The selectmen of the town of Cambridge, Massachusetts, met at the Blue Anchor Tavern, which was established as an ordinary as early as 1652. Their bill for 1769 runs thus:—
“The Selectmen of the Town of Cambridge to Ebenezer Bradish, Dr. 1769:
| March, To dinners and drink | £0. | 17. | 8 | ||
| April, To flip and punch | 2. | ||||
| May, To wine and eating | 6. | 8 | |||
| May, To dinners, drink and suppers | 18. | ||||
| May, To flip and cheese | 1. | 8 | |||
| May, To wine and flip | 4. | ||||
| June, To punch | 2. | 8 | |||
| July, To punch and eating | 4. | ||||
| August, To punch and cheese | 3. | 7 | |||
| October, To punch and flip | 4. | 8 | |||
| October, To dinners and drink | 13. | 8 | |||
| Sundries | 12. | ||||
| ———— | |||||
| £4. | 10. | 7” | |||
“Ordination Day” was almost as great a day for the tavern as for the meeting-house. The visiting ministers who came to assist at the religious service of ordination of a new minister were usually entertained at the tavern. Often a specially good beer was brewed called “ordination beer,” and in Connecticut an “ordination ball” was given at the tavern—this with the sanction of the parsons. The bills for entertaining the visitors, for the dinner and lodging at the local taverns, are in many cases preserved. One of the most characteristic was at a Hartford ordination. It runs:—
| £ | s. | d. | ||
| “To keeping Ministers | 2. | 4 | ||
| 2 Mugs tody | 5. | 10 | ||
| 5 Segars | 3 | |||
| 1 Pint Wine | 9 | |||
| 3 Lodgings | 9 | |||
| 3 Bitters | 9 | |||
| 3 Breakfasts | 3. | 6 | ||
| 15 boles Punch | 1. | 10 | ||
| 24 dinners | 1. | 16 | ||
| 11 bottles wine | 3. | 6 | ||
| 5 Mugs flip | 5. | 10 | ||
| 5 Boles Punch | 6 | |||
| 3 Boles Tody | 3. | 6” |
The bill is endorsed with unconscious humor, “This all paid for except the Ministers Rum.”
Lean-to of Ellery Tavern.
The book already referred to, called Notions of the Americans, tells of taverns during the triumphal tour of Lafayette in 1824. The author writes thus of the stage-house, or tavern, on the regular stage line. He said he stopped at fifty such, some not quite so good and some better than the one he chooses to describe, namely, Bispham’s at Trenton, New Jersey.