“Come view your patriot father! and your friend,
And toast to Freedom and to slavery’s end.”
John Hancock was another popular patriot seen on tavern signs. The sign-board which hung for many years before John Duggan’s hostelry, the Hancock Tavern in Corn Court, is shown on [page 110]. This portrait crudely resembles one of Hancock, by Copley, and is said to have been painted by order of Hancock’s admirer, Landlord Duggan. At Hancock’s death it was draped with mourning emblems. It swung for many years over the narrow alley shown on [page 182], till it blew down in a heavy wind and killed a citizen. Then it was nailed to the wall, and thereby injured. It was preserved in Lexington Memorial Hall, but has recently been returned to Boston.
It was natural that horses, coaches, and sporting subjects should be favorites for tavern signs. A very spirited one is that of the Perkins Inn, at Hopkinton, New Hampshire, dated 1786, and showing horse, rider, and hounds. The Williams Tavern of Centrebrook, Connecticut, stood on the old Hartford and Saybrook turnpike. One side of its swinging sign displayed a coach and horses. It is shown on [page 400]. The other, on [page 396], portrays a well-fed gentleman seated at a well-spread table sedately drinking a glass of wine. Sign-boards with figures of horses were common, such as that of the Hays Tavern, [page 65]; of the Conkey Tavern, [page 190]; of Mowry’s Inn, [page 57]; and of the Pembroke Tavern, [page 217].
Sign-board of
Bissell’s Tavern.
Of course beasts and birds furnished many symbols for sign painters. On the site where the Northfield Seminary buildings now stand, stood until 1880 the old Doolittle Tavern. It was on the main-travelled road from Connecticut through Massachusetts to southern New Hampshire and Vermont. Its sign-board, dated 1781, is on [page 158]. It bore a large rabbit and two miniature pine trees.
Joseph Cutter, a Revolutionary soldier, kept an inn in Jaffray, New Hampshire, on the “Brattleboro’ Pike” from Boston. His sign-board bore the figure of a demure fox. It is shown on [page 412].
Indian chiefs were a favorite subject for sign-boards; three are here shown, one on [page 203], from the Stickney Tavern of Concord, New Hampshire; another on [page 382], from the Wells Tavern at Greenfield Meadows, Massachusetts; a third on [page 310], from the Tarleton Inn of Haverhill, New Hampshire.
Two Beehive Taverns, one in Philadelphia, one in Frankford, each bore the sign-board a beehive with busy bees. The motto on the former, “By Industry We Thrive,” was scarcely so appropriate as—
“Here in this hive we’re all alive,
Good liquor makes us funny.
If you are dry, step in and try
The flavor of our honey.”