Part 16 (1/2)
Until turnpike days all small carriages were two-wheeled; chaises, chairs, and sulkies were those generally used. The chaise and harness used by Jonathan Trumbull--”Brother Jonathan”--are here shown. With regard to private conveyances, whether coaches, chaises, or chairs, the colonies kept close step from earliest days with the mother-countries.
Randolph noted with envy the Boston coaches of the seventeenth century.
Parson Thatcher was accused and reprehended in 1675 for making visits with a coach and four. Coaches were taxed both in England and America; so we know exactly how plentiful they were. There were as many in Ma.s.sachusetts in 1750 in proportion to the number of inhabitants as there were in England in 1830. Judge Sewall's diary often refers to private coaches; and one of the most amusing scenes it depicts is his continued and ingenious argument when wooing Madam Winthrop for his third wife, when she stipulated that he should keep a coach, and his frugal mind disposed him not to do it.
Coach-building prospered in the colonies; Lucas and Paddock in Boston, Ross in New York, made beautiful and rich coaches. Materials were ample and varied in the New World for carriage-building; horseflesh--not over-choice, to be sure--became over-plentiful; it was said that no man ever walked in America save a vagabond or a fool. A coach made for Madam Angelica Campbell of Schenectady, New York, by coach-builder Ross, in 1790, is here shown. It is now owned by Mr. John D. Campbell of Rotterdam, New York.
Sleighs were common in New York a half-century before they were in Boston. Madam Knights noted the fast racing in sleighs in New York when she was there in 1704.
One other curious conveyance of colonial days should be spoken of,--a sedan-chair. This was a strong covered chair fastened on two bars with handles like a litter, and might be carried by two or four persons. When sedan-chairs were so much used in England, they were sure to be somewhat used in cities in America. One was presented to Governor Winthrop as early as 1646, portion of a capture from a Spanish galleon. Judge Sewall wrote in 1706, ”Five Indians carried Mr. Bromfield in a chair.” This was in the country, down on Cape Cod, and doubtless four Indians carried him while one rested. As late as 1789 Eliza Quincy saw Dr. Franklin riding in a sedan-chair in Philadelphia.
The establishment and building of roads, bridges, and opening of inns show that mutual interest which marks civilization, and separates us from the lonely, selfish life of a savage. Soon inns were found everywhere in the Northern colonies. In New England, New York, and Pennsylvania an inn was called an ordinary, a victualling, a cook-shop, or a tavern before we had our modern word hotel.
Board was not very high at early inns; the prices were regulated by the different towns. In 1633 the Salem innkeeper could only have sixpence for a meal. This was at the famous Anchor Tavern, which was kept as a hostelry for nearly two centuries. At the s.h.i.+p Tavern, board, lodging, wine at dinner, and beer between meals cost three s.h.i.+llings a day. Great care was taken by the magistrates to choose responsible men and women to keep taverns, and they would not permit too many taverns in one town. At first the tavern-keeper could not sell sack (which was sherry), nor stronger intoxicating liquor to travellers, but he could sell beer, provided it was good, for a penny a quart. Nor could he sell cakes or buns except at a wedding or funeral. He could not allow games to be played, nor singing or dancing to take place.
We know from Shakespeare's plays that the different rooms in English inns had names. This was also the custom in New England. The Star Chamber, Rose and Sun Chamber, Blue Chamber, Jerusalem Chamber, were some of them. Many of the taverns of Revolutionary days and some of colonial times are still standing. A few have even been taverns since first built; others have served many other uses. A well-preserved old house, built in 1690 in Sudbury, Ma.s.sachusetts, was originally known as the Red Horse Tavern, but has acquired greater fame as the Wayside Inn of Longfellow's Tales. Its tap-room with raftered ceiling and cage-like bar with swinging gate is a picturesque room, and is one of the few old tap-rooms left unaltered in New England.
Every inn had a name, usually painted on its swinging sign-board, with some significant emblem. These names were simply repet.i.tions of old English tavern-signs until Revolutionary days, when patriotic landlords eagerly invented and adopted names significant of the new nation. The scarlet coat of King George became the blue and buff of George Was.h.i.+ngton; and the eagle of the United States took the place of the British lion.
The sign-board was an interesting survival of feudal times, and with its old-time carved and forged companions, such as vanes and weatherc.o.c.ks, doorknockers and figureheads, formed a picturesque element of decoration and symbolism. Many chapters might be written on historic, commemorative, emblematic, heraldic, biblical, humorous, or significant signs, nearly all of which have vanished from public gaze, as has disappeared also the general incapacity to read, which made pictorial devices a necessity. Gilders, painter-stainers, smiths, and joiners all helped to make the tavern-sign a thing of varied workmans.h.i.+p if not of art. It is said that Philadelphia excelled in the quant.i.ty and quality of her sign-boards. With fair roads for colonial days, the best and amplest system of transportation, and the splendid Conestoga wagons, great inns multiplied throughout Pennsylvania. In Baltimore both taverns and signs were many and varied, from the Three Loggerheads to the Indian Queen with its ”two hundred guest-rooms with a bell in every room,” and the Fountain Inn built around a shady court, with galleries on every story, like the Tabard Inn at Southwark.
The swinging sign-board of John Nash's Tavern at Amherst, Ma.s.sachusetts, is here reproduced from the _History of Amherst_. It is a good type of the ordinary sign-board which was found hanging in front of every tavern a century ago.
In Virginia and the Carolinas taverns were not so plentiful nor so necessary; for a traveller might ride from Maryland to Georgia, and be sure of a welcome at every private house on the way. Some planters, eager for company and news, stationed negroes at the gate to invite pa.s.sers-by on the post-road to come into the house and be entertained.
Berkeley, in his _History of Virginia_, wrote:--
”The inhabitants are very courteous to travellers, who need no other recommendation than being human creatures. A stranger has no more to do but to inquire upon the road where any gentleman or good housekeeper lives, and then he may depend upon being received with hospitality. This good-nature is so general among their people, that the gentry, when they go abroad, order their princ.i.p.al servants to entertain all visitors with everything the plantation affords; and the poor planters who have but one bed, will often sit up, or lie upon a form or couch all night, to make room for a weary traveller to repose himself after his journey.”
So universal was this custom of free entertainment that it was a law in Virginia that unless there had been a distinct agreement to pay for board and shelter, no pay could be claimed from any guest, no matter how long he remained. In the few taverns that existed prices were low, about a s.h.i.+lling a dinner; and it was ordered that the meal must be wholesome and good.
The governor of New Netherlands at first entertained all visitors to New Amsterdam at his house in the fort. But as commerce increased he found this hospitality burdensome, and a Harberg or tavern was built; it was later used as a city hall.
In England throughout the seventeenth century, and indeed much later, traversing the great cities by night was a matter of some danger. The streets were ill-lighted, were full of holes and mud and filth, and were infested with thieves. Worse still, groups of drunken and dissipated young men of wealth, calling themselves Mohocks, Scourers, and other names, roamed the dark streets armed with swords and bludgeons, a.s.saulting, tormenting, and injuring every one whom they met, who had the ill fortune to be abroad at night.
There was nothing of that sort known in American cities; there was little noise or roistering, no highway robbery, comparatively little petty stealing. The streets were ill-paved and dirty, but not foul with the acc.u.mulated dirt of centuries as in London. The streets in nearly all cities were unlighted. In 1697 New Yorkers were ordered to have a lantern and candle hung out on a pole from every seventh house. And as the watchman walked around he called out, ”Lanthorn, and a whole candell-light. Hang out your lights.” The watchman was called a rattle-watch, and carried a long staff and a lantern and a large rattle or klopper, which he struck to frighten away thieves. And all night long he called out each hour, and told the weather. For instance, he called out, ”Past midnight, and all's well”; ”One o'clock and fair winds,” or ”Five o'clock and cloudy skies.” Thus one could lie safe in bed and if he chanced to waken could know that the friendly rattle-watch was near at hand, and what was the weather and the time of night. In 1658 New York had in all ten watchmen, who were like our modern police; to-day it has many thousands.
In New England the constables and watch were all carefully appointed by law. They carried black staves six feet long, tipped with bra.s.s, and hence were called tipstaves. The night watch was called a bell-man. He looked out for fire and thieves and other disorders, and called the time of the night, and the weather. The pay was small, often but a s.h.i.+lling a night, and occasionally a ”coat of kersey.” In large towns, as Boston and Salem, thirteen ”sober, honest men and householders” were the night watch. The highest in the community, even the magistrates, took their turn at the watch, and were ordered to walk two together, a young man with ”one of the soberer sort.”
CHAPTER XV
SUNDAY IN THE COLONIES
The first building used as a church at the Plymouth colony was the fort, and to it the Pilgrim fathers and mothers and children walked on Sunday reverently and gravely, three in a row, the men fully armed with swords and guns, till they built a meeting-house in 1648. In other New England settlements, the first services were held in tents, under trees, or under any shelter. The settler who had a roomy house often had also the meeting. The first Boston meeting-house had mud walls, a thatched roof, and earthen floor. It was used till 1640, and some very thrilling and inspiring scenes were enacted within its humble walls. Usually the earliest meeting-houses were log houses, with clay-filled c.h.i.n.ks, and roofs thatched with reeds and long gra.s.s, like the dwelling-houses. At Salem is still preserved one of the early churches. The second and more dignified form of New England meeting-house was usually a square wooden building with a truncated pyramidal roof, surmounted often with a belfry, which served as a lookout station and held a bell, from which the bell-rope hung down to the floor in the centre of the church aisle.
The old church at Hingham, Ma.s.sachusetts, still standing and still used, is a good specimen of this shape. It was built in 1681, and is known as the ”Old s.h.i.+p,” and is a comely and dignified building. As more elegant and costly dwelling-houses were built, so were better meeting-houses; and the third form with lofty wooden steeple at one end, in the style of architecture invented by Sir Christopher Wren, after the great fire of London, multiplied and increased until every town was graced with an example. In all these the main body of the edifice remained as bare, prosaic, and undecorated as were the preceding churches, while all the ambition of both builders and congregation spent itself in the steeple.
These were so varied and at times so beautiful that a chapter might be written on New England steeples. The Old South Church of Boston is a good example of this school of ecclesiastical architecture, and is a well-known historic building as well.
The earliest meeting-houses had oiled paper in the windows, and when gla.s.s came it was not set with putty, but was nailed in. The windows had what were termed ”heavy current side-shutters.” The outside of the meeting-house was not ”colored,” or ”stained” as it was then termed, but was left to turn gray and weather-stained, and sometimes moss-covered with the dampness of the great shadowing hemlock and fir trees which were usually planted around New England churches. The first meeting-houses were often decorated in a very singular and grotesque manner. Rewards were paid by all the early towns for killing wolves; and any person who killed a wolf brought the head to the meeting-house and nailed it to the outer wall; the fierce grinning heads and splashes of blood made a grim and horrible decoration. All kinds of notices were also nailed to the meeting-house door where all of the congregation might readily see them,--notices of town-meetings, of sales of cattle or farms, lists of town-officers, prohibitions from selling guns to the Indians, notices of intended marriages, vendues, etc. It was the only meeting-place, the only method of advertis.e.m.e.nt. In front of the church was usually a row of stepping-stones or horse-blocks, for nearly all came on horseback; and often on the meeting-house green stood the stocks, pillory, and whipping-post.
A verse from an old-fas.h.i.+oned hymn reads thus: