Stage Coach & Tavern Days
This book is a fascinating look back at how folks travelled in the days before trains, planes and automobiles. It may give us, of later generations, some appreciation of the difficulties of travelling about. Perhaps a good reason why many folks of long ago may not have gone more than 50 miles from where they were born during their lifetime.
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This is one of the items on this site that I saved primarily for myself, to go back and read more thoroughly at some later date. If someone else finds it interesting so much the better. Dave
Here's a sample of just one page from the book. You can get the entire PDF version at the link shown
Old-time Taverns
" Unreasonable night-tippling," that is, drinking after the curfew bell at nine o'clock, and "intemperate drinking on the Sabbath," that is, drinking by any one not a boarder before three o'clock on the Sabbath (when church services were ended), were heavily fined. Untimely " sitting of clubs " was also prohibited. These laws were evaded with as much ease as the Raines Law provisions of later years in the same neighborhood. In 1664 the red cross of St. George floated over the city ; the English were in power ; the city of New Amsterdam was now New York. The same tavern laws as under the Dutch obtained, however, till 1748, and under the English, taverns multiplied as fast as under Dutch rule. They had good old English names on their sign-boards : the Thistle and Crown, the Rose and Thistle, the Duke of Cumberland, the Bunch of Grapes, St. George and the Dragon, Dog's Head in the Por- ridge Pot, the Fighting Cocks, the White Lion, the King's Head. On the Boreel Building on Broadway is a bronze commemorative tablet, placed there in 1890 by the Holland Society. The site of this building has indeed a history of note. In 1754 Edward Willet opened there a tavern under the sign of the Province Arms ; and many a distinguished traveller was destined to be entertained for many a year at this Province Arms and its successors. It had been the home residence of the De Lanceys, built about 1700 by the father of Lieu- tenant-Governor James De Lancey, and was deemed........snip............
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Another snippet:
Sometimes the taproom was decorated with broad hints to dilatory customers. Such verses as this were hung over the bar :
— Old-time Taverns 45 "I've trusted many to my sorrow. Pay to-day. I'll trust to-morrow."
Another ran : — " My liquor's good, my measure just ; But, honest Sirs, I will not trust."
Another showed a dead cat with this motto :
— Care killed this Cat. Trust kills the Landlord."
"If Trust, I must, My ale, Will pale."