As before stated, Dr. Kennedy was one of the owners of the line of coaches known as the National Road Stage Company. This was popularly known as the Stockton line, called “the old line,” because it was the oldest on the road. Dr. Kennedy managed all the business of this line relating to the transportation of the mails. He was also one of the original members of the Western Express Company, doing business between Cumberland and Wheeling and Pittsburg via the Monongahela river. L. W. Stockton dying in the spring of 1844, in the fall of that year Dr. Kennedy brought his family from Hagerstown, Maryland, to Uniontown, and established his residence in the old Stockton mansion, called “Ben Lomond,” now the home of Mrs. Judge Gilmore. Here Dr. Kennedy resided until the year 1851, when he returned to Hagerstown, where he died on the 12th of June, 1855. He was of medium height and delicate form, of pleasant address, and a gentleman by birth, education, association and aspiration; in religion an Episcopalian, and in politics a Democrat. His widow, a sister of the late Alfred Howell, of Uniontown, survives him. She is enjoying the sunset of a gentle life in Hagerstown, the central figure of a remnant of that polite and refined society which in the palmy days of the National Road distinguished all the old towns along its line.
William H. Stelle was born in New Jersey, and it will be noted that many of the stage owners, agents, and drivers came out from that State. Two of Mr. Stelle’s partners in the stage business, John A. Wirt and Mr. Hutchinson, were likewise Jersey men. It is related that Mr. Stelle and Mr. Acheson were both desirous of selling their interests in the stage lines, the former being an owner in the Good Intent, and the latter in the Stockton line. Mr. Stelle one day approached Mr. Acheson in Wheeling, and told him he would give him five hundred dollars, if he would sell or buy at a price to be mutually named. Mr. Acheson named a price which he would give or take, and Mr. Stelle elected to sell, and promptly paid Mr. Acheson five hundred dollars for acceding to his proposition. Mr. Stelle located in Wheeling about the year 1841, and died at Elm Grove, Ohio county, West Virginia, on the 26th of September, 1854, aged about fifty years. He left a son, William H., and a daughter, Mrs. Susan R. Hamilton, both living in Wheeling.
Agents of the stage lines possessed functions somewhat, but not altogether, like those of railroad conductors. Some agents passed constantly over the road, paying bills, providing horses and equipage, and giving general direction to the running of the lines. Others were stationary, attending to local business. These agents were prominent characters of the road, and popularly esteemed as men of high position. One of the earliest agents was Charles Rettig, who subsequently kept the tavern two and one-half miles east of Washington, and referred to in a chapter on taverns and tavern keepers. John Risly, of Frederic, Md., and William Biddle and James Coudy, of Hancock, were old agents of lines east of Cumberland. Redding Bunting, Edward Lane, Theodore Granger and Charles Danforth were agents of the Old line west of Cumberland, with authority extending to Wheeling. Bunting also kept the National House in Uniontown, and Lane kept the National House in Washington, which were headquarters at those points respectively for their line. Charles Danforth was a leading local agent of the Stockton line at Uniontown. He was a large, fine looking man, with florid complexion, heavy black whiskers, and possessed of popular manners. He was a native of New York State, and died at Bedford, Pa., in 1853. His remains were brought to Uniontown, and interred in the old Methodist cemetery, near Beeson’s old mill. His widow is living in Chicago. Edward Lane was a man of average size, of reddish complexion, energetic in motion, and affable in manner. His tavern in Washington, Pa., was one of the best eating houses on the road. Granger was a large, dark complexioned man, not well liked by the people, but a favorite of Mr. Stockton. After the stage lines were taken from the road, Granger went to Cincinnati, procured employment at a livery stable, and died in that city in indigent circumstances. Jacob Beck was an agent for Weaver’s line, which was on the road a short time, and went with that line to Ohio and Kentucky. He returned from the West, and was a bar-keeper for John N. Dagg, of Washington, Pa., and subsequently, as elsewhere stated, kept tavern at Rony’s Point, Va., and died there. He was an old stage driver, a good one, and esteemed as an honest man. Daniel Brown, mentioned among the old tavern keepers, was an agent of the Good Intent line, and a very competent one. He was a native of New Jersey, and his sad ending has been alluded to in another chapter. William Scott, familiarly called “Billy,” was a well-known agent of the Good Intent line. He had been a driver, and was promoted to an agency on account of his competency and fidelity. He was a master of his business, a man of small stature, dark hair and complexion, and a little given to brusqueness of manner, but on the whole rather a popular agent. He remained an agent of the Good Intent line until business ceased on the road, when he went to Iowa, and became an agent of a stage line in that State. From Iowa he went to Texas, and died at Jefferson in that State. It is said that he was descended from a good family on both sides, who were wealthy, and that he engaged in stage driving from choice, rather than necessity, and his friends were disappointed in his career. Lemuel Cross was an agent of the Old line. He also kept tavern at Piny Grove, as elsewhere stated, and is well remembered. His jurisdiction as agent was mainly on the mountain division of the road, and he thoroughly understood his business, and was familiar with all the haunts, hills, and hollows of the mountains. B. W. Earl was likewise an agent for a while of the Good Intent line. He commenced a driver, was advanced to an agency, and ended a tavern keeper. John Foster, Andrew Cable, William F. Cowdery, Levi Rose and William Terry were agents at Wheeling. The latter had charge in part of Neil, Moore & Company’s line in Ohio.
THE PONY EXPRESS.
In the year 1835 or 6, Amos Kendall, being Postmaster-General, placed on the road a line of couriers, called the “Pony Express.” It was intended to carry light mails with more speed than the general mail was carried by the coaches. The Pony Express was a single horse and a boy rider, with a leather mail pouch thrown over the horse’s back, something after the style of the old-fashioned saddlebags. The route for each horse covered a distance of about six miles on the average. The horse was put to his utmost speed, and the rider carried a tin horn which was vigorously blown when approaching a station. William Moore, Thomas Wooley, subsequently stage drivers, William Meredith, Frank Holly and James Neese were among the riders on the Pony Express east of Cumberland, and Sandy Conner, Pate Sides and Thomas A. Wiley, all three afterward stage drivers, and William Conn rode west of Cumberland. Wiley rode from Uniontown to Washington, Pennsylvania, and also between Washington and Wheeling. He went with the log cabin boys from Uniontown to Baltimore in 1840 as a driver of one of the stage teams employed on that occasion. He is still living, an employe of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company at Camden Station, Baltimore, in the service of which he has been employed since 1852. He was an attendant at the bedside of L. W. Stockton during that gentleman’s last illness. Calvin Morris, a son of William Morris, the old tavern keeper on the hill west of Monroe, and William Downer, a son of the old gentleman who lived at and maintained the big water trough on Laurel Hill, were also riders on the Pony Express. William Morris was one of the contractors for carrying this fast mail, and his house was one of the relays of the line. The relay next west was the old toll house near Searights. Luther Morris, a brother of Calvin, the Pony Express rider, went to Iowa previous to the civil war, and was elected State Treasurer on two or three occasions. John Gilfillan, now, or recently, of Parkersburg, West Virginia, was a rider on the Pony Express between West Alexander and Wheeling. Bryant and Craven, of West Alexander, were among the contractors of the Pony Express line. “The Pony Express” did not remain long on the road, but when it was on, old pike boys say “it kicked up a dust.”
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
Old Taverns and Tavern Keepers from Baltimore to Boonsboro—Pen Picture of an Old Tavern by James G. Blaine—The Maypole—The Hand in Hand—Earlocker’s—Pine Orchard—The Brown Stand—Levi Chambers, the Nullifier—Old Whalen’s Sunfish, Bob Fowler’s Goose and Warfield’s Ham—Poplar Springs—Allen Dorsie, Van McPherson, The Widow Dean, Getzendanner’s, Peter Hagan, Riddlemoser and the McGruder House, Peter Zettle, Emanuel Harr.