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These helped to roll down the road, and by law were not required to turn aside on the road save for wagons with like width of tire.
The New York turnpikes were traversed by a steady procession of these great wagons, marked often in great lettering with the magic words which were in those days equivalent to Eldorado or Golconda—namely, “Ohio,” or “Genesee Valley.” Freight rates from Albany to Utica were a dollar for a hundred and twelve pounds.
In 1793 the old horse-path from Albany over the mountains to the Connecticut River was made wide enough for the passage of a coach. Westward from Albany a coach ran to Whitestone, Oneida County. In 1783 the first regular mail was delivered at Schenectady, nearly a century after its settlement. Soon the “mail-stages” ran as far as Whitestone. An advertisement of one of these clumsy old mail-stages is here shown. We need not wonder at the misspelling in this advertisement of the name of the town, for in 1792 the Postmaster-general advertised for contracts to carry the mail from “Connojorharrie to Kanandarqua.”
There were twelve gates on the “pike” between Utica and Schenectady; at Schenectady, Crane’s Village, Caughnawaga (now Fonda), Schenck’s Hollow, east of Wagner’s Hollow road, Garoga Creek, St. Johnsville, East Creek Bridge, Fink’s Ferry, Herkimer, Sterling, Utica. These gates did not swing on hinges, but were portcullises; a custom in other countries referred to in the beautiful passage in the Psalms, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates,” etc.
On every toll-gate was a board with the rates of toll painted thereon. Mr. Rufus A. Grider gives the list of rates on the Schenectady and Utica Turnpike, a distance of sixty-eight miles. They seem to me exceedingly high.
The toll-board which hung for many years on a bridge over the Susquehanna River at Sidney, New York, is shown on [page 233].
Sometimes sign-boards were hung on bridges. One is shown on [page 239] which hung for many years on the wooden bridge at Washington’s Crossing at Taylorsville, Pennsylvania, on the Bucks County side. It was painted by Benjamin Hicks, of Newtown, a copy of Trumbull’s picture of Washington crossing the Delaware. It was thrown in the garret of a store at Taylorsville, and rescued by Mr. Mercer for the Bucks County Historical Society.
