The Old Pike / A History of the National Road, with Incidents, Accidents, and Anecdotes Thereon

by Thomas B. Searight

WILLIAM G. BECK.

Among old stage drivers there was one conspicuous above all others, on account of his immense size. It was Montgomery Demmings, known as “Old Mount.” He was six feet and upward in height, and his average weight was four hundred and sixty-five. It was a common remark, in the days of staging on the National Road, that “Old Mount on the front boot of a coach balanced all the trunks that could be put in the rear boot.” As he grew old his weight increased, and at his death, upon authority of his widow, who is still living, was six hundred and fifty pounds. He was born and reared in Allentown, New Jersey, and was sent out on the road in 1836 by James Reeside. His first service was on the “June Bug Line,” a line of brief existence, but full of dash and spirit. “Old Mount” married the widow of Joseph Magee, on May 3, 1839. The clergyman who performed the marriage ceremony was the Rev. John W. Phillips, of Uniontown. Joseph Magee was a blacksmith. His residence and shop were on the roadside, at the west end of Uniontown, near the present toll house. He owned sixteen acres of land on the northeast side of the road, which now forms a part of the Gilmore tract, and his widow, who is also the widow of “Old Mount,” is still living with a third husband, one Thomas, of Wales. Her present home is in Allegheny City, Pa., and she continues to draw a dower interest from the land owned by her first husband, above mentioned. “Old Mount” has a son, Amos Frisbie Demmings, living near his mother, named after Amos Frisbie, who lived in Uniontown many years ago, and carried on the business of stove making. After driving a stage for a number of years, “Old Mount” relinquished his connection with the passenger coaches, and became a driver on the express line. This line carried small packages of light goods, and oysters, known as fast freight, and the people along the road, by way of derision, called it “The Shake Gut Line.” The vehicles of this line were long and strong box-shaped wagons, something like the wagons used for transporting a menagerie. They were drawn by four horses, with relays at established points, driven by check reins or lines, as stage teams were driven. The speed of the express wagons was almost equal to that of the coaches of the stage lines. They made a great noise in their rapid passage over the road, and coming down some of the long hills, could be heard for miles. By the side of the drivers frequently sat one or more way-goers whose necessities impelled them to seek cheap transportation. What proportion of their meagre fares went to the driver, and what to the owners of the line, has never been definitely ascertained. “Old Mount” stuck to the road until its glory began to fade, and in April, 1851, left Uniontown and removed with his family to Brownsville, where he remained about eighteen months. While residing at Brownsville, he was engaged in hauling goods from the steamboat landing at that place to points in western Virginia, along the line of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, then undergoing construction. He owned the team he drove in this employment. From Brownsville he went to South Side Pittsburg, then a separate municipality, called Birmingham. From that point he continued the hauling of goods to western Virginia, and also kept a boarding house. He did not remain in Birmingham longer than two years, probably not that long, and moved from there to McKeesport, where he engaged in the hotel business, having previously leased the Eagle House at that place. He died at McKeesport on March 4, 1855, and was buried there. His death occurred in less than a year after he went to McKeesport, and thus terminated the career of one whose name, half a century ago, was familiarly spoken in every town, tavern and wayside cabin, from Baltimore to Wheeling.

Simeon Houser was a stage driver. When stages left the road Simeon went to tavern keeping. He kept the old house which stood on the lot now occupied by the residence of Dr. Ewing, in Uniontown. It was called the “Buzzard’s Roost,” not by reason of any bad fame of Simeon Houser, for it had that name before he got there. Simeon was a very tall man, and raw boned, with strongly marked face and features. He served a number of years as constable of Uniontown. In 1851 William Bigler and William F. Johnson, rival candidates for governor, visited Uniontown. Bigler took in Greene county on his tour, and coming over to Fayette, struck the National Road at Searight’s, where he met a popular ovation. His friends in that vicinity made a large raft of logs, which they placed on a strong wagon, and with a team of six white horses hauled to Uniontown, the Brownsville brass band seated on the raft and discoursing music, as the procession moved along the road. Bigler, in his early days, had been employed in constructing and running rafts on the Susquehanna river, and his supporters stirred up enthusiasm for him by calling him “The Raftsman of the Susquehanna.” He was elected, not because he was a raftsman, but because the Democrats of that day outnumbered the Whigs. Johnston, his competitor, was a Whig. The present Republican party was not then in existence. Simeon Houser, aforesaid, drove the big white team that hauled the raft, and this is why allusion is made to the incident. It was a grand day for Simeon. Mr. Bigler spoke from the raft in Bierer’s woods, west of Uniontown, to a great multitude, and Dr. Smith Fuller, standing on the same raft, made the speech of welcome. Simeon Houser, like hundreds of old pike boys, yielded up his life in defense of the Stars and Stripes.

HENRY FARWELL.

Henry Farwell, father of the Broadway printer, was an old stage driver. He came to Uniontown in 1839, “the winter of the deep snow.” He came on the Oyster Line from Little Crossings, working his way through the snow, which averaged a depth of four feet on the level, and was three days on the way. The oyster boxes were placed on a sled, drawn by six horses, and the Oyster Line made as good time as the stage lines while the deep snow lasted, and passenger coaches, like oyster boxes, were moved on sleds. Farwell came to Uniontown in obedience to an order of one of the stage lines, to take charge of a team at that place. He drove stage for ten years, one-half of the time in Ohio. When the staging days were over on the old road, Farwell located in Uniontown, and carried on the trade of shoemaking, which he learned before he took to stage driving. He owned the lot on which the National Bank of Fayette county now stands. He has been dead several years, and is well remembered by the older citizens of Uniontown.

Archie McNeil was of the class of merry stage drivers, and enlivened the road with his quaint tricks and humorous jokes. His service as a driver was confined for the most part to the western end of the road, between Brownsville and Wheeling. An unsophisticated youth from the back country, of ungainly form and manners, near the close of the forties, sauntered into Washington, Pennsylvania, to seek employment, with an ambition not uncommon among young men of that period, to become a stage driver. In his wanderings about the town he halted at the National House, then kept by Edward Lane, where he fell in with Archie McNeil, and to him made known the object of his visit. Archie, ever ready to perpetrate a joke, encouraged the aspirations of the young “greenhorn,” and questioned him concerning his experience in driving horses and divers other matters and things pertaining to the work he proposed to engage in. Opposite the National House, on the Maiden street front, there was a long wooden shed, into which empty coaches were run for shelter, the tongues thereof protruding toward the street. McNeil proposed to the supplicating youth that he furnish a practical illustration of his talent as a driver, to which he readily assented, and crossing the street to the shed where the coaches were, he was commanded to climb up on the driver’s seat, which he promptly did. McNeil then fastened a full set of reins used for driving, to the end of the coach tongue, and handed them up to the young man. He next placed in his hands a driver’s whip, and told him to show what he could do. The coach bodies, it will be remembered, were placed on long, wide, and stout leather springs, which caused a gentle rocking when in motion. The young weakling, fully equipped as a driver, swayed himself back and forth, cracked the whip first on one side, and then on the other of the tongue, rocked the coach vehemently, manipulated the reins in various forms and with great pomp, and continued exercising himself in this manner for a considerable time, without evincing the slightest consciousness that he was the victim of a joke. A number of persons, the writer included, witnessed this ludicrous scene, and heartily enjoyed the fun. Among the spectators was James G. Blaine, then a student at Washington college. McNeil was a son-in-law of Jack Bailiss, the old driver before mentioned, and when stage lines were withdrawn from the road he moved with his family to Iowa, and settled in Oskaloosa.

Watty Noble might well be esteemed the Nestor of stage drivers. He commenced his career as a driver on the Bedford and Chambersburg pike. His route on that road was between Reamer’s and the Juniata Crossings, via Lilly’s and Ray’s Hills, a distance of ten miles, and his average time between the points named, was one hour and thirty minutes. He drove one team on this route for a period of ten years without losing or exchanging a horse. He subsequently drove for five consecutive years on the National Road, between Brownsville and Hillsboro, and, as the old pike boys were accustomed to say, “leveled the road.” When he “got the start,” no other driver could pass him, unless in case of accident. He was not a showy reinsman, but noted for keeping his team well and long together. In personal habits he was quiet and steady, and no man ever impeached his honesty or fidelity. Jim Burr, the famous old driver elsewhere mentioned, was a son-in-law of Watty Noble.

Charley Bostick, a stage driver who lived in Uniontown, gained a somewhat unsavory reputation as one of the principals in a social scandal, involving the name of a prominent old Uniontown merchant. The incident produced great agitation in Uniontown society at the time, and its disagreeable details are stored away in the memories of all the older citizens of that place, but it is doubtful if three-fourths of its present inhabitants ever heard of it. On the night of the occurrence it fell to Bostick’s lot in the rounds of his regular service as a driver, to take a coach from Uniontown to Farmington, but he was so prominently and closely identified with the event referred to that he deemed it expedient to employ a substitute, which he procured in the person of “Dumb Ike,” competent for the service and the occasion, and ever ready for such exigencies.