Old Conestoga FreighterOld Conestoga Freighter
The first improvement on these greater routes, after the necessary widening, was to enable wagons to avoid high ground. Here and there wagons pushed on beyond the established limit, and, finding the way not more desperate than much of the preceding “road,” had gone on and on, until at last wagons came down the western slopes of the Alleghenies, and wagon traffic began to be considered possible—much to the chagrin of the cursing pack-horse men. No sooner was this fact accomplished than some attention was paid to the road. The wagons could not go everywhere the ponies or even the heavy carts had gone. They could not climb the steep knolls and remain on the rocky ridges. The lower grounds were, therefore, pursued and the wet grounds were made passableby “corduroying”—laying logs closely together to form a solid roadbed. So far as I can learn this work was done by everybody in particular and nobody in general. Those who were in charge of wagons were, of course, the most interested in keeping them from sinking out of sight in the mud-holes. When possible, such places were skirted; when high or impassable ground prevented this, the way was “corduroyed.”
We have spoken of the width of old-time bridle-paths; with the advent of the heavy freighter these wide routes were doubled and trebled in width. And, so long as the roadbeds remained in a “state of nature,” the heavier the wagon traffic, the wider the roads became. We have described certain great tracks, like that of Braddock’s Road, which can be followed today even in the open by the lasting marks those plunging freighters made in the soft ground. They suggest in their deep outline what the old wagon roads must have been; yet it must be remembered that only what we may call the main road is visible today—the innumerable side-tracks being obliterated because not so deeply worn. In a numberof instances on Braddock’s Road plain evidence remains of these side-tracks. Judging then from this evidence, and from accounts which have come down to us, the introduction of the freighter with its heavier loads and narrower wheels turned the wide, deeply worn bridle-paths and cart tracks into far wider and far deeper courses. The corduroy road had a tendency to contract the route, but even here, where the ground was softest, it became desperate traveling. Where one wagon had gone, leaving great black ruts behind it, another wagon would pass with greater difficulty leaving behind it yet deeper and yet more treacherous tracks. Heavy rains would fill each cavity with water, making the road nothing less than what in Illinois was known as a “sloo.” The next wagoner would, therefore, push his unwilling horses into a veritable slough, perhaps having explored it with a pole to see if there was a bottom to be found there. In some instances the bottoms “fell out,” and many a reckless driver has lost his load in pushing heedlessly into a bottomless pit. In case a bottom could be found the driverpushes on; if not, he finds a way about; if this is not possible he throws logs into the hole and makes an artificial bottom over which he proceeds.
We can hardly imagine what it meant to get stalled on one of the old “hog wallow” roads on the frontier. True, many of our country roads today offer bogs quite as wide and deep as any ever known in western Virginia or Pennsylvania; and it is equally true that roads were but little better in the pioneer era on the outskirts of Philadelphia and Baltimore than far away in the mountains. It remains yet for the present writer to find a sufficiently barbarous incident to parallel one which occurred on the Old York (New York) Road just out of Philadelphia, in which half a horse’s head was pulled off in attempting to haul a wagon from a hole in the road. “Jonathan Tyson, a farmer of 68 years of age [in 1844], of Abington, saw, at 16 years of age, much difficulty in going to the city [Philadelphia on York Road]: a dreadful mire of blackish mud rested near the present Rising Sun village.... He saw there the team of Mr. Nickum, ofChestnut hill, stalled; and in endeavoring to draw out the forehorse with an iron chain to his head, it slipped and tore off the lower jaw, and the horse died on the spot. There was a very bad piece of road nearer to the city, along the front of the Norris estate. It was frequent to see there horses struggling in mire to their knees. Mr. Tyson has seen thirteen lime wagons at a time stopped on the York road, near Logan’s hill, to give one another assistance to draw through the mire; and the drivers could be seen with their trowsers rolled up, and joining team to team to draw out; at other times they set up a stake in the middle of the road to warn off wagons from the quicksand pits. Sometimes they tore down fences, and made new roads through the fields.”[9]
If such was the case almost within the city limits of Philadelphia, it is not difficult to realize what must have been the conditions which obtained far out on the continental routes. It became a serious problem to get stalled in the mountains late in the day; assistance was not alwaysat hand—indeed the settlements were many miles apart in the early days. Many a driver, however, has been compelled to wade in, unhitch his horses, and spend the night by the bog into which his freight was settling lower and lower each hour. Fortunate he was if early day brought assistance. Sometimes it was necessary to unload wholly or in part, before a heavy wagon, once fairly “set,” could be hauled out. Around such treacherous places ran a vast number of routes some of which were as dangerous—because used once too often—as the central track. In some places detours of miles in length could be made. A pilot was needed by every inexperienced person, and many blundering wiseacres lost their entire stock of worldly possessions in the old bogs and “sloos” and swamps of the “West.”
A town in Indiana was “very appropriately” named Mudholes, a name that would have been the most common in the country a century ago if only descriptive names had been allowed.[10]The conditionof pioneer roads did, undoubtedly, influence the beginnings of towns and cities. On the longer routes it will be found that the steep hills almost invariably became the sites of villages because of physical conditions. “Long-a-coming,” a New Jersey village, bore a very appropriate name.[11]
The girls of Sussex, England, were said to be exceedingly long-limbed, and a facetious wag affirmed the reason to be that the Sussex mud was so deep and sticky that in drawing out the foot “by the strength of the ancle” the muscles, and then the bones, of the leg were lengthened! In 1708 when Prince George of Denmark went to meet Charles the Seventh of Spain traveling by coach, he traveled at the rate of nine miles in six hours—a tribute to the strength of Sussex mud. Charles Augustus Murray, in hisTravels in North America, leaves us a humorous account of the mud-holes in the road from the Potomac to Fredericksburg, Maryland, and his experience upon it:
“On the 27th of March I quitted Washington, to make a short tour in the districts of Virginia adjacent to the James River; comprising Richmond, the present capital, Williamsburgh, the former seat of colonial government, Norfolk, and other towns.
“The first part of the journey is by steam-boat, descending the Potomac about sixty miles. The banks of this river, after passing Mount Vernon, are uninteresting, and I did not regret the speed of the Champion, which performed that distance in somewhat less than five hours; but this rate of travelling was amply neutralized by the movement of the stage which conveyed me from the landing-place to Fredericsburgh. I was informed that the distance was only twelve miles, and I was weak enough (in spite of my previous experience) to imagine that two hours would bring me thither, especially as the stage was drawn by six good nags, and driven by a lively cheerful fellow; but the road bade defiance to all these advantages—it was, indeed, such as to compel me to laugh out-right, notwithstanding the constant and severe bumping to which it subjected both the intellectual and sedentary parts of my person.
“I had before tasted the sweets of mud-holes, huge stones, and remnants of pine-trees standing and cut down; but here was something new, namely, a bed of reddish-coloured clay, from one to two feet deep, so adhesive that the wheels were at times literally not visible in any one spot from the box to the tire, and the poor horses’ feet sounded, when they drew them out (as a fellow-traveller observed), like the report of a pistol. I am sorry that I was not sufficiently acquainted with chemistry or mineralogy to analyze that wonderful clay and state its constituent parts; but if I were now called upon to give a receipt for a mess most nearly resembling it, I would write, ‘Recipe—(nay, I must write the ingredients in English, for fear of taxing my Latin learning too severely)—
Ordinary clay1 lb.Do. Pitch1 lb.Bird-lime6 oz.Putty6 oz.Glue1 lb.Red lead, orcolouringmatter6 oz.Fiat haustus—ægrot. terq. quaterq. quatiend.’
“Whether the foregoing, with a proper admixture of hills, holes, stumps, and rocks, made a satisfactorydraughtor not, I will refer to the unfortunate team—I, alas! can answer for the effectual application of the second part of the prescription, according to the Joe Miller version of ‘When taken, to be well shaken!’
“I arrived, however, without accident or serious bodily injury, at Fredericsburgh, having beenonlythree hours and a half in getting over the said twelve miles; and, in justice to the driver, I must say that I very much doubt whether any crack London whip could have driven those horses over that ground in the same time: there is not a sound that can emanate from human lungs, nor an argument of persuasion that can touch the feelings of a horse, that he did not employ, with a perseverance and success which commanded my admiration.”
Fancy these wild, rough routes which, combined, often covered half an acre, and sometimes spread out to a mile in total width, in freezing weather when every hub and tuft was as solid as ice. How many an anxious wagoner has pushed hishorses to the bitter edge of exhaustion to gain his destination ere a freeze would stall him as completely as if his wagon-bed lay on the surface of a “quicksand pit.” A heavy load could not be sent over a frozen pioneer road without wrecking the vehicle. Yet in some parts the freight traffic had to go on in the winter, as the hauling of cotton to market in the southern states. Such was the frightful condition of the old roads that four and five yoke of oxen conveyed only a ton of cotton so slowly that motion was almost imperceptible; and in the winter and spring, it has been said, with perhaps some tinge of truthfulness, that one could walk on dead oxen from Jackson to Vicksburg. The Bull-skin Road of pioneer days leading from the Pickaway Plains in Ohio to Detroit was so named from the large number of cattle which died on the long, rough route, their hides, to exaggerate again, lining the way.
In our study of the Ohio River as a highway it was possible to emphasize the fact that the evolution of river craft indicated with great significance the evolution of social conditions in the region underreview; the keel-boat meant more than canoe or pirogue, the barge or flat-boat more than the keel-boat, the brig and schooner more than the barge, and the steamboat far more than all preceding species. We affirmed that the change of craft on our rivers was more rapid than on land, because of the earlier adaptation of steam to vessels than to vehicles. But it is in point here to observe that, slow as were the changes on land, they were equally significant. The day of the freighter and the corduroy road was a brighter day for the expanding nation than that of the pack-horse and the bridle-path. The cost of shipping freight by pack-horses was tremendous. In 1794, during the Whiskey Insurrection in western Pennsylvania, the cost of shipping goods to Pittsburg by wagon ranged from five to ten dollars per hundred pounds; salt sold for five dollars a bushel, and iron and steel from fifteen to twenty cents per pound in Pittsburg. What must have been the price when one horse carried only from one hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty pounds? The freighter represented agrowing population and the growing needs of the new empire in the West.
The advent of the stagecoach marked a new era as much in advance of the old as was the day of the steamboat in advance of that of the barge and brig of early days.
The social disturbance caused by the introduction of coaches on the pioneer roads of America gives us a glimpse of road conditions at this distant day to be gained no other way. A score of local histories give incidents showing the anger of those who had established the more important pack-horse lines across the continent at the coming of the stage. Coaches were overturned and passengers were maltreated; horses were injured, drivers were chastised and personal property ruined. Even while the Cumberland Road was being built the early coaches were in danger of assault by the workmen building the road, incited, no doubt, by the angry pack-horse men whose profession had been eclipsed. It is interesting in this connection to look again back to the mother-country and note the unrest which was occasioned by the introduction of stagecoaches on the bridle-paths ofEngland. Early coaching there was described as destructive to trade, prejudicial to landed interests, destructive to the breed of horses,[11*]and as an interference with public resources. It was urged that travelers in coaches got listless, “not being able to endure frost, snow or rain, or to lodge in the fields!” Riding in coaches injured trade since “most gentlemen, before they travelled in coaches, used to ride with swords, belts, pistols, holsters, portmanteaus, and hat-cases, which, in these coaches, they have little or no occasion for: for, when they rode on horseback, they rode in one suit and carried another to wear when they came to their journey’s end, or lay by the way; but in coaches a silk suit and an Indian gown, with a sash, silk stockings, and beaver hats, men ride in and carry no other with them, because they escape the wet and dirt, which on horseback they cannot avoid; whereas intwo or three journeys on horseback, these clothes and hats were wont to be spoiled; which done, they were forced to have new very often, and that increased the consumption of the manufacturers; which travelling in coaches doth in no way do.” If the pack-horse man’s side of the question was not advocated with equally marvelous arguments in America we can be sure there was no lack of debate on the question whether the stagecoach was a sign of advancement or of deterioration. For instance, the mails could not be carried so rapidly by coach as by a horseman; and when messages were of importance in later days they were always sent by an express rider. The advent of the wagon and coach promised to throw hundreds of men out of employment. Business was vastly facilitated when the freighter and coach entered the field, but fewer “hands” were necessary. Again, the horses which formerly carried the freight of America on their backs were not of proper build and strength to draw heavy loads on either coach or wagon. They were ponies; they could carry a few score pounds with great skill over blind andragged paths, but they could not draw the heavy wagons. Accordingly hundreds of owners of pack-horses were doomed to see an alarming deterioration in the value of their property when great, fine coach horses were shipped from distant parts to carry the freight and passenger loads of the stagecoach day.
The change in form of American vehicles was small but their numbers increased within a few years prodigiously. Nominally this era must be termed that of the macadamized road, or roads made of layers of broken stone like the Cumberland Road. These roads were wider than any single track of any of the routes they followed, though thirty feet was the average maximum breadth. To a greater degree than would be surmised, the courses of the old roads were followed. It has been said that the Cumberland Road, though paralleling Braddock’s Road from Cumberland to Laurel Hill, was not built on its bed more than a mile in the aggregate. After studying the ground I believe this is more or less incorrect; for what we should call Braddock’s route was composed of manyroads and tracks. One of these was a central road; the Cumberland Road may have been built on the bed of this central track only a short distance, but on one of the almost innumerable side-tracks, detours, and cut-offs, for many miles. At Great Meadows, for instance, it would seem that the Cumberland Road was separated from Braddock’s by the width of the valley; yet as you move westward you cross the central track of Braddock’s Road just before reaching Braddock’s Grave. May not an old route have led from Great Meadows thither on the same hillside where we find the Cumberland Road today? The crookedness of these first stable roads, like many of the older streets in our cities,[12]indicates that the old corduroy road served in part as a guide for the later road-makers. It is a common thing in the mountains, either on the Cumberland or Pennsylvania state roads, to hear people say that had the older routes been even more strictly adhered tobetter grades would have been the result. A remarkable and truthful instance of this (for there cannot, in truth, be many) is the splendid way Braddock’s old road sweeps to the top of Laurel Hill by gaining that strategic ridge which divides the heads of certain branches of the Youghiogheny on the one hand and Cheat River on the other near Washington’s Rock. The Cumberland Road in the valley gains the same height (Laurel Hill) by a longer and far more difficult route.
The stagecoach heralded the new age of road-building, but these new macadamized roads were few and far between; many roadways were widened and graded by states or counties, but they remained dirt roads; a few plank roads were built. The vast number of roads of better grade were built by one of the host of road and turnpike companies which sprang up in the first half of the nineteenth century. Specific mention of certain of these will be made later.
Confining our view here to general conditions, we now see the Indian trail at its broadest. While the roads, in number,kept up with the vast increase of population, in quality they remained, as a rule, unchanged. Traveling by stage, except on the half dozen good roads then in existence, was, in 1825, far more uncomfortable than on the bridle-path on horseback half a century previous. It would be the same today if we could find a vehicle as inconvenient as an old-time stagecoach. In our “Experiences of Travelers” we shall give pictures of actual life on these pioneer roads of early days. A glimpse or two at these roads will not be out of place here.
The route from Philadelphia to Baltimore is thus described by theAmerican Annual Registerfor 1796: “The roads from Philadelphia to Baltimore exhibit, for the greater part of the way, an aspect of savage desolation. Chasms to the depth of six, eight, or ten feet occur at numerous intervals. A stagecoach which left Philadelphia on the 5th of February, 1796, took five days to go to Baltimore. [Twenty miles a day]. The weather for the first four days was good. The roads are in a fearful condition. Coaches are overturned, passengers killed, and horses destroyed bythe overwork put upon them. In winter sometimes no stage sets out for two weeks.” Little wonder that in 1800, when President and Mrs. Adams tried to get to Washington from Baltimore, they got lost in the Maryland woods! Harriet Martineau, with her usual cleverness, thus touches upon our early roads: “... corduroy roads appear to have made a deep impression on the imaginations of the English, who seem to suppose that American roads are all corduroy. I can assure them that there is a large variety in American roads. There are the excellent limestone roads ... from Nashville, Tennessee, and some like them in Kentucky.... There is quite another sort of limestone road in Virginia, in traversing which the stage is dragged up from shelf [catch-water] to shelf, some of the shelves sloping so as to throw the passengers on one another, on either side alternately. Then there are the rich mud roads of Ohio, through whose deep red sloughs the stage goes slowly sousing after rain, and gently upsetting when the rut on one or the other side proves to be of a greater depth than was anticipated.Then there are the sandy roads of the pine barrens ... the ridge road, running parallel with a part of Lake Ontario.... Lastly there is the corduroy road, happily of rare occurrence, where, if the driver is merciful to his passengers, he drives them so as to give them the association of being on the way to a funeral, their involuntary sobs on each jolt helping the resemblance; or, if he be in a hurry, he shakes them like pills in a pill-box. I was never upset in a stage but once ...; and the worse the roads were, the more I was amused at the variety of devices by which we got on, through difficulties which appeared insurmountable, and the more I was edified at the gentleness with which our drivers treated female fears and fretfulness.”[13]
Perhaps it was of the Virginian roads here mentioned that Thomas Moore wrote:
“Dear George! though every bone is aching,After the shakingI’ve had this week, over ruts and ridges,And bridges,Made of a few uneasy planks,In open ranksOver rivers of mud, whose names aloneWould make the knees of stoutest man knock.”[14]
David Stevenson, an English civil engineer, leaves this record of a corduroy road from Lake Erie to Pittsburg: “On the road leading from Pittsburg on the Ohio to the town of Erie on the lake of that name, I saw all the varieties of forestroad-making in great perfection. Sometimes our way lay for miles through extensive marshes, which we crossed by corduroy roads, ...; at others the coach stuck fast in the mud, from which it could be extricated only by the combined efforts of the coachman and passengers; and at one place we travelled for upwards of a quarter of a mile through a forest flooded with water, which stood to the height of several feet on many of the trees, and occasionally covered the naves of the coach-wheels. The distance of the route from Pittsburg to Erie is 128 miles, which was accomplished in forty-six hours ... although the conveyance ... carried the mail, and stopped only for breakfast, dinner, and tea, but there was considerable delay caused by the coach being once upset and several times mired.”[15]
“The horrible corduroy roads again made their appearance,” records Captain Basil Hall, “in a more formidable shape, by the addition of deep, inky holes, which almost swallowed up the fore wheels of the wagonand bathed its hinder axle-tree. The jogging and plunging to which we were now exposed, and occasionally the bang when the vehicle reached the bottom of one of these abysses, were so new and remarkable that we tried to make a good joke of them.... I shall not compare this evening’s drive to trotting up or down a pair of stairs, for, in that case, there would be some kind of regularity in the development of the bumps, but with us there was no wavering, no pause, and when we least expected a jolt, down we went, smack! dash! crash! forging, like a ship in a head-sea, right into a hole half a yard deep. At other times, when an ominous break in the road seemed to indicate the coming mischief, and we clung, grinning like grim death, to the railing at the sides of the wagon, expecting a concussion which in the next instant was to dislocate half the joints in our bodies, down we sank into a bed of mud, as softly as if the bottom and sides had been padded for our express accommodation.”
The first and most interesting macadamized road in the United States was the old Lancaster Turnpike, running from Philadelphia to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Its position among American roads is such that it deserves more than a mere mention. It has had several historians, as it well deserves, to whose accounts we are largely indebted for much of our information.[16]
The charter name of this road was “The Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike Road Company;” it was granted April 9, 1792, and the work of building immediately began. The road was completed in 1794 at a cost of four hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars. When the subscription books were opened there was a tremendous rush to take the stock. The money raised for constructing and equipping this ancient highway with toll houses and bridges, as well as grading and macadamizing it, was by this sale of stock. In the LancasterJournalof Friday, February 5, 1796, the following notice appeared:
“That agreeable to a by-law of stockholders, subscriptions will be opened at the Company’s office in Philadelphia on Wednesday, the tenth of February next, for one hundred additional shares of capital stock in said company. The sum to be demanded for each share will be $300, with interest at six per cent. on the different instalments from the time they are severally called for, to be paid by original stockholders; one hundred dollars thereof to be paid at time of subscribing, and the remainder in three equal payments, at 30, 60 and 90 days, no person to be admitted to subscribe more than one share on the same day.
By order of the Board.William Govett,Secretary.”
“When location was fully determined upon,” writes Mr. Witmer, “as you will observe, today, a more direct line could scarcely have been selected. Many of the curves which are found at the present time did not exist at that day, for it has been crowded and twisted by various improvements along its borders so that the originalconstructors are not responsible. So straight, indeed, was it from initial to terminal point that it was remarked by one of the engineers of the state railroad, constructed in 1834 (and now known as the Pennsylvania Railroad), that it was with the greatest difficulty that they kept their line off of the turnpike, and the subsequent experiences of the engineers of the same company verify the fact, as you will see. Today there is a tendency, wherever the line is straightened, to draw nearer to this old highway, paralleling it in many places for quite a distance, and as it approaches the city of Philadelphia, in one or two instances they have occupied the old road bed entirely, quietly crowding its old rival to a side, and crossing and recrossing it in many places.
“You will often wonder as you pass over this highway, remembering the often-stated fact by some ancient wagoner or stage-driver (who today is scarcely to be found, most of them having thrown down the reins and put up for the night), that at that time there were almost continuous lines of Conestoga wagons, with theirfeed troughs suspended at the rear and the tar can swinging underneath, toiling up the long hills (for you will observe there was very little grading done when that roadway was constructed), and you wonder how it was possible to accommodate so much traffic as there was, in addition to stagecoaches and private conveyances, winding in and out among these long lines of wagons. But you must bear in mind that the roadway was very different then from what it is at the present time.
“The narrow, macadamized surface, with its long grassy slope (the delight of the tramp and itinerant merchant, especially when a neighboring tree casts a cooling shadow over its surface), which same slope becomes a menace to belated and unfamiliar travelers on a dark night, threatening them with an overturn into what of more recent times is known as the Summer road, did not exist at that time, but the road had a regular slope from side ditch to center, as all good roads should have, and conveyances could pass anywhere from side to side. The macadam was carefully broken and no stone was allowed to be placed onthe road that would not pass through a two-inch ring. A test was made which can be seen today about six miles east of Lancaster, where the roadway was regularly paved for a distance of one hundred feet from side to side, with a view of constructing the entire line in that way. But it proved too expensive, and was abandoned. Day, in his history, published in 1843,[17]makes mention of the whole roadway having been so constructed, but I think that must have been an error, as this is the only point where there is any appearance of this having been attempted, and can be seen at the present time when the upper surface has been worn off by the passing and repassing over it.”
The placing of tollgates on the Lancaster Pike is thus announced in the LancasterJournal, previously mentioned, where the following notice appears:
“The public are hereby informed that the President and Managers of the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike Road having perfected the very arduous and important work entrusted by the stockholders to their direction, have established toll gates at the following places on said road, and have appointed a toll gatherer at each gate, and that the rates of toll to be collected at the several gates are by resolution of the Board and agreeable to Act of Assembly fixed and established as below. The total distance from Lancaster to Philadelphia is 62 miles.
Gate No. 1—2miles W from Schuylkill, collect3 milesGate No. 2—5miles W from Schuylkill, collect5 milesGate No. 3—10miles W from Schuylkill, collect7 milesGate No. 4—20miles W from Schuylkill, collect10 milesGate No. 5—29½miles W from Schuylkill, collect10 milesGate No. 6—40miles W from Schuylkill, collect10 milesGate No. 7—49½miles W from Schuylkill, collect10 milesGate No. 8—581⁄8miles W from Schuylkill, collect5 milesGate No. 9—Witmer’s Bridge, collect 61 miles.”
There is also in the same journal, bearing date January 22, 1796, the following notice:
“Sec. 13. And be it further enacted, by authority of aforesaid, that no wagon or other carriage with wheels the breadth of whose wheels shall not be four inches, shall be driven along said road between the first day of December and the first day of May following in any year or years, witha greater weight thereon than two and a half tons, or with more than three tons during the rest of the year; that no such carriage, the breadth of whose wheels shall not be seven inches, or being six inches or more shall roll at least ten inches, shall be drawn along said road between the said day of December and May with more than five tons, or with more than five and a half tons during the rest of the year; that no carriage or cart with two wheels, the breadth of whose wheels shall not be four inches, shall be drawn along said road with a greater weight thereon than one and a quarter tons between the said first days of December and May, or with more than one and a half tons during the rest of the year; no such carriage, whose wheels shall be of the breadth of seven inches shall be driven along the said road with more than two and one half tons between the first days of December and May, or more than three tons during the rest of the year; that no such carriage whose wheels shall not be ten inches in width shall be drawn along the said road between the first days of December and May with more than three and a half tons, or with more than four tons the rest of the year; that no cart, wagon or carriage of burden whatever, whose wheels shall not be the breadth of nine inches at least, shall be drawn or pass in or over the said road or any part thereof with more than six horses, nor shall more than eight horses be attached to any carriage whatsoever used on said road, and if any wagon or other carriage shall be drawn along said road by a greater number of horses or with a greater weight than is hereby permitted, one of the horses attached thereto shall be forfeited to the use of said company, to be seized and taken by any of their officers or servants, who shall have the privilege to choose which of the said horses they may think proper, excepting the shaft or wheel horse or horses, provided always that it shall and may be lawful for said company by their by-laws to alter any and all of the regulations here contained respecting burdens or carriages to be drawn over the said road and substituting other regulations, if on experience such alterations should be found conducive of public good.”
There were regular warehouses or freight stations in the various towns through which the Lancaster Pike passed, Mr. Witmer leaves record, where experienced loaders or packers were to be found who attended to filling these great curving wagons, which were elevated at each end and depressed in the centre; and it was quite an art to be able to so pack them with the various kinds of merchandise that they would carry safely, and at the same time to economize all the room necessary; and when fully loaded and ready for the journey it was no unusual case for the driver to be appealed to by some one who wished to follow Horace Greeley’s advice and “go west,” for permission to accompany him and earn a seat on the load, as well as share his mattress on the barroom floor at night by tending the lock or brake. Mr. Witmer was told by one of the largest and wealthiest iron masters of Pittsburg that his first advent to the Smoky City was on a load of salt in that capacity.
“In regard to the freight or transportation companies,” continues the annalist, “the Line Wagon Company was the mostprominent. Stationed along this highway at designated points were drivers and horses, and it was their duty to be ready as soon as a wagon was delivered at the beginning of their section to use all despatch in forwarding it to the next one, thereby losing no time required to rest horses and driver, which would be required when the same driver and horses took charge of it all the way through. But, like many similar schemes, what appeared practical in theory did not work well in practice. Soon the wagons were neglected, each section caring only to deliver it to the one succeeding, caring little as to its condition, and soon the roadside was encumbered with wrecks and breakdowns and the driver and horses passed to and fro without any wagon or freight from terminal points of their sections, leaving the wagons and freight to be cared for by others more anxious for its removal than those directly in charge. So it was deemed best to return to the old system of making each driver responsible for his own wagon and outfit.
“A wagoner, next to a stagecoach-driver, was a man of immense importance,and they were inclined to be clannish. They would not hesitate to unite against landlord, stage-driver or coachman who might cross their path, as in a case when a wedding party was on its way to Philadelphia, which consisted of several gigs. These were two-wheeled conveyances, very similar to our road-carts of the present day, except that they were much higher and had large loop springs in the rear just back of the seat; they were the fashionable conveyance of that day. When one of the gentlemen drivers, the foremost one (possibly the groom), was paying more attention to his fair companion than his horses, he drove against the leaders of one of the numerous wagons that were passing on in the same direction. It was an unpardonable offense and nothing short of an encounter in the stable yard or in front of the hotel could atone for such a breach of highway ethics. At a point where the party stopped to rest before continuing their journey the wagoners overtook them and they immediately called on the gentleman for redress. But seeing a friend in the party they claimed they would excuse theculprit on his friend’s account; the offending party would not have it so, and said no friend of his should excuse him from getting a beating if he deserved it, and I have no doubt he prided himself on his muscular abilities also. However it was peaceably arranged and each pursued his way without any blood being shed or bones broken. That was one of the many similar occurrences which happened daily, many not ending so harmlessly.
“The stage lines were not only the means of conveying the mails and passengers, but of also disseminating the news of great events along the line as they passed. The writer remembers hearing it stated that the stage came through from Philadelphia with a wide band of white muslin bound around the top, and in large letters was the announcement that peace had been declared, which was the closing of the second war with Great Britain, known as the War of 1812. What rejoicing it caused along the way as it passed!”
The taverns of this old turnpike were typical. Of them Mr. Moore writes:
“Independent of the heavy freighting,numerous stage lines were organized for carrying passengers. As a result of this immense traffic, hotels sprung up all along the road, where relays of horses were kept, and where passengers were supplied with meals. Here, too, the teamsters found lodging and their animals were housed and cared for over night. The names of these hotels were characteristic of the times. Many were called after men who had borne conspicuous parts in the Revolutionary War that had just closed—such as Washington, Warren, Lafayette, and Wayne, while others represented the White and Black Horse, the Lion, Swan, Cross Keys, Ship, etc. They became favorite resorts for citizens of their respective neighborhoods, who wished at times to escape from the drudge and ennui of their rural homes and gaze upon the world as represented by the dashing stages and long lines of Conestoga wagons. Here neighbor met neighbor—it was the little sphere in which they all moved, lived and had their being. They sipped their whisky toddies together, which were dispensed at the rate of three cents a single glass, or for a finer quality,five for a Spanish quarter, with the landlord in, was asked; smoked cigars that were retailed four for a cent—discussed their home affairs, including politics, religion and other questions of the day, and came just as near settling them, as the present generation of men, that are filling their places, required large supplies and made convenient home markets for the sale of butter, eggs, and whatever else the farmers had to dispose of.”
Earliest Style of Log TavernEarliest Style of Log Tavern
In our history of the Cumberland Road the difference between a wagonhouse and a tavern was emphasized. Mr. Witmer gives an incident on the Lancaster Turnpike which presents vividly the social position of these two houses of entertainment: “It was considered a lasting disgrace for one of the stage taverns to entertain a wagoner and it was sure to lose the patronage of the better class of travel, should this become known. The following instance will show how carefully the line was drawn. In the writer’s native village, about ten miles east of this city [Lancaster], when the traffic was unusually heavy and all the wagon taverns were full, awagoner applied to the proprietor of the stage hotel for shelter and refreshment, and after a great deal of consideration on his part and persuasion on the part of the wagoner he consented, provided the guest would take his departure early in the morning, before there was any likelihood of any aristocratic arrivals, or the time for the stage to arrive at this point. As soon as he had taken his departure the hostlers and stable boys were put to work to clean up every vestige of straw or litter in front of the hotel that would be an indication of having entertained a wagoner over night!”
The later history of the turnpike has been sketched by Mr. Moore as follows:
“The turnpike company had enjoyed an uninterrupted era of prosperity for more than twenty-five years. During this time the dividends paid had been liberal—sometimes, it is said, exceeding fifteen per cent of the capital invested. But at the end of that time the parasite that destroys was gradually being developed. Another, and altogether new system of transportation had been invented—a railroad—and which had already achieved partial success insome places in Europe. It was about the year 1820 that this new method of transportation began to claim the serious attention of the progressive business men throughout the state. The feeling that some better system than the one in use must be found was fed and intensified by the fact that New York State was then constructing a canal from Albany to the lakes; that when completed it would give the business men of New York City an unbroken water route to the west....
“With the completion of the entire Pennsylvania canal system to Pittsburg, in 1834, the occupation of the famous old Conestoga teams was gone.[18]The same may also be said of the numerous lines of the stages that daily wended their way over the turnpike. The changes wrought were almost magical. Everyone who rode patronized the cars; and the freight was also forwarded by rail. The farmers, however, were not ruined as they had maintained they would be. Their horses, as well asdrivers, were at once taken into the railway service and employed in drawing cars from one place to another. It was simply a change of vocation, and there still remained a market for grain, hay, straw and other produce of the farm.
“The loss sustained by the holders of turnpike stock, however, was immeasurable. In a comparative sense, travel over the turnpike road was suspended. Receipts from tolls became very light and the dividends, when paid, were not only quite diminutive, but very far between.
“The officers of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company have always been noted for their foresight, as well as shrewdness in protecting the business interests of their organization—and none have given more substantial evidence of these traits than its present chief officer, Mr. Alexander Cassatt. In the year 1876 the horse cars had been extended as far west as the Centennial buildings and it became apparent in a year or two thereafter that they might be still further extended over the turnpike in the direction of Paoli and thus become an annoying competitor for the local travel,which had been carefully nurtured and built up by the efforts of the railroad company. Under the leadership of Mr. Cassatt a company was organized to purchase the road. When all the preliminaries had been arranged a meeting of the subscribers to the purchasing fund was held on the twentieth day of April, 1880. The turnpike was purchased from Fifty-second Street to Paoli, about seventeen miles, for the sum of twenty thousand dollars. In the following June a charter was secured for the ‘Lancaster Avenue Improvement Company,’ and Mr. Cassatt was chosen president. The horse railroad was thus shut off from a further extension over the old turnpike. The new purchasers rebuilt the entire seventeen miles and there is today probably no better macadam road in the United States, nor one more scrupulously maintained than by ‘The Lancaster Avenue Improvement Company.’ Some parts of the turnpike road finally became so much out of repair that the traveling public refused to longer pay the tolls demanded. This was the case on that portion of the road lying between Paoli and Exton, adistance of some eight and a half miles. It traversed parts of the townships of Willistown and East and West Whiteland, in Chester County and upon notice of abandonment being served in 1880 upon the supervisors of these townships, those officials assumed the future care of the road. The turnpike was also abandoned from the borough of Coatesville to the Lancaster County line, a distance of about eight and one-half miles. This left only that portion of the turnpike lying between Exton station and the borough of Coatesville, a distance of some ten miles, under control of the old company, and upon which tollgates were maintained. The road was in a wretched repair and many persons driving over it refused to pay when tolls were demanded. The company, however, continued to employ collectors and gather shekels from those who were willing to pay and suffering those to pass who refused.
“Thus the old company worried along and maintained its organization until 1899, when the ‘Philadelphia and West Chester Traction Company,’ made its appearance. This company thought it saw an opportunity to extend the railroad west over the turnpike at least as far as Downingtown, and possibly as far as the borough of Coatesville. Terms were finally agreed upon with the president of the Turnpike Company, and all the rights, titles and interests in the road then held by the original Turnpike Company, and which embraced that portion lying between Exton and the borough of Coatesville, were transferred to Mr. A. M. Taylor, as trustee, for ten dollars per share. The original issue was twelve hundred shares. It was estimated that at least two hundred shares would not materialize, being either lost or kept as souvenirs. The length of the road secured was about ten miles. The disposition of the old road may be enumerated as follows:
SOLD