Stage-coach and Tavern Days

by Alice Morse Earle

The great bell-crowned hat which the driver wore in summer on lines leaving Boston often was crammed with papers and valuables, and one of the rules of the Eastern Stage Company at one time was, “No driver shall carry anything except in his pocket.” It is said many of the drivers grew bald from the constant weight on their heads.

The constant imbibing of ale, brandy, and rum-and-milk by English coachmen at coaching inns was echoed in America by drivers at every tavern at which the stage-coach stopped. The driver was urged to drink by coach passengers who had far better have implored him not to drink. Many an old driver showed by the benignant purple glow of his nose that the importunities of the travellers had been duly silenced by more than ample hard cider, gin, and New England rum.

A great day on the coaches was when schoolboys and college boys went home on their vacations. The tops of the coaches were filled with their square boxes, which packed like cord-wood. On these boxes and within the coach swarmed the boys, pea-shooters in hand. A favorite target was the pike-keeper at the toll-gate, and those who left the coach first fared worst. Our boys have but a feeble imitation of these good times when they riot into a railway car together for a few hours of hurried travel to their city homes.

The stage-drivers were universally kind and careful of all children placed under their charge; even young children, boys and girls, were intrusted to their care.

One old gentleman tells me that in the days of his youth he rode by stage-coach to and from school, and so strong was his longing for a seafaring life, with such a flavor of salt water and tar did he englamour every unusual event, that it was inevitable with the imaginativeness of a child he should compare this trip by stage to a sea voyage; the roads and fields he mentally termed the ocean, the driver was the captain, the inside of the coach the cabin, the top the deck, and so on. He was honored by having a seat with the driver; and as the day waned, and the ship came to anchor, and all disembarked for supper at a stage tavern, he was further honored by eating supper with the driver and being treated to a glass of toddy. After the coach was again under way the driver had some tardy compunctions that the toddy had been rather strong drink for a growing boy, and said plainly that he feared the young traveller felt the liquor and might tumble from his high seat. He was not reassured when the boy answered dreamily, “Never mind, I can swim.” After glancing sharply at him, the driver stopped his horses, and ignominiously forced the boy to descend and make the rest of the journey inside the coach.

Nothing is more marked than the changes in travelling-bags and trunks from those of stage-coach days. When our ancestors crossed the ocean they transported their belongings in wooden chests—common sea-chests and chests of carved wood. I have seen no mention of trunks in any old colonial inventories, though trunks existed and are named by Shakespere. These old trunks were metal coffers, and usually small. When Judge Sewall went to England in 1690, he bought trunks for his little daughters—trunks of leather or hide with their initials studded in metal nails. This shape of trunk lasted till the days of the railroad. Nearly all old families have one or more of these old trunks in their garrets. They were stout enough of frame, and heavy enough of frame to have lasted in larger numbers, and for centuries, but their heavy deerskin or pigskin covering often grew sorely offensive through harboring moths; and as they held but little, and were very heavy, they were of no use for a modern wardrobe. Their long narrow forms, however, were seen laden on every stage-coach, in company with carpet bags and leather sacks, and the schoolboy who owned one was a proud fellow.

An ancient travelling bag is shown on [page 333]. It is of a heavy woollen homespun stuff ribbed like corduroy, mounted with green leather bindings, straps, handles, etc. It is shaped like a mail-bag, and the straps laced through large eyelet holes. This bag is believed by its owners to have held the possessions of John Carver on the Mayflower.

Deer’s Hide and Pigskin Trunks.

Not only were stage-drivers respected by all persons in every community, but they had a high idea of their own dignity and of the importance of their calling. Little Jack Mendum, who drove the Salem mail-coach, did not deem it an exaggeration of his position when he roared out angrily in answer to a hungry passenger who kept urging him to drive faster, “When I drive this coach I am the whole United States of America.”