Wheeling, Virginia30hours.Columbus, Ohio45½“Indianapolis, Indiana65½“Vandalia, Illinois85½“St. Louis, Missouri94“
At the same time the ordinary mail-coaches, which also served as passenger coaches, made very much slower time:
Wheeling, Virginia2days11hours.Columbus, Ohio3“16“Indianapolis, Indiana6“20“Vandalia, Illinois9“10“St. Louis, Missouri10“4“
Cities off the road were reached in the following time from Washington:
Cincinnati, Ohio60hours.Frankfort, Kentucky72“Louisville, Kentucky78“Nashville, Tennessee100“Huntsville, Alabama115½“
The ordinary mail to these points made the following time:
Cincinnati, Ohio4days18hours.Frankfort, Kentucky6“18“Louisville, Kentucky6“23“Nashville, Tennessee8“16“Huntsville, Alabama10“21“
The Post Office Department had given its mail contracts to the steamship lines in the east, when possible, from Boston to Portland and New York to Albany. One mail route to the southern states, however, passed over the Cumberland Road and down to Cincinnati, where it went on to Louisville and the Mississippi ports by packet. The following time was made by this Great Southern Mail from Louisville:
Nashville, Tennessee21hours.Mobile, Alabama80“New Orleans, Louisiana105“
The service rendered to the south and southwest by the Cumberland Road, was not rendered to the northwest, as might have been expected. Chicago and Detroit were difficult to bring into easy communication with the east. Until the railway wascompleted from Albany to Buffalo, the mails went very slowly to the northwest from New York. The stage line from Buffalo to Cleveland and on west over the terrible Black Swamp road to Detroit was one of the worst in the United States. When lake navigation became closed, communication with northwestern Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and northern Indiana and Illinois was almost cut off. Had the stage route followed that of the buffalo and Indian on the high ground occupied by the Mahoning Indian trail from Pittsburg to Detroit, a far more excellent service might have been at the disposal of the Post Office Department. As it was, stagehorses floundered in the Black Swamp with “mud up to the horses’ bridles,” where a half dozen mails were often congested, and “six horses were barely sufficient to draw a two-wheeled vehicle fifteen miles in three days.”[65]
The old time-tables of the Cumberland Road make an interesting study. One ofthe first of these published after the great stage lines were in operation over the entire road and the southern branch to Cincinnati, appeared early in the year 1833. By this schedule the Great Eastern Mail left Washington daily at 7 P. M. and Baltimore at 9 P. M. and arrived in Wheeling, on the Ohio River, in fifty-five hours. Leaving Wheeling at 4:30 A. M., it arrived in Columbus at five the morning following, and in Cincinnati at the same hour the next morning, making forty-eight hours from one point on the river to the other, much better time than any packet could make. The Great Western Mail left Cincinnati daily at 2 P. M. and reached Columbus at 1 P. M. on the day following. It left Columbus at 1:30 P. M. and reached Wheeling at 2:30 P. M. the day following, thence Washington in fifty-five hours.[66]
At times the mails on the Cumberland Road were greatly delayed, taxing the patience of the public beyond endurance. The road itself was so well built that rain had little effect upon it as a rule. In fact, delay of the mails was more often due to inefficiency of the Post Office Department, inefficiency of the stage line service, or failure of contractors, than poor roads. Until a bridge was built across the Ohio River at Wheeling, in 1836, mails often became congested, especially when ice was running out. There were frequent derangements of cross and way mails which affected seriously the efficiency of the service. The vast number of connecting mails on the Cumberland Road made regularity in transmission of cross mails confusing, especially if the through mails were at all irregular.
To us living in the present age of telegraphic communication and the ubiquitousdaily paper, it may not occur that the mail stages of the old days were the newsboys of the age, and that thousands looked to their coming for the first word of news from distant portions of the land. In times of war or political excitement the express mailstage and its precious load of papers from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, was hailed as the latest editions of our newspapers are today. Thus it must have been that a greater proportion of the population along the Cumberland Road awaited with eager interest the coming of the stage in the old days, than today await the arrival of the long mail trains from the east.
Late in the 30’s and in the 40’s, when the mailstage system reached its highest perfection, the mail and passenger service had been entirely separated, special stages being constructed for hauling the former. As early as 1837 the Post Office Department decreed that the mails, which heretofore had always been held as of secondary consideration compared with passengers, should be carried in specially arranged vehicles, into which the postmaster should put themunder lock and key not to be opened until the next post office was reached. These stages were of two kinds, designed to be operated upon routes where the mail ordinarily comprised, respectively, a half and nearly a whole load. In the former, room was left for six passengers, in the latter, for three. Including newspapers with the regular mail, the later stages which ran westward over the Cumberland Road rarely carried passengers. Indeed there was little room for the guards who traveled with the driver to protect the government property. Many old drivers of the “Boston Night Mail,” or the “New York Night Mail,” or “Baltimore Mail,” may yet be found along the old road, who describe the immense loads which they carried westward behind flying steeds. Such a factor in the mailstage business did the newspapers become, that many contractors refused to carry them by express mail, consigning them to the ordinary mails, thereby bringing down upon themselves the frequent savage maledictions of a host of local editors.[67]
Newspapers were, nevertheless, carried by express mailstages as far west as Ohio in 1837, as is proved by a newspaper account of a robbery committed on the Cumberland Road, the robbers holding up an express mailstage and finding nothing in it but newspapers.[68]
The mails on the Cumberland Road were always in danger of being assailed by robbers, especially on the mountainous portions of the road at night. Though by dint of lash and ready revolver the doughty drivers usually came off safely with their charge.
So distinctive was the character of the Cumberland Road that all which pertained to it was highly characteristic. Next to the race of men which grew up beside its swinging stretches, nothing had a more distinctive tone than the taverns which offered cheer and hospitality to its surging population.
The origin of taverns in the East was very dissimilar from their history in the West. The first taverns in the West were those which did service on the old Braddock’s Road. Unlike the taverns of New England, which were primarily drinking places, sometimes closing at nine in the evening, and not professing, originally, to afford lodging, the tavern in the West arose amid the forest to answer all the needs of travelers. It may be said that every cabin in all the western wilderness was a tavern,where, if there was a lack of “bear and cyder” there was an abundance of dried deer meat and Indian meal and a warm fireplace before which to spread one’s blankets.[69]
The first cabins on the old route from the Potomac to the Ohio were at the Wills Creek settlement (Cumberland) and Gist’s clearing, where Washington stopped on his Le Bœuf trip on the buffalo trace not far from the summit of Laurel Hill. After Braddock’s Road was built, and the first roads were opened between Uniontown and Brownsville, Washington and Wheeling, during the Revolutionary period, a score of taverns sprang up—the first of the kind west of the Allegheny Mountains.
The oldest tavern on Braddock’s Road was Tomlinson’s Tavern near “Little Meadows,” eight miles west of the present village of Frostburg, Maryland.
At this point the lines of Braddock’s Road and the Cumberland Road coincide.On land owned by him along the old military road Jesse Tomlinson erected a tavern. When the Cumberland Road was built, his first tavern was deserted and a new one built near the old site. Another tavern, erected by one Fenniken, stood on both the line of the military road and the Cumberland Road, two miles west of Smithfield (“Big Crossings”) where the two courses were identical.
The first taverns erected upon the road which followed the portage path from Uniontown to Brownsville were Collin’s Log Tavern and Rollin’s Tavern, erected in Uniontown in 1781 and 1783, respectively. These taverns offered primitive forms of hospitality to the growing stream of sojourners over the rough mountain path to the Youghiogheny at Brownsville, where boats could be taken for the growing metropolis of Pittsburg. Another tavern in the West was located on this road ten miles west of Uniontown. As the old century neared its close a score of taverns sprang up on the road from Uniontown to Brownsville and on the road from Brownsville to Wheeling. At least three old tavernsare still remembered at West Brownsville. Hill’s stone tavern was erected at Hillsboro in 1794. “Catfish Camp,” James Wilson’s tavern at Washington, the first tavern in that historic town, was built in 1781 and operated eleven years for the benefit of the growing tide of pioneers who chose to embark on the Ohio at Wheeling rather than on the Monongahela at Brownsville. Other taverns at Washington before 1800 were McCormack’s (1788), Sign of the White Goose (1791), Buck Tavern (1796), Sign of the Spread Eagle, and Globe Inn (1797). The Gregg Tavern and the famous old Workman House at Uniontown were both erected in the last years of the old century, 1797-1799. Two miles west of Rankintown, Smith’s Stone Tavern stood on the road to Wheeling, and the Sign of the American Eagle (1796) offered lodging at West Alexander, several years before the old century closed. West of the Ohio River, on Zane’s rough blazed track through the scattered Ohio settlements toward Kentucky, travelers found, as has been elsewhere noted, entertainment at Zane’s clearings, at the fords of the Muskingumand Scioto, and at the little settlement at Cincinnati. Before the quarter of a century elapsed ere the Cumberland Road crossed the Ohio River, a number of taverns were erected on the line of the road which was built over the course of Zane’s Trace. On this first wagon-road west of the Ohio River the earliest taverns were at St. Clairsville and Zanesville. At this latter point the road turned southwest, following Zane’s Trace to Lancaster, Chillicothe, and Maysville, Kentucky. The first tavern on this road was opened at Zanesville during the last year of the old century, McIntire’s Hotel. In the winter of the same year, 1799, Green’s Tavern was built, in which, it is recorded, the Fourth of July celebration in the following year was held. Cordery’s Tavern followed, and David Harvey built a tavern in 1800. The first license for a tavern in St. Clairsville was issued to Jacob Haltz, February 23, 1802. Two other licenses were issued that year to John Thompson and Bazil Israel. Barnes’s Tavern was opened in 1803. William Gibson, Michael Groves, Sterling Johnson, Andrew Moore, and AndrewMarshall kept tavern in the first half decade of this century. As elsewhere noted, there was no earlier road between Zanesville and Columbus which the Cumberland Road followed. West of Zanesville but one tavern was opened in the first decade of this century. Griffith Foos’s tavern at Springfield, which was doing business in 1801, prospered until 1814. The other taverns of the West, at Zanesville, Columbus, Springfield, Richmond (Indiana), and Indianapolis, are of another era and will be mentioned later.
The first taverns of the West were built mostly of logs, though a few, as noted, were of stone. They were ordinary wilderness cabins, rendered professionally hospitable by stress of circumstance. They were more often of but one or two rooms, where, before the fireplace, guests were glad to sleep together upon the puncheon floor. The fare afforded was such as hunters had—game from the surrounding forest and neighboring streams and the product of the little clearing, potatoes, and the common cereals.
At the beginning of the new century alarge number of substantial taverns arose beside the first western roads—even before the Cumberland Road was under way. The best known of these were built at Washington, The Sign of the Cross Keys (1801), the McClellan (1802); and at Uniontown the National and Walker Houses. At Washington arose The Sign of the Golden Swan (1806), Sign of the Green Tree (1808), Gen. Andrew Jackson (1813), and Sign of the Indian Queen (1815). These were built in the age of sawmills and some of them came well down through the century.
It is remarkable how many buildings are to be seen on the Cumberland Road which tell by their architectural form the story of their fortunes. Many a tavern, outgrowing the day of small things, was found to be wholly inadequate to the greater business of the new era. Additions were made as circumstances demanded, and in some cases the result is very interesting. The Seaton House in Uniontown was built in sections, as was the old Fulton House (now Moran House) also of Uniontown. A fine old stone tavern at Malden, Pennsylvania was erected in 1822 and an addition madein 1830. A stone slab in the second section bears the date “1830,” also the word “Liberty,” and a rude drawing of a plow and sheaf of wheat. Though of more recent date, the well-known Four Mile House west of Columbus, Ohio displays, by a series of additions, the record of its prosperous days, when the neighboring Camp Chase held its population of Confederate prisoners.
Among the more important taverns which became the notable hostelries of the Cumberland Road should be mentioned the Black, American, Mountain Spring, and Pennsylvania Houses at Cumberland; Plumer Tavern and Six Mile House west of Cumberland; Franklin and Highland Hall Houses of Frostburg; Lehman and Shulty Houses at Grantsville; Thistle Tavern at the eastern foot of Negro Mountain, and Hablitzell’s stone tavern at the summit; The Stoddard House on the summit of Keyser’s Ridge; the stone tavern near the summit of Winding Ridge, and the Wable stand on the western slope; the Wentling and Hunter Houses at Petersburg; the Temple of Juno two mileswestward; the Endsley House and Camel Tavern at Smithfield (Big Crossings); a tavern on Mt. Augusta; the Rush, Inks, and John Rush Houses, Sampey’s Tavern at Great Meadows; the Braddock Run House; Downer Tavern; Snyder’s Tavern at eastern foot of Laurel Hill, and the Summit House at the top; Shipley and Monroe Houses and Norris Tavern east of Uniontown, and Searight’s Tavern six miles west; Johnson-Hatfield House; the Brashear, Marshall, Clark and Monongahela Houses at Brownsville; Adam’s Tavern; Key’s and Greenfield’s Taverns at Beallsville; Gall’s House; Hastings and the Upland House at the foot of Egg Nogg Hill; Ringland’s Tavern at Pancake; the Fulton House, Philadelphia, and Kentucky Inn and Travellers Inn at Washington; Rankin and Smith Taverns; Caldwell’s Tavern; Brown’s and Watkin’s Taverns at Claysville; Beck’s Tavern at West Alexander; the Stone Tavern at Roney’s Point and the United States Hotel and Monroe House at Wheeling.
West of the Ohio were Rhode’s and McMahon’s Taverns at Bridgeport; Hoover’s Tavern near St. Clairsville; Chamberlain’s Tavern; Christopher Hoover’s Tavern, one mile west of Morristown; Taylor’s Tavern; Gleave’s Tavern and Stage Office; Bradshaw’s Hotel at Fairview; Drake’s Tavern at Middleton; Sign of the Black Bear at Washington; Carran’s, McDonald’s, McKinney’s and Wilson’s Taverns in Guernsey County and the Ten Mile House at Norwich, ten miles east of Zanesville. In Zanesville, Robert Taylor opened a tavern in 1805, and in 1807 moved to the present site of the Clarendon Hotel, situated on the Cumberland Road and hung out the Sign of the Orange Tree. Perhaps no tavern in the land can claim the honor of holding a state legislature within its doors, except the Sign of the Orange Tree, where, in 1810-12, when Zanesville was the temporary capital of Ohio, the legislature made its headquarters.[70]The Sign of the Rising Sun was another Zanesville tavern, opened in 1806, the name being changed by a later proprietor, without damage toits brilliancy, perhaps, to the Sign of the Red Lion. The National Hotel was opened in 1818 and became a famous hostelry. Roger’s Hotel is mentioned in many old advertisements for bids for making and repairing the Cumberland Road. In 1811 William Burnham opened the Sign of the Merino Lamb in a frame building owned by General Isaac Van Horne. The Sign of the Green Tree was opened by John S. Dugan in 1817, this being remembered for entertaining President Monroe, and General Lewis Cass at a later date. West of Zanesville, on the new route opened straight westward to Columbus, the famous monumental pile of stone, the Five Mile House long served its useful purpose beside the road and is one of the most impressive of its monuments, today. Edward Smith and Usal Headley were early tavern-keepers at this point. Henry Winegamer built a tavern three miles west of the Five Mile House. Henry Hursey built and opened the first tavern at Gratiot. These public houses west of Zanesville were erected in the year preceding the opening of the Cumberland Road, which was built throughthe forest in the year 1831.[71]The stages which were soon running from Zanesville to Columbus, left the uncompleted, line of the Cumberland Road at Jacksontown and struck across to Newark and followed the old road thence to Columbus. The first tavern built in Columbus was opened in 1813, which, in 1816, bore the sign “The Lion and the Eagle.” After 1817 it was known as “The Globe.” The Columbus Inn and White Horse Tavern were early Columbus hotels; Pike’s Tavern was opened in 1822, and a tavern bearing the sign of the Golden Lamb was opened in 1825. The Neil House was opened in the twenties, a transfer of it to new owners appearing in local papers in 1832. It was the headquarters of the Neil, Moore, and Company line of stages and the best known early tavern in the old coaching days in Ohio. Many forgotten taverns in Columbus can be found mentioned in old documents and papers, including the famous American House, Buckeye Hotel, on the present site of the Board of Trade building,etc. West of Columbus the celebrated Four Mile House, which has been referred to previously, was erected in the latter half of the century. In the days of the great mail and stage lines Billy Werden’s Tavern in Springfield was the leading hostelry in western Ohio. At this point the stages running to Cincinnati, with mail for the Mississippi Valley, left the Cumberland Road. Across the state line, Neal’s and Clawson’s Taverns offered hospitality in the extreme eastern border of Indiana. At Richmond, Starr Tavern (Tremont Hotel), Nixon’s Tavern, Gilbert’s two-story, pebble-coated tavern and Bayle’s Sign of the Green Tree, offered entertainment worthy of the road and its great business, while Sloan’s brick stagehouse accommodated the passenger traffic of the stage lines. At Indianapolis, the Palmer House, built in 1837, and Washington Hall, welcomed the public of the two great political faiths, Democrat and Whig, respectively.
At almost every mile of the road’s long length, wagonhouses offered hospitality to the hundreds engaged in the great freight traffic. Here a large room with its fireplace could be found before which to lay blankets on a winter’s night. The most successful wagonhouses were situated at the outskirts of the larger towns, where, at more reasonable prices and in more congenial surroundings than in a crowded city inn, the rough sturdy men upon whom the whole West depended for over a generation for its merchandise, found hospitable entertainment for themselves and their rugged horses. These houses were usually unpretentious frame buildings surrounded by a commodious yard, and generous watering-troughs and barns. A hundred tired horses have been heard munching their corn in a single wagonhouse yard at the end of a long day’s work.
In both tavern and wagonhouse the fireplace and the bar were always present, whatever else might be missing. The fireplaces in the first western taverns were notably generous, as the rigorous winters of the Alleghenies required. Many of these fireplaces were seven feet in length and nearly as high, capable of holding, had it been necessary, a wagonload of wood. With a great fireplace at the end of theroom, lighting up its darkest corners as no candle could, the taverns along the Cumberland Road where the stages stopped for the night, saw merrier scenes than any of their modern counterparts witness. And over all their merry gatherings the flames from the great fires threw a softened light, in which those who remember them best seem to bask as they tell us of them. The taverns near some of the larger villages, Wheeling, Washington, or Uniontown, often entertained for a winter’s evening, a sleighing party from town, to whom the great room and its fireplace were surrendered for the nonce, where soon lisping footsteps and the soft swirl of old-fashioned skirts told that the dance was on.
Beside the old fireplace hung two important articles, the flip-iron and the poker. The poker used in the old road taverns was of a size commensurate with the fireplace, often being seven or eight feet long. Each landlord was Keeper-of-the-Poker in his own tavern, and many were particular that none but themselves should touch the great fire, which was one of the main features of their hospitality, after the qualityof the food and drink. Eccentric old “Boss” Rush in his famous tavern near Smithfield (Big Crossings) even kept his poker under lock and key.
The tavern signs so common in New England were known only in the earlier days of the Cumberland Road as many of the tavern names show. The majority of the great taverns bore on their signs only the name of their proprietor, the earliest landlord’s name often being used for several generations. The advancing of the century can be noticed in the origin of such names as the National House, the United States Hotel, the American House, etc. The evolution in nomenclature is, plainly, from the sign or symbol to the landlord’s name, then to a fanciful name. Another sign of later days was the building of verandas. The oldest taverns now standing are plain ones or the two story buildings rising abruptly from the pavement and opening directly upon it. Of this type is the Brownfield House at Uniontown and numerous half-forgotten houses which were early taverns in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
The kitchen of the old inn was an important feature, especially as many of the taverns were little more than restaurants where stage-passengers hastily dined. The food provided was of a plain and nourishing character, including the famous home-cured hams, which Andrew Jackson preferred, and the buckwheat cakes, which Henry Clay highly extolled. In this connection it should be said that the women of the old West were most successful in operating the old-time taverns, and many of the best “stands” were conducted by them. The provision made in a license to a woman in early New England, that “she provide a fit man that is godly to manage the business,” was never suggested in the West, where hundreds of brave women carried on the business of their husbands after their decease. And their heroism was appreciated and remembered by the gallant aristocracy of the road.
The old Revolutionary soldiers who, quite generally, became the landlords of New England, did not keep tavern in the West. But one Revolutionary veteran was landlord on the Cumberland Road. The road bred and brought up its own landlordsto a large extent. The early landlords were fit men to rule in the early taverns, and provided from forest and stream the larger portion of food for the travelers over the first rough roads. It is said that these objected to the building of the Cumberland Road, through fear that more accelerated means of locomotion would eventually cheat them out of the business which then fell to their share.
But, like the New England landlord, the western tavern-keeper was a many-sided man. Had the Cumberland Road taverns been located always within villages, their proprietors might have become what New England landlords are reputed to have been, town representatives, councilmen, selectmen, tapsters, and heads of the “Train Band”—in fact, next to the town clerk in importance. As it was, the western landlord often filled as important a position on the frontier as his eastern counterpart did in New England. This was due, in part, to the place which the western tavern occupied in society. Taverns were, both in the East and in the West, places of meeting for almost any business. Thiswas particularly true in the West, where the public house was almost the only available place for any gathering whatever between the scattered villages. But while in the East the landlord was most frequently busy with official duties, the western landlord was mostly engaged in collateral professions, which rendered him of no less value to his community. The jovial host at the Cumberland Road tavern often worked a large farm, upon which his tavern stood. Some of the more prosperous on the eastern half of the road, owned slaves who carried on the work of the farm and hotel. He sometimes ran a store in connection with his tavern, and almost without exception, officiated at his bar, where he “sold strong waters to relieve the inhabitants.” Whiskey, two drinks for a “fippenny bit,” called “fip” for short (value six and a quarter cents) was the principal “strong water” in demand. It was the pure article, neither diluted nor adulterated. In the larger towns of course any beverage of the day was kept at the taverns—sherry toddy, mulled wine, madeira, and cider.
As has been said, the road bred its own landlords. Youths, whose lives began simultaneously with that of the great road, worked upon its curved bed in their teens, became teamsters and contractors in middle life, and spent the autumn of their lives as landlords of its taverns, purchased with the money earned in working upon it. Several well-known landlords were prominent contractors, many of whom owned their share of the great six- and eight-horse teams which hauled freight to the western rivers.
The old taverns were the hearts of the Cumberland Road, and the tavern life was the best gauge to measure the current of business that ebbed and flowed. As the great road became superseded by the railways, the taverns were the first to succumb to the shock. In a very interesting article, a recent writer on “The Rise of the Tide of Life to New England Hilltops,”[72]speaks of the early hill life of New England, and the memorials there left “of the deep and sweeping streams of human history.” Theauthor would have found the Cumberland Road and its predecessors an interesting western example of the social phenomena with which he dealt. In New England, as in the Central West, the first traveled courses were on the summits of the watersheds. These routes of the brute were the first ways of men. The tide of life has ebbed from New England hilltops since the beginning. Sufficient is it for the present subject that the Cumberland Road was the most important “stream of human history” from Atlantic tide-water to the headwaters of the streams of the Mississippi. Its old taverns are, after the remnants of the historic roadbed and ponderous bridges, the most interesting “shells and fossils” cast up by this stream. This old route, chosen first by the buffalo and followed by red men and white men, will ever be the course of travel across the mountains. From this rugged path made by the once famous Cumberland Road, the tide of life cannot ebb. Here, a thousand years hence, may course a magnificent boulevard, the American Appian Way, to the commercial, as well as military, key of the eastern slopes of theMississippi Basin at the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. It is important that each fact of history concerning this ancient highway be put on lasting record.
It is impossible to leave the study of the Cumberland Road without gathering up into a single chapter a number of threads which have not been woven into the preceding record. And first, the very appearance of the old road as seen by travelers who pass over it today. One cannot go a single mile over it without becoming deeply impressed with the evidence of the age and the individuality of the old Cumberland Road. There is nothing like it in the United States. Leaping the Ohio at Wheeling, the Cumberland Road throws itself across Ohio and Indiana, straight as an arrow, like an ancient elevated pathway of the gods, chopping hills in twain at a blow, traversing the lowlands on high grades like a railroad bed, vaulting river and stream on massive bridges of unparalleled size. The farther one travels uponit, the more impressed one must become, for there is, in the long grades and stretches and ponderous bridges, that “masterful suggestion of a serious purpose, speeding you along with a strange uplifting of the heart,” of which Kenneth Grahame speaks; “and even in its shedding off of bank and hedgerow as it marched straight and full for the open downs, it seems to declare its contempt for adventitious trappings to catch the shallow-pated.”[73]For long distances, this road “of the sterner sort” will be, so far as its immediate surface is concerned, what the tender mercies of the counties through which it passes will allow, but at certain points, the traveler comes out unexpectedly upon the ancient roadbed, for in many places the old macadamized bed is still doing noble duty.
Nothing is more striking than the ponderous stone bridges which carry the roadbed over the waterways. It is doubtful if there are on this continent such monumental relics of the old stone bridge builders’ art. Not only such massive bridges as those at Big Crossings (Smithfield, Pennsylvania) and the artistic “S” bridge near Claysville, Pennsylvania, will attract the traveler’s attention, but many of the less pretentious bridges over brooks and rivulets will, upon examination, be found to be ponderous pieces of workmanship. A pregnant suggestion of the change which has come over the land can be read in certain of these smaller bridges and culverts. When the great road was built the land was covered with forests and many drains were necessary. With the passing of the forests many large bridges, formerly of much importance, are now of a size out of all proportion to the demand for them, and hundreds of little bridges have fallen into disuse, some of them being quite above the general level of the surrounding fields. The ponderous bridge at Big Crossings was finished and dedicated with great éclat July 4, 1818. Near the eastern end of the three fine arches is the following inscription: “Kinkead, Beck & Evans, builders, July 4, 1818.”
Culvert on the Cumberland Road in OhioCulvert on the Cumberland Road in Ohio
The traveler will notice still the mileposts which mark the great road’s successive steps. Those on the eastern portion of theroad are of iron and were made at the foundries at Connellsville and Brownsville. Major James Francis had the contract for making and delivering those between Cumberland and Brownsville. John Snowdan had the contract for those between Brownsville and Wheeling. They were hauled in six-horse teams to their sites. Those between Brownsville and Cumberland have recently been reset and repainted. The milestones west of the Ohio River are mostly of sandstone, and are fast disappearing under the action of the weather. Some are quite illegible though the word “Cumberland” at the top can yet be read on almost all. In central Ohio, through the Darby woods, or “Darby Cuttings,” the mileposts have been greatly mutilated by vandal woodchoppers, who knocked off large chips with which to sharpen their axes.
The bed of the Cumberland Road was originally eighty feet in width. In Ohio at least, property owners have encroached upon the road until, in some places, ten feet of ground has been included within the fences. This matter has been brought into noticewhere franchises for electric railway lines have been granted. In Franklin County, west of Columbus, Ohio, there is hardly room for a standard gauge track outside the roadbed, where once the road occupied forty feet each side of its axis. When the property owners were addressed with respect to the removal of their fences, they demanded to be shown quitclaim deeds for the land, which, it is unnecessary to say, were not forthcoming from the state. Hundreds of contracts, calling for a width of eighty feet, can be given as evidence of the original width of the road.[74]In days when it was considered the most extraordinary good fortune to have the Cumberland Road pass through one’s farm, it was not considered necessary to obtain quitclaim deeds for the land.
It is difficult to sufficiently emphasize the aristocracy which existed among the old “pike boys,” as those most intimately connected with the road were called. This was particularly true of the drivers of themail and passenger stages, men who were as often noted for their quick wit and large acquaintance with men as for their dexterous handling of two hands full of reins. Their social and business position was the envy of the youth of a nation, whose ambition to emulate them was begotten of the best sort of hero-worship. Stage-drivers’ foibles were their pet themes, such as the use of peculiar kinds of whips and various modes of driving. Of the latter there were three styles common to the Cumberland Road, (1) The flat rein (English style), (2) Top and bottom (Pennsylvania adaptation), (3) Side rein (Eastern style). The last mode was in commonest use. Of drivers there were of course all kinds, slovenly, cruel, careful. Of the best class, John Bunting, Jim Reynolds, and Billy Armor were best known, after “Red” Bunting, in the east, and David Gordon and James Burr, on the western division. No one was more proud of the fine horses which did the work of the great road than the better class of drivers. As Thackeray said was true in England, the passing of the era of good roads and the mailstage hassounded the knell of the rugged race of horses which once did service in the Central West.
As one scans the old files of newspapers, or reads old-time letters and memoirs of the age of the Cumberland Road, he is impressed with the interest taken in the coming and going of the more renowned guests of the old road. The passage of a president-elect over the Cumberland Road was a triumphant procession. The stage companies made special stages, or selected the best of their stock, in which to bear him. The best horses were fed and groomed for the proud task. The most noted drivers were appointed to the honorable station of Charioteer-to-the-President. The thousands of homes along his route were decked in his honor, and welcoming heralds rode out from the larger towns to escort their noted guests to celebrations for which preparations had been making for days in advance. The slow-moving presidential pageant through Ohio and Pennsylvania was an educational and patriotic ceremony, of not infrequent occurrence in the old coaching days—a worthy exhibition which hardly has its counterpart in thesedays of steam. Jackson, Van Buren, Monroe, Harrison, Polk, and Tyler passed in triumph over portions of the great road. The taverns at which they were fêted are remembered by the fact. Drivers who were chosen for the task of driving their coach were ever after noted men. But there were other guests than presidents-elect, though none received with more acclaim. Henry Clay, the champion of the road, was a great favorite throughout its towns and hamlets, one of which, Claysville, proudly perpetuates his name. Benton and Cass, General Lafayette, General Santa Anna, Black Hawk, Jenny Lind, P. T. Barnum, and John Quincy Adams are all mentioned in the records of the stirring days of the old road. As has been suggested elsewhere, politics entered largely into the consideration of the building and maintenance of the road. Enemies of internal improvement were not forgotten as they passed along the great road which they voted to neglect, as even Martin Van Buren once realized when the axle of his coach was sawed in two, breaking down where the mud was deepest. Manyepisodes are remembered, indicating that all the political prejudice and rancor known elsewhere was especially in evidence on this highway, which owed its existence and future to the machinations of politicians.
But the greatest blessing of the Cumberland Road was the splendid era of growth which it did its share toward hastening. Its best friends could see in its decline and decay only evidences of unhappiest fortune, while in reality the great road had done its noble work and was to be superseded by better things which owed to it their coming. Historic roads there had been, before this great highway of America was built, but none in all the past had been the means of supplanting themselves by greater and more efficient means of communication. The far-famed Appian Way witnessed many triumphal processions of consuls and proconsuls, but it never was the means of bringing into existence something to take its place in a new and more progressive era. It helped to create no free empire at its extremity, and they who traversed it in so much pride and power would find it today nothing but a ponderous memorialof their vanity. The Cumberland Road was built by the people and for the people, and served well its high purpose. It became a highway for the products of the factories, the fisheries and the commerce of the eastern states. It made possible that interchange of the courtesies of social life necessary in a republic of united states. It was one of the great strands which bound the nation together in early days when there was much to excite animosity and provoke disunion. It became the pride of New England as well as of the West which it more immediately benefited; “The state of which I am a citizen,” said Edward Everett at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1829, “has already paid between one and two thousand dollars toward the construction and repair of that road; and I doubt not she is prepared to contribute her proportion toward its extension to the place of its destination.”[75]
Hundreds of ancient but unpretentious monuments of the Cumberland Road—the hoary milestones which line it—stand to perpetuate its name in future days. Butwere they all gathered together—from Indiana and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Virginia and Maryland—and cemented into a monstrous pyramid, the pile would not be inappropriate to preserve the name and fame of a highway which “carried thousands of population and millions of wealth into the West; and more than any other material structure in the land, served to harmonize and strengthen, if not save, the Union.”
What of the future? The dawning of the era of country living is in sight. It is being hastened by the revolution in methods of locomotion. The bicycle and automobile presage an era of good roads, and of an unparalleled countryward movement of society. With this era is coming the revival of inn and tavern life, the rejuvenation of a thousand ancient highways and all the happy life that was ever known along their dusty stretches. By its position with reference to the national capital, and the military and commercial key of the Central West, Pittsburg, and both of the great cities of Ohio, the Cumberland Road will become, perhaps, the foremost of the great roadways of America. The bed iscapable of being made substantial at a comparatively small cost, as the grading is quite perfect. Its course measures the shortest possible route practicable for a roadway from tidewater to the Mississippi River. As a trunk line its location cannot be surpassed. Its historic associations will render the route of increasing interest to the thousands who, in other days, will travel, in the genuine sense of the word, over those portions of its length which long ago became hallowed ground. The “Shades of Death” will again be filled with the echoing horn which heralded the arrival of the old-time coaches, and Winding Ridge again be crowded with the traffic of a nation. A hundred Cumberland Road taverns will be opened, and bustling landlords welcome, as of yore, the travel-stained visitor. Merry parties will again fill those tavern halls, now long silent, with their laughter.
And all this will but mark a new and better era than its predecessor, an era of outdoor living, which must come, and come quickly, if as a nation we are to retain our present hold on the world’s great affairs.