History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 16

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed. n 85042884-1
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1538

USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I > Part 16

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couragements and trials, but his single coach, driven by his own hand, in the early years of the century, had given place to a large establishment of horses, carriages and drivers. Mr. Paine's career had not been different. He was a postman in Maine when all the mails were carried on horse-back; a man of few words, prompt, inflexible, and of great energy. He came to be the largest owner and sole manager of coaches east of Portsmouth and government con- tractor for the eastern mails, while the stages on this side of Portsmouth were under the able and exclusive management of Mr. Hale. The proprietors, at this time, were few,-not more than five or six. Besides those named, were Judge Elkins, of Wenham and Salem, and Samnel Larkin, of Portsmouth. Dr. Cleaveland, of Topsfield, bought an interest about 1806. The profitable character of the business could not long be concealed. Tributary lines spring up. Thus a stage connected with the Boston Line set off. from Salem, August 20, 1810, for the Coos County. Three were to be despatched every week. Competi- tion, of course, followed, and, in 1818, opposing lines were absorbed by the original proprietors, and the Eastern State Company was incorporated. It is not too early to write in a historic strain of that once familiar visitant, the Stage Coach. And the books of this corporation, now in possession of the Essex In- stitute, shed ample light upon one of the largest and most successful staging enterprises of New England.

The Eastern Stage Company was chartered by the State of New Hampshire, for a period of twenty years. Its act of incorporation, approved June, 1818, contains three sections, and, singularly enough, by no word except its title, from beginning to end, indi- cates the business to be facilitated thereby. By this act, Samuel Larkin, William Simes, Elisha Whidden and their associates are made a body corporate, the " Eastern Stage Company," by name, are to sue and be sued, have a common seal, make rules and by-laws, and generally to do whatever appertains to bodies corporate, with a capital stock not exceeding one hundred thousand dollars, and shares not more than five hundred in number, and that is all. To one fa- miliar with the guarded language of acts establishing the railroad lines which superseded this great stage route, the absence of all limitations of power is strik- ing. In the early railroad charters every function that could be anticipated is provided for, even to the grade of the road-bed, the curves of the track, and the erection of toll houses and toll-gates, after the analo- gy of the turnpike, where trains were to stop and travellers pay fare.

But these corporators did not abuse their powers, however loosely conferred. Their first meeting, duly notified in the Portsmouth Oracle, the Boston Centinel and the Newburyport Herald, was held at Langmaid's tavern, at Hampton Falls, on Friday, October 9, 1818. They chose Dr. Nehemiah Cleaveland, of Topsfield, Moderator, and Samuel Newman, Clerk, accepted the

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OLD MODES OF TRAVEL.

charter, adopted by-laws and fixed their capital stock at four hundred and twenty-five shares, of one hnn- dred dollars each. The by-laws provide for eight directors and a proprietors' clerk, to be chosen annu- ally by the share-holders, who were to throw a vote for each share owned, not exceeding twenty-the di- rectors to chose a president from their number, ap- point "a principal agent and treasurer" and such "agents, drivers and servants as they may find neces- sary for the due management of the property." They are to close accounts and declare dividends in March and September, and are allowed two dollars per day and expenses for attendance at directors' meetings. The clerk was under oath, and the agent and treasurer under bonds in the sum of ten thou- sand dollars.

Article VI. provides a form of stock certificate, as- signable by indorsement and transfer on the books of the proprietors' clerk.

Article VII. "No person whatever shall be privi- leged to ride in any of the company's carriages with- out paying common stage fare."

They organized thus,-President, Dr. Cleaveland, --- Proprietors' Clerk, Seth Sweetser,-Directors, Josiah Paine, Stephen Howard, Seth Sweetser, Samuel Lark- in, Thomas Haven, Henry Elkins, Ephraim Wildes. Col. Jeremiah Coleman was principal agent and treasurer.

If the charter said nothing of the purposes of this corporation, their own by-laws said abont as little. Nowhere is there a distinct annonncement of the function which they proposed to discharge, nor any description of the extent nor location of their field of operations. This is to be explained, no doubt, by the fact that some of these gentlemen were, before their incorporation, already successful operators and proprietors of stages running over portions of the routes they now proposed to combine, and no words were needed to teach them the duties and liabilities of common carriers of persons.

Thus at the first directors' meeting we seem plunged at once into the dust and whirl of stage-coach travel. The six o'clock stage from Portsmouth (they vote) is to be discontinned. What a chapter might be writ- ten on that early coach, leaving " Wildes' Hotel" at six o'clock each frosty October morning or, better still, on the stage which, all winter long, in storm or by starlight, left Boston for the East at five o'clock in the morning. The hurried breakfast,-the smok- ing corn-cake,-the savory rasher,-the potato raked, glowing hot, ont of its bed of ashes,-the steaming, creamy, aromatic coffee,-the chill, crisp morning, -- lanterns flitting ghostly through the ample stables, -reluctant horse-boys shivering abont the door-yard and wishing themselves in their bunks again,-the resonant crack of the whip,-the clear, sharp click of well-shod hoofs on frozen ground,-the clatter of wheels,-the scramble in the dark for seats,-the long, dull ride with fellow-travellers chilled and

grim, half concealed by twilight and half in mufflers, -that crying baby, who seems to have found vent, at that unlucky hour, for all the pent-up sorrows of its little life,-the gradual warmth of conversation and day-break stealing at last over the coach-load,-the side-lights fading out and good nature once more pre- vailing over cramped legs, sharp elbows and cold feet shuffling among the scanty straw,-all these things must now be given over to the romancer, whose ready pen, ever busy with the past, will not long neglect them.

The late President Quincy gives a well-drawn pic- ture of staging facilities at the close of the last cen- tury. He was then paying court to a New York la- dy, to whom he was privately engaged and after- wards married. Boston had twenty-New York, thirty thousand souls. Two coaches and twelve horses sufficed the travel between the two commercial centres of the continent. The journey was almost as rare an event then as a voyage to Enrope is now, and took about as long. To one bent on Mr. Quiucy's errand the way no doubt seemed doubly tedious. The impatient suitor writes :

" The carriages were old, and the shackling and much of the harness made of ropes. One pair of horses carried ns eighteen miles. We gen- erally reached our resting-place for the night, if no accident intervened, at ten o'clock, and after a frugal supper, went to bed with a notice that we should be called at three, next morning-which generally proved to be half-past two. Then, whether it snowed or rained, the traveller must rise and make ready by the help of a horn lantern and a farthing candle, and proceed on his way, over bad roads,-sometimes with a driver showing no doubtful symptoms of drunkenness, which good- hearted passengers never failed to improve at every stopping-place, by urging upon him the comfort of another glass of toddy. Thus we trav- elled eighteen miles a stage, sometimes obliged to get out and help the coachman lift the cnach out of a quagmire or rut, and arrived at New York after a week's hard travelling, wondering at the ease as well as the expedition with which our journey was effected."

Contrast with this picture an "Old Driver's Remi- niscence," which I give in his own words. The stage that left Newburyport for Boston at 8 o'clock in the morning nsnally took the passengers who had stopped for rest over night, many of whom were strangers to our New England customs. One morning, as the passengers were abont taking their seats, a gentleman asked the driver it he would accommodate him with a seat on the box. "Certainly," says the driver, "please step right up before another occupies it." Our first stop was at Rowley, a seven mile drive, dur- ing which many questions were asked by the stranger and answered according to the driver's knowledge. At this place we took some passengers. While the driver was arranging the baggage, the gentleman on the box asked him to step in and take something to drink. His reply was, "No, I thank yon, sir, I have no occasion for anything," and he mounted the box and drove to Ipswich, where the horses were changed. Here most of the passengers alighted while the shift- ing was taking place. At the same time the stranger came off the box and nrged the driver again to take something to drink. The answer was the same as be-

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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

fore. When the horses were ready, the driver, as was the custom, says-"the stage is ready, gentle- men !" and they take their seats in the coach. Off they start down the crooked hill and over the stone bridge, called by some short-sighted people "Choate's Folly." The next stop was at Wenham, where it was the usual practice to take the fares, it being the Half- Way House to Boston. And here the outside pas- senger says to the driver again, -- "Come, now, you have accomplished one-half of the distance,-you must certainly take a drink with me." "No, I thank you, sir." " What kind of men are you drivers here in this section of the country ? Drivers where I came from will drink at every stopping-place, and it is with much fear that we travel there, but here I see that passengers are perfectly at ease when seated in the coach." "Sir, things have changed here within a few years. You were saying that passengers in your section were uneasy, and often had fears for their safety while riding with your drivers. Here all that is reversed, for in former years the travellers used every precaution to keep the drivers sober, but now the drivers by their example try to keep the passengers sober." "I will never ask you to drink again," says our outside passenger, and he was mum on the drinking question the rest of the way to Bos- ton.

The arrangements for the main route of the Eastern Stage Company, in the winter of 1818, may be sketched thus : A coach left Portsmouth for Boston at 9 A. M., (the same carriage running through), dined at Topsfield, then through Danversport and Salem to Boston, and back the same way next day, dining at Newburyport. A portion of the Newburyport turn- pike was used, and this made Topsfield quite metro- politan, so much so that conventions often met there. In 1808 a great caucus was held at Topsfield to de- nounce the embargo. The County Convention which established Lyceums met there in 1829. The Essex Agricultural Society, formed at Topsfield in 1818, held its annual meetings there in 1820, '22, '23, '24, '25, '37 and '38, but never after.

Of course the records plunge us at once into all sorts of questions of law and policy,-they meet us at the threshold,-they linger to the end ;- questions of tolls on turnpikes and bridges,-conferences ar- ranged with this and that corporation,-new terms made or war declared. Once it is voted that seven hundred dollars be accepted by the Newburyport Turnpike as toll for the year, or the stages go by Old Town Bridge. Complications grow out of the delicate relations of carriers to the public. Too accommodat- ing drivers are induced to act as expressmen on their private account, and attempts are made to hold the company liable for their losses. At the first meeting " Drivers are expressly prohibited from carrying any money or packages, not accounted for to the company's agent ; " and almost at the last a " committee is con- sidering the subject of drivers carrying provisions

from sundry places to Boston for sale, contrary to a vote of the directors." In April, 1819, " the company do not consider themselves accountable for the loss of any baggage, bundles, or packages whatever, com- mitted to the care of the drivers, or otherwise put into their stages." This sweeping announcement, so like what is sometimes read on the backs of railroad tick- ets to-day, was followed up in the same spirit in 1826 and 1829. Now they vote that no driver shall carry anything, except in his pocket, without paying the company's agent, on pain of instant dismissal; and again, the driver must " agree with the agent to ex- clude his private or pocket business from his compen- sation, so the company shall have no participation, direct or indirect, with such business of the drivers, meaning especially Bills of any Bank which may be entrusted to them." " But is this law ?" ask the per- plexed proprietors of Benjamin Merrill, Esq., in 1832, and that eminent counselor finds himself unable to give the desired assurance, but on the contrary, they record a long opinion advising them that their con- tract with drivers will not discharge them from lia- bility, unless notice of it is brought home in each case to the sender of the bill or parcel. And accordingly a notice, drawn by him, is formally served in person on every bank president and cashier on the route, posted in the taverns, and widely advertised in the news- papers.

The record is rich in little incidents which give life to the picture of the times. A driver is fined fifty dollars, the value of a horse killed by his carelessness. Afterwards, for good conduct, the forfeiture is reduced to one month's wages. Owing to the appreciated state of the currency, in 1820, wages were reduced, and fares from Boston to Exeter put at three dollars. Once in awhile a coach is overturned. In one case, if payment of damages is refused by the Salem Turn- pike, the agent is to enter complaint and present the road to the grand jury ; in another, forty dollars are received in liquidation. Again, a director is to settle for damages done by loose horses breaking out of the Salem stable. And again, fines imposed by the post- office department for loss of mails, are to be charged off to the drivers who lost them. Sub-agents were selected for the principal points on the route, placed on salary, and under bonds, and quartered at the best hotels. Blacksmith's shops were established at many points, and extensive stables in Boston and elsewhere, many of them built of brick. Not more than seven shillings were to be paid for shoeing, out of Boston, and but ten cents for caulking or resetting shoes. Dri- vers are forbid taking letters, in violation of laws reg- ulating the United States General Post-office; and fre- quent embassies are dispatched to Washington to con- tract for carrying the mails, or to change the times or terms for delivering them. " Accommodating Stages " are sometimes to take mails at the desire of govern- ment or the postmaster at Boston, but " Mail Stages " are regularly designated, and these make better speed

1xix

OLD MODES OF TRAVEL.

and collect higher fares than the former. Mail-con- tracts are exchanged among different companies, and combinations formed with other lines where compe- tition would be ruinous, and sub-agents are withdrawn from inns which harbor the books of hostile compan- ies. In April, 1823, it is significantly voted that sev- eral sub-agents be discharged, and hereafter it shall be an "indispensible requisite that their moral char- acters be good, and that they have no horses and car- riages to let." In August, 1823, it is voted to " keep a horse and chaise in Boston to accommodate passen- gers, and carry and fetch their baggage." This under the stress of a vigorous opposition, when the exigen- cy called for unusual efforts and the running of ex- tras at "about the same time the opposing stage goes, but always a little before that conveyance and at the same fare." In October, a number of horses and chaises are to be kept on hire at Newburyport. In December, the extras run a little before the opposition coaches are to charge but half fare. The Ann Street stage-house at Boston is leased and furnished, and Col. Wildes placed there as landlord, with an interest in the profits not to exceed one-half. Next summer the horses are to be fed with cut hay and meal. April 19, 1825, the directors met at Gilman's hotel, in New- buryport. They found their enterprise thriving,- established a sinking fund to be swelled by semi-an- nual additions; carried one thousand dollars to that account ; declared a semi-annual dividend of four per cent .; created seventy-five new shares, making up the full five hundred to which they were limited in their charter, and provided for selling the new shares at not less than six dollars premium on a par of one hundred dollars. To the sinking fund was afterward voted the net income of the Ann Street stage-house, and the agent was directed to sell at auction, from time to time, collections of articles left in their offices and coaches " for which no owners can be found." The second dividend for this year was six per cent., and in I826 eleven per cent. was divided.

At the end of ten years the prosperity of the com- pany was established. It had now substantial stables, not connected with public houses, at all the chief points of the route, one of them on Church Street, in the rear of the Lafayette Coffee-house, in Salem ; and it owned hotels, or a controlling interest in hotels, at Boston, Newburyport, Exeter and Dover. It was sending deputations to the New England Stage Asso- ciation, which met at " Holbrook's," in Milk Street, Boston, with a view to bring together, at least once a year, representatives of all the stage companies of this section. In October, 1828, it held its shares at a pre- mium of fifty dollars, and made a semi-annual divi- dend of eight per cent., on one hundred and fifty dol- lars per share. At this time the management of the stage-house in Aun Street passed into the hands of Mr. Leavitt, upon the death of Col. Wildes and Col. Henry Whipple of Salem, became a director in place of Judge Elkins, resigned.

In 1830, the company was incorporated in Massa- chusetts, with a capital of one hundred thousand dol- lars. In 1832 it sent delegates to a Mail Contract Convention, which sat at "Wyatt's" in Dover, to apportion the mail routes for New England, and its bid shows that it was running coaches from Concord to Portsmouth ; Dover, by two routes, to Newbury- port ; Portsmouth, by Exeter, to Newburyport, Salem and Boston; from Salem to Haverhill and Lowell; from Gloucester to Ipswich; and from Lowell, by two routes, to Newburyport.

January, 1833, found them free from debt and their stock higher than ever. They owned near five hun- dred horses. A steamboat had been built on Lake Winnepessaukee and they were running stages from Dover to meet it. At times they ran a daily to Port- land. In October, 1834, the stock stood at $202.13 per share on their books, par being $100. In Janu- ary, 1835, they were paying between eight and nine thousand dollars in tolls for the year, had bought turnpike, bridge and bank stocks, and amongst other real estate the Dalton House, between the West es- tate and Church Street, in Salem, which they sold, retaining a way out from the stables to Church Street. Up to this point their career must be considered as one of unmixed prosperity. The Eastern Railroad was not chartered ; the Boston and Maine was but a spur from the Boston and Lowell, extending as far as Andover. Travel increased apace, -with it the run- ning stock and corps of employés. The directors' record-book is pleasant reading now. They meet at comfortable inns, spend two or three days together, ex- amine lucrative accounts, pass the evening over plethoric way-bills, compute their dividends, make combinations with kindred bodies all over the Eastern States, and New York if need be, and smile at com- petition.

What a text is here for another volume of pen and ink sketches,-these old stage houses which figure in the record,-" Wildes' Hotel " at Portsmouth, "Lang- maid's" and "Wade's" at Hampton Falls, "Gilman's" and the "Wolfe" at Newburyport, the "Sun Tav- ern," the "Lafayette Coffee House " at Salem, " Ann Street Stage House" and "City Tavern " in Boston ! What pleasant memories start up at the recital, as of those ancient hostelries of London, once, as Mr. Dickens says, "the headquarters of celebrated coach- es in the days when coaches performed their journeys in a graver and more solemn manner than they do in these times, but which have now degenerated into little more than the abiding and booking places of country wagons." Of these he says, "there still re- main some half-dozen in the borough, which have preserved their external features unchanged, and which have escaped alike the rage for public im- provement and the encroachments of private specu- lation. Great, rambling, queer, old places they are, with galleries, and passages, and stair-cases wide enough and antiquated enough to furnish materials

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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

for a hundred ghost-stories, supposing we should ever be reduced to the lamentable necessity of in- venting any." Such was our own poet's Wayside Inn,

" Built in the old colonial day, When men lived in a grander way With ampler hospitality- A kind of old Ilobgoblin 1Inll, Now somowhut fallen to decay. With weather-stains upon the wall And stair-ways worn und crazy doors And creaking undl uneven floors, And chimneys huge, and tiled nod tall. A region of repose it seems. By noon and night the panting teanis Stop under the great oaks thut throw Tungles of light and shnde below Across the road the barns display Their lives of stalls, their mows of hay. Through the wide door the breezes blow,- The wattled cocks strut to and fro,- And, half effaced by rain aod shine, The 'Red Horse ' prances on the sign."

One seems to recall the impatience with which the tired traveller looked forward to alighting at these old inns,-to see again the village steeple peering over the hill, its gilded coekerel glistening in the sunset,- to hear the stage-horn once more bidding the post- master expect the evening mail, the landlord serve the welcome meal ; to see honest, little, nervous Jack Mendum, or sturdy, robust, reliable Robert Annable, or good-natured Knight, or the voluble but substan- tial Pike, or some other famous whip, gather up his reins and muster his strength for a final sweep across the tavern yard, the crowning effort of a day of toil to dusty traveller and smoking, jaded team, and then down go the steps and cramped legs are free at last !

Or we seem again to be bowling down that grand old turnpike from Newburyport, with Ackerman or Barnabee or Forbes, rumbling by old Gov. Dummer's Academy at Byfield, telling off the milestones through the Topsfield of fifty years ago, over tbe grassy hills and by the beautiful lake at Lynnfield, on the coach that left "Pearson's" at six every summer morning; or to be whirling by Flax Pond, where, a cen- tury ago, Mr. Goldthwaite asked John Adams to a "genteel dinner" of fish, bacon, peas and incom- parable Madeira, under the " shady trees, with half a dozen as clever fellows as ever were born ;" or to be rattling through the old toll-gate and dashing down Great Pasture hills into Salem town on the topmost seat of the early Boston Mail Stage which, in 1835, was to " breakfast in Salem and dine at Portsmouth," while all the eastern landscape is aglow with the tints of morning and the dews of spring make every- thing in nature sparkle. Or perhaps it is winter.

" Now the increasing storm makes all the plain From field to highway a vast foaming sea ! And sculptors of the air, with curious skill, Hinve graven their inges of stainless white, Pagodas, templea, turrets, columns raised From the exhaustless quarries of tho snow, Afur and near,-the artwork of the wind !"'

and we reach perhaps the little court-house on the

hill at Ipswich, with the bar of Southern Essex, to find that another coach-load of jurisprudence is stuck fast on Rowley Marshes, while judge and counsellor alike have committed trespass quare clausum fregit, in prying their coach out of a snowdrift with the near- est fence rails.

The Hon, Allen W. Dodge writes of the drivers of those days as follows :-

" Io those days of old-fashioned winters, there were many trials and difficulties in getting through the route, but let the storm or the snow blockade be ever so bad, they were always ready to do, to the uttermost, all that men could do to accomplish it. These drivers, too, were tho most obliging and kind-hearted men that ever handled reine, cracked whip or sounded stage-horn.

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History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 16

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed. n 85042884-1 Publication date: 1888 Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1538

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed. n 85042884-1
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1538