Nervous in temperament, excited by his victory, indignant at the injustice and loss to which he had been subjected; he was loudly intolerant of the law’s delay, and especially of the failure of Chief Justice Dudley and his associate Lynde, to unite with the three other judges, Saltonstall, Sewall, and Cushing, in the verdict; and in anger and derision he had painted for him and his tavern a new and famous sign, and he hung it in front of the tavern in caricature of the court.
The sign is gone long ago; but in that entertaining book, The Almanacks of Nathaniel Ames 1726-1775, the author, Sam Briggs, gives an illustration of the painting from a drawing found among Dr. Ames’ papers after his death, a copy of which is shown on the foregoing page. On the original sketch these words are written:—
“Sir:—I wish could have some talk on ye above subject, being the bearer waits for an answer shal only observe Mr Greenwood thinks yt can not be done under £40 Old Tenor.”
This was a good price to pay to lampoon the court, for the sign represented the whole court sitting in state in big wigs with an open book before them entitled Province Laws. The dissenting judges, Dudley and Lynde, were painted with their backs turned to the book. The court, hearing of the offending sign-board, sent the sheriff from Boston to bring it before them. Dr. Ames was in Boston at the time, heard of the order, rode with speed to Dedham in advance of the sheriff, removed the sign, and it is said had allowance of time sufficient to put up a board for the reception of the officer with this legend, “A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, but there shall no sign be given it.”
The old road house, after this episode in its history, became more famous than ever before; and The Almanac was a convenient method of its advertisement, as it was of its distance from other taverns. In the issue of 1751 is this notice:—
“These are to signify to all Persons that travel the great Post-Road South West from Boston That I keep a house of Public Entertainment Eleven Miles from Boston at the sign of the Sun. If they want Refreshment and see Cause to be my Guests, they shall be well entertained at a reasonable rate.
N. Ames.”
Here lived the almanac-maker for fifteen years; here were born by a second wife his famous sons, Dr. Nathaniel Ames and Hon. Fisher Ames. Here in 1774 his successor in matrimony and tavern-keeping, one Richard Woodward, kept open house in September, 1774, for the famous Suffolk Convention, where was chosen the committee that drafted the first resolutions in favor of trying the issue with Great Britain with the sword. My great-grandfather was a member of this convention at Ames Tavern, and it has always seemed to me that this was the birthplace of the War for Independence. During the Revolution, as in the French and Indian War, the tavern doors swung open with constant excitement and interest. Washington, Lafayette, Hancock, Adams, and scores of other patriots sat and drank within its walls. It stood through another war, that of 1812, and in 1817 its historic walls were levelled in the dust.
The tavern sign-board was not necessarily or universally one of the elaborate emblems I have described. Often it was only a board painted legibly with the tavern name. It might be attached to a wooden arm projecting from the tavern or a post; it might be hung from a near-by tree. Often a wrought-iron arm, shaped like a fire crane, held the sign-board. The ponderous wooden sign of the Barre Hotel hung from a substantial frame erected on the green in front of the tavern. Two upright poles about twenty feet long were set five feet apart, with a weather-vane on top of each pole. A bar stretched from pole to pole and held the sign-board. A drawing of it from an old print is shown on [page 280].