The Cumberland Road

by Archer Butler Hulbert

CHAPTER VI

TAVERNS AND TAVERN LIFE

So distinctive was the character of the Cumberland Road that all which pertained to it was highly characteristic. Next to the race of men which grew up beside its swinging stretches, nothing had a more distinctive tone than the taverns which offered cheer and hospitality to its surging population.

The origin of taverns in the East was very dissimilar from their history in the West. The first taverns in the West were those which did service on the old Braddock’s Road. Unlike the taverns of New England, which were primarily drinking places, sometimes closing at nine in the evening, and not professing, originally, to afford lodging, the tavern in the West arose amid the forest to answer all the needs of travelers. It may be said that every cabin in all the western wilderness was a tavern, where, if there was a lack of “bear and cyder” there was an abundance of dried deer meat and Indian meal and a warm fireplace before which to spread one’s blankets.[69]

The first cabins on the old route from the Potomac to the Ohio were at the Wills Creek settlement (Cumberland) and Gist’s clearing, where Washington stopped on his Le Bœuf trip on the buffalo trace not far from the summit of Laurel Hill. After Braddock’s Road was built, and the first roads were opened between Uniontown and Brownsville, Washington and Wheeling, during the Revolutionary period, a score of taverns sprang up—the first of the kind west of the Allegheny Mountains.

The oldest tavern on Braddock’s Road was Tomlinson’s Tavern near “Little Meadows,” eight miles west of the present village of Frostburg, Maryland.

At this point the lines of Braddock’s Road and the Cumberland Road coincide. On land owned by him along the old military road Jesse Tomlinson erected a tavern. When the Cumberland Road was built, his first tavern was deserted and a new one built near the old site. Another tavern, erected by one Fenniken, stood on both the line of the military road and the Cumberland Road, two miles west of Smithfield (“Big Crossings”) where the two courses were identical.

The first taverns erected upon the road which followed the portage path from Uniontown to Brownsville were Collin’s Log Tavern and Rollin’s Tavern, erected in Uniontown in 1781 and 1783, respectively. These taverns offered primitive forms of hospitality to the growing stream of sojourners over the rough mountain path to the Youghiogheny at Brownsville, where boats could be taken for the growing metropolis of Pittsburg. Another tavern in the West was located on this road ten miles west of Uniontown. As the old century neared its close a score of taverns sprang up on the road from Uniontown to Brownsville and on the road from Brownsville to Wheeling. At least three old taverns are still remembered at West Brownsville. Hill’s stone tavern was erected at Hillsboro in 1794. “Catfish Camp,” James Wilson’s tavern at Washington, the first tavern in that historic town, was built in 1781 and operated eleven years for the benefit of the growing tide of pioneers who chose to embark on the Ohio at Wheeling rather than on the Monongahela at Brownsville. Other taverns at Washington before 1800 were McCormack’s (1788), Sign of the White Goose (1791), Buck Tavern (1796), Sign of the Spread Eagle, and Globe Inn (1797). The Gregg Tavern and the famous old Workman House at Uniontown were both erected in the last years of the old century, 1797-1799. Two miles west of Rankintown, Smith’s Stone Tavern stood on the road to Wheeling, and the Sign of the American Eagle (1796) offered lodging at West Alexander, several years before the old century closed. West of the Ohio River, on Zane’s rough blazed track through the scattered Ohio settlements toward Kentucky, travelers found, as has been elsewhere noted, entertainment at Zane’s clearings, at the fords of the Muskingum and Scioto, and at the little settlement at Cincinnati. Before the quarter of a century elapsed ere the Cumberland Road crossed the Ohio River, a number of taverns were erected on the line of the road which was built over the course of Zane’s Trace. On this first wagon-road west of the Ohio River the earliest taverns were at St. Clairsville and Zanesville. At this latter point the road turned southwest, following Zane’s Trace to Lancaster, Chillicothe, and Maysville, Kentucky. The first tavern on this road was opened at Zanesville during the last year of the old century, McIntire’s Hotel. In the winter of the same year, 1799, Green’s Tavern was built, in which, it is recorded, the Fourth of July celebration in the following year was held. Cordery’s Tavern followed, and David Harvey built a tavern in 1800. The first license for a tavern in St. Clairsville was issued to Jacob Haltz, February 23, 1802. Two other licenses were issued that year to John Thompson and Bazil Israel. Barnes’s Tavern was opened in 1803. William Gibson, Michael Groves, Sterling Johnson, Andrew Moore, and Andrew Marshall kept tavern in the first half decade of this century. As elsewhere noted, there was no earlier road between Zanesville and Columbus which the Cumberland Road followed. West of Zanesville but one tavern was opened in the first decade of this century. Griffith Foos’s tavern at Springfield, which was doing business in 1801, prospered until 1814. The other taverns of the West, at Zanesville, Columbus, Springfield, Richmond (Indiana), and Indianapolis, are of another era and will be mentioned later.

The first taverns of the West were built mostly of logs, though a few, as noted, were of stone. They were ordinary wilderness cabins, rendered professionally hospitable by stress of circumstance. They were more often of but one or two rooms, where, before the fireplace, guests were glad to sleep together upon the puncheon floor. The fare afforded was such as hunters had—game from the surrounding forest and neighboring streams and the product of the little clearing, potatoes, and the common cereals.