By means of the New York canal, peddlers were offering for sale almost every thing enjoyed in the East, “at unprecedented low prices;” and even the meridian mark in the south doorway was of no use any longer, except to regulate a Yankee clock. These Connecticut time-pieces were distributed to nearly every resident landholder in the state at sixty dollars or less, on a year’s credit, in the form of a note with six per cent interest—a clock that cost the peddler two dollars and fifty cents at a New England factory.
Traveling merchants of all kinds flocked into the North-west like squirrels at moving time, and the epidemic struck Pennsylvania so disastrously that the Hon. John Andrew Schultz, at the time governor of that state, is reported as having memorialized the legislature for a law preventing this class of non-residents from perambulating the country, selling articles of no value, and often base counterfeits of things of domestic use, saying that in his neighborhood, “They were palming off counterfeit basswood nutmegs, when every body knows the genuine are made of sassafrac.”
The opening of the canal trade gave interest and amusement to thousands of persons. On the day appointed citizens came long distances to witness the filling of the ditch with water, and the floating of boats as they came along in the pride of the names they bore in honor of favorite citizens living along the line, as “The James Rowe,” “The Dr. Coats,” “The James Emmitt,” “The Sam Campbell,” “The General Worthington,” etc., lettered in gold, all of which was purely complimentary to the individual, and not thought of as an advertising dodge, although it may have suggested afterwards its advantages in this line to members of the Board of Public Works.
The remarkable advancement in the prosperity of the state resulting from the canals exceeded the expectations of their best friends so far that it will probably ever remain as the most notable era in the history of the state. Increased prosperity and rising civilization advanced step by step. From the pack-saddle to the freight-wagon, stage-coach, canal-boat, steamboat and railroad, each served or is serving a good purpose in the elevation of the social, intellectual and moral faculties of American citizens.
Ohio Stage Coach.
From the organization of the state until the introduction of canals and railroads, inland transportation of merchandise and travel was done by means of stage-coaches and freight-wagons. The coaches were stoutly constructed, with leather suspensions for springs, with inside dimensions for nine persons, and somewhat like a Chicago street-car—enough room outside for all who were able to find a place to “hang on.” At the rear each coach was provided with a capacious boot for the accommodation of Saratoga trunks and U. S. mail-bags. The driver had an elevated outside seat in front, and proudly pulled the strings on four spirited horses, which were driven in relays of ten miles, and under favorable circumstances would, in this way, make eight miles an hour, including stops for changes, and times of arrival and departure at the stations were very punctually made on good roads.
Often it became amusing to see how easy a good-hearted driver who loved his team, as many drivers did, could favor it by letting the horses walk up each little ascent, but when in sight of the change would blow the horn and crack the whip, and go in flying, with a mark “behind time” for the next driver and relay to make up. But the “make up” seldom came, and it was nothing unusual in a distance of two hundred miles to find the coaches fifteen to twenty hours behind the schedule time.
There were no improved roads north of Columbus for nearly fifty years, and during the wet season, or thawing of the frozen road-bed, staging became slow and laborious. If not mixed with pleasure, it was the only means of inland intercourse of a public character the inhabitants could look to.
Charles Dickens, on his way from Columbus, Ohio, to Buffalo, N. Y., via Sandusky City, in 1842, accurately describes the roughness of traveling by stage-coach and the jolting of the corduroy roads over bogs and swamps, and says: “At length, between ten and eleven o’clock at night, a few feeble lights appeared in the distance, and Upper Sandusky, an Indian village, where we were to stay till morning, lay before us. They were gone to bed at the log inn, which was the only house of entertainment in the place, but soon answered our knocking, and got some tea for us in a sort of kitchen or common room, tapestried with old newspapers pasted against the wall.