying packages and the mail. As he drove into town blowing his horn he inaugurated a change for Haverhill that was indeed a new life. By 1814 a permanent stage line was established between Concord and Haverhill through Plymouth; and the first coach came down the long hill on its first trip, with loud and constant blasts of the horn, with a linchpin gone, but wheel safely in place clean up to the tavern door, thanks to Silas May’s skilful driving. A leading spirit in obtaining the turnpike charter and one of the proprietors of the first stage line was Colonel William Tarleton (or Tarlton), then a dashing young fellow of great elegance of manners; he kept the Tarleton Tavern on Tarleton Lake on the Pike till his death. Every stage and team that went down or up the Pike stopped there to water the horses, with water in which was thrown salt; and every passenger had at least a hot drink. His hostelry was famous for two generations, and all the while there swung in the breezes that swept over Tarleton Lake the old sign-board which is shown here. It is an oaken board on which is painted on one side an Indian and the name William Tarlton and date, 1774; on the other a symbol of Plenty. It is owned by his grandson, Amos Tarleton, of Haverhill, to whose cordial interest and intelligent help I owe much of this story of Haverhill’s coaching days.
The turnpike line from Concord to Haverhill was scarcely under way when a rival line was started which came through Hanover, and connected with the stage line to New York. Others followed with surprising quickness; the chief were lines to Boston, New York, and Stanstead, Canada; lesser lines of coaches ran to the White Mountains, to Montpelier, Vermont, to Chelsea, Vermont, and elsewhere. The reason for this sudden growth of Haverhill was found in its position with regard to the neighboring country; the topography of upper New England made it a proper and natural travel centre.
As many coaches came into Haverhill every night and started out early the next morning, as many passengers changed coaches there, it can be readily seen that the need of taverns was great, and a number at once were opened. Often a hundred and fifty travellers were set down daily in Haverhill. The Bliss Tavern was one of the first to be built and is still standing, a dignified and comfortable mansion, as may be seen from its picture on page 314. Its landlord, Joseph Bliss, was a man of influence in the town, and held several important offices; his house was the headquarters where the judges of the court and the lawyers stopped when court was held; for Haverhill was a shire town, a county seat, from 1773. At some of the courts of the General Sessions of the Peace as many as twenty-two justices were present; and court terms were longer then than now, so justices, lawyers, clients, sheriffs, deputies, jurors, and witnesses came and remained in town till their law business was settled. Sometimes the taverns were crowded for weeks. The court and bar had a special dining room and table at Bliss’s Tavern, to which no layman, however high in social standing, was admitted. On Sundays all went to the old meeting-house at Piermont, where there was a “Judges’ Pew.” Sometimes executions took place in town – a grand day for the taverns. When one Burnham was hanged there in 1805, ten thousand people witnessed the sight. Old and young, mothers with babes, lads and lasses, even confirmed invalids thronged to this great occasion.
Besides the court and its following, and the pampered travellers in stage-coaches, Haverhill taverns had by 1825 other classes of customers. Backward and forward from upper New Hampshire and Vermont to Boston, Portsmouth, and Salem, rolled the great covered wagons with teams of six or eight horses bearing the products of the soil and forest to the towns and the products of the whole earth in return. These wagons, which were the Conestoga wagons of Pennsylvania, made little appearance in New England till this century; they were brought there by the War of 1812; but they had there their day of glory and usefulness as elsewhere throughout our whole northern continent.
The two-wheeled cart of the earliest colonists, clumsily built and wasteful of power, was used long in New England for overland transportation; though the chief transfer of merchandise was in the winter by “sledding.” There seems to have always been plentiful snow and good sledding every year in every part of New England in olden times, though it is far from being so to-day. The farmer, at that season of the year, had little else to do, and the ancient paths were soon made smooth by many sleighs and sleds.
Mr. Henry S. Miner gives me a very interesting account of these freight wagons in New England as he remembers them in ante-railroad days. Though the traffic was small in amount compared with that of the present day, it was carried on in a way which gave a sense of great life and action on the road. As even little towns furnished freight for several teams, the aggregate was large, and as they neared Boston the number of teams on the highway seemed enormous. These passed through towns on the turnpike every day, Sundays included. No vocation called for sturdier or better men. The drivers were almost invariably large, hearty, healthy Yankees, of good sense and regular habits, though they were seldom total abstainers. They could not be drunkards, for their life was too vigorous; long whip in hand, they walked beside their teams. The whip was a sign of office, seldom applied to a horse. They had to be keen traders, good merchants, to sell advantageously the goods they carried to town and to choose wisely for return trips. Country merchants seldom went to the cities, but depended wholly on these teamsters for supplies.
The wagons were of monstrous size, broad and high. Each horse had a ton of freight. No one was a regular teamster who drove less than four horses. But there were other carriers. A three-horse team called a “spike,” a two-horse team called a “podanger,” and a single horse with cart called a “gimlet,” were none of them in favor with tavern-keepers or other teamsters. Still, if the smaller teams got stuck in the mud or snow, the regulars would good-humoredly help them out. Whatever accident happened to a teamster or his wagon or horses, his fellow-craftsmen assisted him, while stage-drivers, drovers, or any other travelling citizens were never looked upon for help.
An old man who drove one of these teams in his youth says: —
“When these large teams were hooked to the wagons, the starting word was ‘whoo-up’; and the horses would at once place themselves in position. Then, ‘Order, whope, git.’ To turn to the left, ‘Whoa, whoa,’ softly; to the right, ‘Geer there.’ For a full stop, ‘Whoa who-oof,’ in louder voice, and all would come to a standstill. It was a fine sight to see six or eight good horses spread out, marching along in each other’s steps, and see how quick they were to mind the driver’s voice. Good drivers always spoke to their teams in a low voice, never shouted. The teamsters walked beside their teams, twenty miles a day the average. The reins were done up on each horse’s hames, allowing them to spread apart with ease, a check-rein from the bit over the hames to keep them where they belonged. You could never teach a horse anything that wasn’t checked up. The wagons weighed from eighteen hundred to twenty-two hundred pounds. Some wagons had an adjustable seat called a lazy-board.”
With winter snows the wagons were generally housed; hundreds, yes, thousands of sleighs, pods, and pungs took their place. The farmer no longer sent to town by wagon and teamster; he carried his farm produce to town himself, just as his grandfather had in the days of the cart and sled before the Revolution. Winter brought red-letter days to the New England farmer; summer and autumn were his time of increase, but winter was his time of trade and of glorious recreation.
Friendly word was circulated from farm to farm, spread chiefly at the Sabbath nooning, that at stated date, at break of day the long ride to market would begin. Often twenty or thirty neighbors would start together on the road to town. The two-horse pung or single-horse pod, shod with steel shoes one inch thick, was closely packed with farm wealth – anything that a New England farm could produce that could be sold in a New England town. Frozen hogs, poultry, and venison; firkins of butter, casks of cheeses, – four to a cask, – bags of beans, peas, sheep-pelts, deer hides, skins of mink, fox, and fisher-cat that the boys had trapped, perhaps a splendid bearskin, nuts that the boys had gathered, shoe pegs that they had cut, yarn their sisters had spun, stockings and mittens they had knitted, homespun cloth and linen, a forest of splint brooms strapped on behind, birch brooms that the boys had whittled. So closely packed was the sleigh that the driver could not sit; he stood on a little semicircular step on the back of the sleigh, protected from the cutting mountain winds by the high sleigh back. At times he ran alongside to keep his blood briskly warm.
To Troy and Portland went some winter commerce, but Boston, Portsmouth, and Salem took far the greatest amount. On the old Cohos Turnpike trains of these farm sleighs were often a half mile long. The tavern-keepers might well have grown rich, had all these winter travellers paid for board and lodging, but nearly all, even the wealthiest farmers, carried their own provender and food. Part of their oats and hay for their horses sometimes was deposited with honest tavern-keepers on the way down to be used on the way home; and there was also plenty of food to last through the journey: doughnuts, cooked sausages, roast pork, “rye and injun” bread, cheese, and a bountiful mass of bean porridge. This latter, made in a tub and frozen in a great mass, was hung by loops of twine by the side of the sleigh, and great chunks were chopped off from time to time. This itinerant picnic was called in some vicinities tuck-a-nuck, an Indian word; also mitchin. It was not carried from home because tavern-fare was expensive, – a “cold bite” was but twelve and a half cents, and a regular meal but twenty-five cents; but the tavern-keeper did not expect to serve meals to this class or to such a great number of travellers. His profits were made on liquor he sold and sleeping room he gave. The latter was often simple enough. Great fires were built in barroom and parlor; each driver spread out a blanket or fur robe, and with feet to the fire, the semicircle slept the sleep of the healthy and tired and cider-filled. Ten cents this lodging cost; but the sale of rum and cider, toddy and flip, brought in dimes and dollars to the tavern-keeper. Many a rough story was told or old joke laughed at before the circle was quiet; quarrels, too, took place among so many strong and independent men.
It can readily be seen how important the tavern must have been in such a town as Haverhill, what a news centre, what an attraction, what an education. Newspapers were infrequent, but none were needed when newcomers from all points of the compass brought all there was to tell from everywhere. Mine host was the medium through which information was spread; he came into close contact with leaders in law, politics, and business, and dull he must have been if he did not profit in mental growth. But he could not be dull, he had to be companionable and intelligent; hence we find the tavern-keeper the leading man in town, prominent in affairs, and great in counsel, and it was to the stage-coach he owed much of his intelligence and influence.
CHAPTER XV
THE STAGE-DRIVER
In a home-library in an old New England town there were for half a century two sets of books which seemed strangely alien to the other staid occupants of the bookshelves, which companions were chiefly rows of encyclopædias, Scott’s novels, the Spectator and Tatler, a large number of books of travel, and scores of biographies, autobiographies and memoirs of pious “gospellers,” English and American, chiefly missionaries. These two special sets of books were large volumes, but were not placed primly and orderly with others of their own size; they were laid on their sides thrust high up among the smaller books on the upper shelves as if to escape notice under the frames of the glazed doors. They were strictly tabooed to all the younger members of the family, and were, indeed, well out of our reach; but Satan can find library steps for idle and very inquisitive little souls to climb, and we had read them eagerly before we were in our teens. One set was that inestimable and valuable work London Labour and London Poor, which was held to be highly improper reading for the young, but which I found very entertaining, as being of folk as remote from my life as if they were gnomes and elves. The other volumes were Pierce Egan’s Book of Sports; and one, a prince of wicked books, entitled Life in London: or the Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorne, Esq., and his elegant friend Corinthian Tom accompanied by Bob Logic, the Oxonian, in their Rambles and Sprees through the Metropolis. This also was by Pierce Egan.
That this latter most reprehensible book (from the standard of the Puritan household in which it was found) should have been preserved at all must have been, I think, from the fact that the illustrations were by Cruikshank, and delightful pictures they were. Though this book was so ill-regarded in New England, its career in England was a most brilliant one. It was the most popular work in British literature in the years 1820 to 1850; in fact, to many Englishmen it was the book, the literature, of the period. One claim it has to the consideration of the reading public to-day: it is perhaps the best picture existing of Society, or, as it was termed in the words of the day, of “Life, Fashion, and Frolic,” in the times of George IV. Thackeray tells, in his article on George Cruikshank, of the lingering fondness he had for this old book, but even when he wrote could find no copy either in the British Museum or in London circulating libraries. It was dramatized by several hands, and had long runs on the stage both in England and the United States; and I do not doubt wealthy young men in the large American cities tried to emulate the sports of the London Tom and Jerry. In the peculiar affectations of the bucks and bloods of that day, from the king down, shown in the love of all low sports, in association, even familiarity, with low sportsmen, and in the domination of the horse in sporting life, we see the reason for the high perfection and participation of the rich in coaching in England – a perfection which was aped in some respects in America. Coaching is less talked about than other sports by Jerry and the elegant Corinthian Tom (whose surname is never once given), probably because their dissipations and sprees were those of the city, not of turnpike roads and green lanes. But the life of the day, perhaps the idlest, most aimless era of fashion in English history, the life most thoroughly devoid of any spirituality or intellectuality, yet never exactly unintelligent and never dull, lives forever in Pierce Egan’s pages; and lives for me with the intensity of reality from the eager imprinting on the fresh memory of a little child of unfamiliar scenes and incomprehensible words, knowledge even of whose existence was sternly forbidden.
I obtained from these books a notion of an English coachman, as an idealized being, a combination of Phœbus Apollo, a Roman charioteer, and the Prince Regent. I fancied our American coach-drivers as glorious likewise, though with a lesser refulgence; and I distinctly recall my disappointment at the reality of the first coachman of my first coach-ride from Charlestown, New Hampshire. A man, even on a day of Indian Summer, all in hide and fur: moth-eaten fur gloves, worn fur cap with vast ear-flaps and visor, and half-bare buffalo-hide coat, and out of all these ancient skins but one visible feature, a great, shining, bulbous nose. But even the paling days of stage-coaches were then long past; and the ancient coachman had long been shorn of his glory. In the days of his prime he was a power in the land, though he was not like the English coachman.
From Mr. Miner and others who remember the great days of stage-coach travel, I learn that our American drivers were a dignified and interesting class of men. Imposing in bearskin caps, in vast greatcoats, and with their teams covered with ivory rings, with fine horses and clean coaches, they and their surroundings were pleasant to the eyes. They acquired characteristic modes of speaking, of thinking. They were terse and sententious in expression, had what is termed horse sense. They had prudence and ability and sturdy intelligence. They carried from country to town, from house to house, news of the health of loved ones, or of sickness when weary nurses were too tired to write. A kindly driver would stop his horses or walk them past a lane corner where an anxious mother or sister waited, dreading; and passengers in the coach would hear him call out to her, “John’s better, fever’s all gone.”
They were character-readers, of man and horse alike. They had great influence in the community they called home, and their word was law. They were autocrats in their own special domain, and respected everywhere. No wonder they loved the life. Harrison Bryant, the veteran Yankee whip, inherited a fine farm in Athol. He at once gave up his hard life as a driver, bade good-by to the cold and exposure, the long hours of work, the many hardships, and settled down to an existence of sheltered prosperity. On the third day of his life on the farm he stood at the edge of a field as a stage passed on the road. The driver gave “the Happy Farmer” a salute and snapped his whip. The horses started ahead on the gallop, a passenger on top waved good-by to him; the coach bounded on and disappeared. Farmer Bryant walked sombrely across the field to his new home, packed his old carpet-bag, went to the stage-office in the next town, and two days later he swept down the same road on the same coach, snapping his whip, waving his hand, leaving the miles behind him. He was thus one week off the coach-box, and at the end of his long life had a well-established record of over one hundred and thirty-five thousand miles of stage driving, more than five times round the world.
A letter written by an “old-timer” says: —
“I remember many of the old stage-drivers. What a line was the old ‘accommodation’ put on by Gen. Holman and others! What a prince of drivers was Driver Day! Handsome, dressy, and a perfect lady’s man! How many ladies were attracted to a seat on the box beside him! Then such a team, and with what grace they were guided! How many young men envied his grace as a driver! So, also, what gentlemen were the tavern-keepers of that day! They studied to please the public by their manners, though behind the scenes some of them could spice their conversation with big words.”
A very vivid description of the dress of the old stage-drivers of Haverhill and other New Hampshire towns was given me by Mr. Amos Tarleton, an old inhabitant of the town. He says: —
“The winter dress of these old drivers was nearly all alike. Their clothing was of heavy homespun, calfskin boots, thick trousers tucked inside the boots, and fur-lined overshoes over the boots. Over all these were worn Canadian hand-knit stockings, very heavy and thick, colored bright red, which came up nearly to the thighs, and still over that a light leather shoe. Their coats were generally fur or buffalo skin with fur caps with ear protectors, either fur or wool tippets. Also a red silk sash that went round the body and tied on the left side with a double bow with tassels.”
Can you not see one of those hairy old bears peering out of his furs, vain in scarlet sash and tassels, and with his vast feet planted on the dashboard? What were on his fore paws? double-pegged mittens, leather gauntlets, fur gloves, wristlets, and muffettees?
Mr. Twining declared that the skill of American drivers equalled that of English coachmen, though they had little of the smart appearance of the latter, “neither having the hat worn on one side, nor greatcoat, nor boots, but wearing coarse blue jackets, worsted stockings, and thick shoes.”
A traveller calling himself a Citizen of the World, writing in 1829, noted with pleasure that the drivers on American coaches neither asked for nor took a fee, but simply wished the passengers a polite good morning. Other Englishmen greeted this fact with approval. Mr. Miner tells us “tipping” was unknown – which was so customary, indeed so imperative, in England. Sometimes travellers who went frequently over the same route would make a gift to the driver.
The custom of “shouldering,” which was for the coachman to take the fare of a way-passenger – one who did not register or start at the booking-office – and pocket it without making any return to the coach agent or proprietor, was universal in England. Some coach companies suffered much by it, and it was a tidy bit of profit to the unscrupulous coachman. Shouldering was common also in the new world, and called by the same name. There were no “spotters” on coaching lines as on street railways.
As in every trade, profession, or calling, stage-coaching had a vocabulary – call it coaching slang if you will. Among English coachmen “skidding” was checking with a shoe or drag or “skid-pan” the wheels of the coach when going down hill, thus preventing them from revolving, and slackening the progress of the coach. “Fanning” the horses was, in coachman’s tongue, whipping them; “towelling” was flogging them; and “chopping” the cruel practice of hitting the horse on the thigh with the whip. “Pointing” was hitting the wheeler with the point of the whip. A “draw” was a blow at the leader. If the thong of the whip lapped round any part of the harness, it was called “having a bite.” “Throat-lashing” was another term.
Another and expressive use of the word bite was to indicate a narrow strip of gravel or broken stone on the near side of a winding road on a steep hill. The additional friction on the wheel on one side made a natural drag or brake, while the wheels of the ascending coach did not touch it.
The drivers on local lines grew to be on terms of most friendly intimacy with dwellers along the route. They bore messages, brought news, carried letters and packages, transacted exchange, and did all kinds of shopping at the citywards end of the route. An old coach-driver in Ayer, Massachusetts, told me with much pride that he always bought bonnets in Boston for all the women along his route who could not go to town; and that often in the spring the bandboxes were piled high on the top of his coach; that he never bought two alike, and that there wasn’t another driver on the road that the women would trust to perform this important duty save himself.
The great bell-crowned hat which the driver wore in summer on lines leaving Boston often was crammed with papers and valuables, and one of the rules of the Eastern Stage Company at one time was, “No driver shall carry anything except in his pocket.” It is said many of the drivers grew bald from the constant weight on their heads.
The constant imbibing of ale, brandy, and rum-and-milk by English coachmen at coaching inns was echoed in America by drivers at every tavern at which the stage-coach stopped. The driver was urged to drink by coach passengers who had far better have implored him not to drink. Many an old driver showed by the benignant purple glow of his nose that the importunities of the travellers had been duly silenced by more than ample hard cider, gin, and New England rum.
A great day on the coaches was when schoolboys and college boys went home on their vacations. The tops of the coaches were filled with their square boxes, which packed like cord-wood. On these boxes and within the coach swarmed the boys, pea-shooters in hand. A favorite target was the pike-keeper at the toll-gate, and those who left the coach first fared worst. Our boys have but a feeble imitation of these good times when they riot into a railway car together for a few hours of hurried travel to their city homes.
The stage-drivers were universally kind and careful of all children placed under their charge; even young children, boys and girls, were intrusted to their care.
One old gentleman tells me that in the days of his youth he rode by stage-coach to and from school, and so strong was his longing for a seafaring life, with such a flavor of salt water and tar did he englamour every unusual event, that it was inevitable with the imaginativeness of a child he should compare this trip by stage to a sea voyage; the roads and fields he mentally termed the ocean, the driver was the captain, the inside of the coach the cabin, the top the deck, and so on. He was honored by having a seat with the driver; and as the day waned, and the ship came to anchor, and all disembarked for supper at a stage tavern, he was further honored by eating supper with the driver and being treated to a glass of toddy. After the coach was again under way the driver had some tardy compunctions that the toddy had been rather strong drink for a growing boy, and said plainly that he feared the young traveller felt the liquor and might tumble from his high seat. He was not reassured when the boy answered dreamily, “Never mind, I can swim.” After glancing sharply at him, the driver stopped his horses, and ignominiously forced the boy to descend and make the rest of the journey inside the coach.
Nothing is more marked than the changes in travelling-bags and trunks from those of stage-coach days. When our ancestors crossed the ocean they transported their belongings in wooden chests – common sea-chests and chests of carved wood. I have seen no mention of trunks in any old colonial inventories, though trunks existed and are named by Shakespere. These old trunks were metal coffers, and usually small. When Judge Sewall went to England in 1690, he bought trunks for his little daughters – trunks of leather or hide with their initials studded in metal nails. This shape of trunk lasted till the days of the railroad. Nearly all old families have one or more of these old trunks in their garrets. They were stout enough of frame, and heavy enough of frame to have lasted in larger numbers, and for centuries, but their heavy deerskin or pigskin covering often grew sorely offensive through harboring moths; and as they held but little, and were very heavy, they were of no use for a modern wardrobe. Their long narrow forms, however, were seen laden on every stage-coach, in company with carpet bags and leather sacks, and the schoolboy who owned one was a proud fellow.
An ancient travelling bag is shown on page 333. It is of a heavy woollen homespun stuff ribbed like corduroy, mounted with green leather bindings, straps, handles, etc. It is shaped like a mail-bag, and the straps laced through large eyelet holes. This bag is believed by its owners to have held the possessions of John Carver on the Mayflower.
Not only were stage-drivers respected by all persons in every community, but they had a high idea of their own dignity and of the importance of their calling. Little Jack Mendum, who drove the Salem mail-coach, did not deem it an exaggeration of his position when he roared out angrily in answer to a hungry passenger who kept urging him to drive faster, “When I drive this coach I am the whole United States of America.”
One coachman who drove from Boston to Hartford was deeply tanned by summer suns and winter winds, and his mates spoke to each other of him as Black Ben. An English traveller, bustling out of the coach office with importance, shouted out: “I and my people want to go with Black Ben; are you the coachman they call Black Ben?” “Blackguards call me Black Ben,” was the answer, “but gentlemen call me Mr. Jarvis.”