Stage-coach and Tavern Days

by Alice Morse Earle

We were slow in abandoning our water travel and water transportation. Water lines controlled in the East till 1800, in the West till 1860, and have now great revival.

Transportation was wholly done by water. When horses multiplied, merchandise was drawn short distances in the winter time on crude sledges. Packhorses were in common use in England and on the Continent, and the scrubby, enduring horses raised here soon were used as packhorses. Their use lingered long over the Alleghany Mountains, as it did on the mountains of the Pacific coast; in fact the advance guard of inland commerce in America has always employed packhorses.

The first appearance of the Conestoga wagon in history (though the wagons were not then called by that name) was in 1755, when General Braddock set out on his ill-fated expedition to western Pennsylvania. There led thither no wagon-road, simply an Indian trail for packhorses. Braddock insisted strenuously to the Pennsylvania Assembly upon obtaining their assistance in widening the trail to a wagon-road, and also to secure one hundred and fifty wagons for the army. The cutting of the road was done, but when returns were made to Braddock at Frederick, Maryland, only twenty-five wagons could be obtained. Franklin said it was a pity the troops had not been landed in Philadelphia, since every farmer in the country thereabouts had a wagon. At Braddock’s earnest solicitation, Franklin issued an ingenious and characteristic advertisement for one hundred and fifty four-horse wagons, and fifteen hundred saddle- or packhorses, for the use of this army. The value of transportation facilities at the time is proved by Franklin’s terms of payment, namely: fifteen shillings a day for each wagon with four horses and driver, and two shillings a day for horse with saddle or pack. Franklin agreed that the owners should be fairly compensated for the loss of these wagons and horses if they were not returned, and was eventually nearly ruined by this stipulation. For the battle at Braddock’s Field was disastrous to the English, and the claims of the farmers against Franklin amounted to twenty thousand pounds. Upon his appeal these claims were paid by the Government under order of General Shirley. Franklin gathered these wagons and horses in York and Lancaster counties, Pennsylvania, and I doubt if York and Lancaster, England, would have been as good fields at that date.

A Wayside Friend.

Braddock’s trail became the famous route for crossing the Alleghany Mountains for the principal pioneers who settled southwestern Pennsylvania and western Virginia, and all their effects were carried to their new homes on packhorses. The only wealth acquired in the wilds by these pioneers was peltry and furs, and each autumn a caravan of packhorses was sent over the mountains bearing the accumulated spoils of the neighborhood, under the charge of a master driver and three or four assistants. The horses were fitted with pack-saddles, to the hinder part of which was fastened a pair of hobbles made of hickory withes; and a collar with a bell was on each horse’s neck. The horses’ feed of shelled corn was carried in bags destined to be filled with alum salt for the return trip; and on the journey down, part of this feed was deposited for the use of the return caravan. Large wallets filled with bread, jerked bear’s meat, ham, and cheese furnished food for the drivers. At night the horses were hobbled and turned out into the woods or pasture, and the bells which had been muffled in the daytime were unfastened, to serve as a guide to the drivers in the morning. The furs were carried to and exchanged first at Baltimore as a market; later the carriers went only to Frederick; then to Hagerstown, Oldtown, and finally to Fort Cumberland. Iron and steel in various forms, and salt, were the things most eagerly desired by the settlers. Each horse could carry two bushels of alum salt, each bushel weighing eighty-four pounds. Not a heavy load, but the horses were scantily fed. Sometimes an iron pot or kettle was tied on either side on top of the salt-bag.

Ginseng, bears’ grease, and snakeroot were at a later date collected and added to the furs and hides. The horses marched in single file on a road scarce two feet wide; the foremost horse was led by the master of the caravan, and each successive horse was tethered to the pack-saddle of the one in front. Other men or boys watched the packs and urged on laggard horses.

I do not know the exact mode of lading these packhorses. An English gentlewoman named Celia Fiennes rode on horseback on a side-saddle over many portions of England in the year 1695. She thus describes the packhorses she saw in Devon and Cornwall:—

“Thus harvest is bringing in, on horse backe, with sort of crookes of wood like yokes on either side; two or three on a side stands up in which they stow ye corne, and so tie it with cords; but they cannot so equally poise it but ye going of ye horse is like to cast it down sometimes on ye one side sometimes on ye other, for they load them from ye neck to ye taile, and pretty high, and are forced to support it with their hands so to a horse they have two people women as well as men.”

At a later date this packhorse system became that of common carriers. Five hundred horses at a time, after the Revolution, could be seen winding over the mountains. At Lancaster, Harrisburg, Shippensburg, Bedford, Fort Pitt, and other towns were regular packhorse companies. One public carrier at Harris Ferry in 1772 had over two hundred horses and mules. When the road was widened and wagons were introduced, the packhorse drivers considered it an invasion of their rights and fiercely opposed it.