The old stage route between Boston and New York, before John Quincy Adams was President, passed through Worcester, Springfield, Hartford, and Norwalk. Passengers paid ten dollars for a seat and were fifty- six hours or more on the road. This gave way about 1825 to the steamboat line via Providence, which for five dollars carried passengers from Boston to New York in twenty-four hours.
Stage books for the Providence line were kept in Boston at offices in different parts of the city, where those wishing to go the next day registered their names. These names were collected and brought to the central stage office in the Marlboro Hotel at ten o'clock each night, where they were arranged into stage-loads, each made up from those residing in the same part of the city. At four o'clock in the morning a man started from the stage office in a chaise to go about and wake up the passengers, that the stage need not be kept waiting. The large brass door knockers were vigorously plied, and sometimes quite a commotion was caused by "waking up the wrong passenger."
In due time the stage made its appearance, with its four spirited horses, and the baggage was put on. Trunks, which were diminutive in size compared with those now used, were put on the rack behind, securely strapped; valises and packages were consigned to the depths of a receptacle beneath the driver's seat, and bandboxes were put on the top. The back seat was generally given to ladies and elderly gentlemen, while young men usually sought a seat on top of the stage, by the side of the driver. When the passengers had been "picked up," the stages returned to the stage office, where they way-bills were perfected and handed to the drivers. As the Old South clock was striking five, whips were cracked, and the coaches started at the rate of ten miles an hour, stopping for breakfast at Timothy Gay's tavern in Dedham, where many of the passengers visited the bar to imbibe Holland gin and sugar-house molasses—a popular morning beverage.
Breakfast over, away the stages went over the good turnpike road at a rapid pace. Those who were fellow passengers, even if strangers to one another, gradually entered into conversation, and generally some one of them was able to impart information concerning the route. Occasionally the stage would rattle into a village, the driver giving warning blasts upon his long tin horn that he claimed the right of way, and then dash up to a wayside inn, before which would be in waiting a fresh team of horses to take the place of those which had drawn the coach from the previous stopping-place. Time was always afforded those passengers who desired to partake of libations at the tavern bar, and old travelers used to see that their luggage was safe.
Providence was in due time reached, and the procession of stages whirled along the narrow street beneath the bluff, swaying heavily with the irregularities of the road. The steamboats lay at India Point, just below the town, where immense quantities of wood were piled up, for each boat consumed between thirty and forty cords on a trip through Long Island Sound.
The stages used to reach India Point about half-past eleven o'clock, and the boat would start for New York precisely at twelve. There were no state-rooms, the passengers occupying berths, and at the dinner and supper the captain of the boat occupied the head of the table, having seated near him any distinguished passengers. Occasionally there was an opposition line with sharp rivalries, and at one time a then rising New Yorker, Cornelius Vanderbilt, carried passengers from New York to Boston for one dollar.
On arriving at New York, the passengers had to look out for their luggage, and either engage hacks or hand-cartmen, who for twenty- five cents would carry a trunk to any part of the city. The city then, be it remembered, did not reach up Manhattan Island above the vicinity of Broome or Spring Streets, although there were beyond that the villages of Greenwich, Bloomingdale, Yorkville, and Harlem. The City Hotel, on Broadway, just above Trinity Churchyard, Bunker's Hotel, lower down, and the Washington Hotel, which occupied the site of the Stewart building above the Park, were the principal public houses. The Boston stages stopped at Hall's North American Hotel, at the corner of Bayard Street and the Bowery, and there were many boarding-houses where transient guests were accommodated.
From New York, travelers southward went by steamboat to Elizabethport, where they were transferred to stages, and crossed New Jersey to Bordentown on the Delaware River, where a steamer was in waiting to transport them to Philadelphia. This was a long and fatiguing day's journey, and a majority of travelers remained over a day in Philadelphia, where the hotels were excellent and there were many objects of attraction.
Leaving Philadelphia in a steamboat, passengers went down the Delaware to New Castle, whence they crossed in stages to Frenchtown on the Elk River, and there re-embarked on steamers, which took them down and around to Baltimore, another long and fatiguing day's trip. At each change from boat to stage, or from stage to boat, passengers had to see that their luggage was transferred, and it was generally necessary to give a quarter to the porter. Baggage checks and the checking of baggage were then unknown.
Between Baltimore and Washington there were opposition lines of stages and a good turnpike road. There had been, when I first went over the road, some daring robberies by "road agents," and the mail coaches were protected by a guard, who occupied a perch on the roof over the boot and was armed with a blunderbuss. This weapon had a funnel-shaped barrel, a flint lock, took about half a pint of buckshot for a charge, and was capable of destroying a whole band of robbers at once. In due time the flat, wide dome of the Capitol, which resembled an inverted wash-bowl, was visible, and the stage was soon floundering through the broad expanse of mud or of dust known as Pennsylvania Avenue, taking passengers to the doors of the hotels or boarding-houses which they had previously indicated.