Not far from this Pease Tavern is a sulphur spring which has some medicinal repute, and which attracted visitors. To reach it at one time you passed close to the house of the Indian, Old Brazil, and his wife Nancy, and this was always a ticklish experience. Miss Ward tells their blood-curdling story. His real name was the gentle title Basil, but he had been a pirate on the high seas, and Brazil was more appropriate. He and his wife thriftily ran their little farm and industriously wove charming baskets and peddled them around the neighboring towns. These last leaves on the tree were, for all the perceptions of Shrewsbury folk, peaceful creatures as they were honest; but when Brazil had been treated to a good mug of hard cider at tavern or farm-house (and no one would fail thus to treat him) he told of his past life with such fierce voice and horrid gesture as made him equally a delight and a terror to the children and to many older folk as well.
Harrington Tavern, Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.
He had been a bloodthirsty villain; scores, perhaps hundreds, of helpless souls on captured craft had perished at his gory hands. He detailed to the gaping loungers at the tavern with a realism worthy a modern novelist how he split the heads of his victims open with his broadaxe—exactly in the middle—“one half would fall on one shoulder, tother half on tother shoulder! ugh! ugh!” and with another pull of cider, husband and wife trotted contentedly home. About 1850 they died as they had lived, close—and loving—companions. As a fitting testimonial to the pirate’s end, the village boys put a charge of gunpowder in the brick oven of the peaceful little kitchen and blew the pirate’s house in fragments.
At a time when he could not afford to pay high Boston rents, Pease made Shrewsbury his headquarters. This may account for the large number of old taverns in the town, several of which are portrayed in these pages,—the Old Arcade on [page 294], Harrington’s Tavern on [page 299], Balch Tavern on [page 301].
The Exchange Hotel, still standing and still in use as a public house, was the stage office for Pease’s stage line in Worcester. This interesting old landmark, built in 1784, was owned by Colonel Reuben Sykes, the partner of Pease; and other coach lines than theirs centred at the Exchange, and made it gay with arrival and departure. As the United States Arms, Sykes’s Coffee-house, Sykes’s Stage-house, Thomas Exchange Coffee-house, and Thomas Temperance Exchange in the days of the Washingtonian movement, this hotel has had an interesting existence. President Washington in 1789 “stopped at the United States Arms where he took breakfast, and then proceeded on his journey. To gratify the inhabitants he politely passed through town on horseback. He was dressed in a brown suit, and pleasure glowed in every countenance as he came along.” Lafayette was also a guest; and through its situation opposite the Worcester court-houses on Court Hill the tavern has seen within its walls a vast succession of men noted in law and in lawsuits.
Balch Tavern, Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.
From 1830 to 1846 a brilliant comet flashed its way through the stage-driving world of New England; it was Hon. Ginery Twichell, who was successively and successfully post-rider, stage-driver, stage proprietor, most noted express rider of his times, railroad superintendent, president of the Boston and Worcester Railroad, and member of Congress. Some thirty years ago or more a small child sat in the “operating room” of a photographer’s gallery in Worcester. Her feet and hands were laboriously placed in a tentatively graceful attitude and the back of her head firmly fastened in that iron “branks-without-a-gag” fixture which then prevailed in photographers’ rooms and may still, for all that I know. A sudden dashing inroad from an adjoining room of the photographer’s assistant with the loud and excited exclamation, “Ginery’s coming, Ginery’s coming,” led to the immediate and unceremonious unveiling of the artist from the heavy black cloth that had enveloped his head while he was peeping wisely through the instrument at his juvenile sitter, and to his violent exit; he was followed with equal haste and lack of explanation by my own attendant. Thus basely deserted I sat for some minutes wondering what a Ginery could be, for there was to me a sort of menagerie-circus-like ring in the word, and I deemed it some strange wild beast like the Pygarg once exhibited at the old Salem Tavern. At last, though fully convinced that my moving would break the camera, I boldly disengaged myself from the claws of the branks, ran to a front window, and hung peering out at the Ginery over the heads of the other occupants of the gallery, who regarded with eager delight no wild or strange beast, but a great stage-coach with six horses which stood reeking, foaming, pawing, in front of the Baystate House across the street. A dignified and self-contained old man, ruddy of face, and dressed in a heavy greatcoat and tall silk hat, sat erect on the coachman’s seat, reins well in hand—and suddenly Ginery and his six horses were off with rattle of wheels and blowing of horn and cheers of the crowd; but not before there was imprinted forever in unfading colors on my young brain a clear picture of the dashing coaching life of olden days. It was an anniversary of some memorable event, and the member of Congress celebrated it by once more driving over his old-time coaching route to meet the cheers and admiration of all beholders.
The predecessor of Baystate House, the old Central Hotel, was the headquarters of Twichell’s stage line during the sixteen years of his connection with it. It was built in 1722, and rooms in it served various purposes besides those of good cheer—one being used as a county jail.