History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 17

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 17

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"They were great favorites with all the boys who rode with then. Many of us who were then at Exeter Academy came home at the end of the term by the Eaetern Stage route, and a lively time we used to have of it. Quite a number of stage couches were always sent on to take us. When they arrived what a scramble ensued to see who should ride with Pike, who with Annable, or Knight, or Forbes, or some other good- natured driver, experienced in stages and careful of their young charges as if they were all destined to be governors, or judges, or presidents. We need to consider it the seat of honor on the outside with the driver, there to listen to his stories and to eojoy his company. Many a scrap of practical wisdom did we youngsters thus pick up to turn to good account on the great road of life.

"And then too what a gathering at the old Wolfe Tavern in Newbury- port, when the noon stage-coaches arrived from Boston ! The sidewalk was often crowded with anxione hoys, and men too, to catch a sight of distinguished passengers and the last fashions, and to hear the latest news. Why, it was as good as a daily paper, or a telegraphic dispatch- better indeed, for the living men, actors sometimes in the scenes de- scribed, were there to tell what had happened."

I find related in a contribution to the Salem Gazette, one of those little incidents that sparkle like jewels in the sand :

"Once when a mere child it was necessary for me to go from Suco to a town osar Boston. This was quite an undertaking in those days, as ono was obliged to pass the night in Portsmouth. Being withont a protector, my mother confided me to the care of one of those old, faithful drivers. It was evening when we renched Portsmouth and very cold. Everything was new and etrange to me. How carefully was I taken by the band and led up that long flight of stairs to the excellent accommodations which awaited me ! How well I remember the kind, smiling face of Robinson, as next morning, whip in hand, he appeared at the parlor door and inquired for the 'little girl' who was to go with him ! His hearty ' good morning' and 'all ready, miss,' as I presented myself, are still sounding in my ears. While changing horses at Newburyport I was comfortably seated before a warm fire in the sitting-room. Indeed, I do not know that I could have been more comfortably attended to had I been the daughter of the President. I was the daughter of a poor widow instead, and an utter stranger to the man whose memory I have ever cherished as one of the pleasnot recollections of my childhood."

What stalwart men this sturdy, out-door life pro- duced ! Moses Head, of Portsmouth, drove into that town, from Boston, the stage that brought news of peace in 1815, with a white flag fastened to the box. News of the battle of New Orleans came at the same time. That evening there was a procession in honor of these events. Head, who was then Ensign of the artillery company, and resembled General Jackson in appearance and stature, arrayed himself in a military suit and chapeau, and personated the hero of New Orleans in the ranks of the procession to great accept- ance. He was born among the granite hills of New Hampshire, and died at the age of seventy-two, after a sickness of a day, the only sickness of his life.

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OLD MODES OF TRAVEL.

Another old driver sends me his recollections of "life on the road," and I insert them here.

"I began to drive on an opposition line in 1823, and after about nine months I had an application from Col. Coleman to come over to the old company. As I thought it a more permanent job, I came over to drive 'Extra.' I had not been long at it before the travel increased very much, so the directors ordered oue hundred more horses to be bought, and carriages in proportion, to accommodate the public. The business came on so hard that I had all I bargained for. I followed the mail twelve days in succession, starting from Boston at 2 o'clock in the morn- ing, breakfasting in Newburyport, dinner at Portsmouth and back again to supper in Salem, getting into Boston anywhere from nine to eleven o'clock, so there was not much sleep or rest for me. The twelfth day, when I drove into the yard at Salem, Col. Coleman was there, and said he, 'young man, you had better stop here and get a little rest and take your team in the morning at four o'clock.' So Mr. Rand took the team to Boston and back.

"The worst of it was, I had the same horses out and back every day. It was hard keeping up with the mail, as their horses rested one or two days in the week, and they were like wild ones. Only hold on and they would go as fast as any one wished to ride. As a general thing we made good time. I have been through Charlestown Square on time, for three weeks, not varying five minutes by the clock, although we had some trying storms.

"I was compelled to stop at Hamilton one night, after beating with the storm from seven in the morning till ten at night, with a single sleigh and two horses, and so, completely used up, we slept well. It cleared np about three o'clock, so that uncle Robert Annable, with the morning coach, came along pretty well, and passed us while we were asleep, and took off his bells so as not to aweke us, and then he was very joyous to think he had got ahead. It was something, to be sure, that never happened before nor since.

"On the whole it was a very pleasant life, for every one on the road was very hospitable to us. I never got stuck in the mud nor snow, when all the people on the road were not willing, night or day, to lend a hand. So we felt that we were among friends, and that was comforting to us. The wealthy Southerners, who used to come east in summer, would al- most always want us to keep on and drive them to Providence or New York, for they did not get so good accommodations at the South. And as we refused the refreshments they offered us at every stopping place, we were pretty sure to get a handsome present before they left, which was far more satisfactory. It was a very pleasant business, and we had our choice of company ontside, and that was worth a great deal.

" When it was decided by the Legislature that there should be a Rail- road, you may depend upon it there were heavy hearts. For we had spent so much time in staging we did not know what we should do. But all who wished had something to do. The corporation employed a large number of the drivers as conductors, baggage-masters and brake- men. I withdrew and took up the express business, and followed that until 1860. So I had served the public from '23 to '60."

These drivers, so freely trusted with life and treas- ure, with the care of helpless infancy and age, de- served well of the community they served, and are held in kindly remembrance. They knew of old the wants and habits of the travelling public, and railroad corporations were glad to secure agents from among their numbers.

Has anybody forgotten rare James Potter, of the Salem and Boston Line,-active, clear-headed, cour- teous and prompt, who for forty years drove with such care and skill to Boston and back that, it was said, he was as well known and as much respected by Salem people as Dr. Bentley ? Here he comes up the street from the old "Sun Tavern " with the seven o'clock morning coach, his dapple-greys groomed to a hair and well in hand,-the model driver, trusted by the banks, by the old sea-kings, by everybody with uncounted treasure,-the splendid reinsman, chosen in August, 1824, to bring the beloved Lafayette in safety into Salem !

Has anybody forgotten the scene in College yard at Cambridge, when Peter Ray arrived, at the end of the term, with his coach and six sorrels, to take home what might well be styled the "flower of Essex!" How he displayed, before admiring eyes, his mastery of curves and functions, by turning six-in-hand, at a cheerful trot, in the little corner between Holworthy and Stoughton, and how the Essex County boys, cheered by their fellows and eager for the long vacation, whirled out of college gate and down the historic roads by Washington's Elm, and Letchmere's Point, and Bunker Hill, to their welcome home! Handsome Peter, they called him-a favorite with children and ladies-for with him, on the introduction of the fam- ous steel-spring coaches, they first knew what it was to ride comfortably outside, with an intelligent and entertaining driver, whose tongue kept pace with his team, and whose castles in the air often reached stu- . pendous proportions before half the distance between Lynn and Salem had been accomplished !

And here comes Page! witty, large-hearted, strong- handed Woodbury Page, his two hays on the jump, swinging round the corner from Beverly, sweeping round the Common to the old stable in Union Street, shifting horses, and then round the big elm and off again in a twinkling, with those very four milk-whites, with which he drove Henry Clay, in October, 1833, from Senator Silsbee's door-step in Washington Square to the Tremont House in sixty minutes !

And what shall be said of the polished and agree- able Jacob Winchester, favorite driver on wedding journeys and pleasure parties, who carried bags of specie to and from New York, when our merchants wanted a messenger who would neither play the rogue with fonds nor suffer anybody to take them from him; what of the popular driver and consummate reinsman Lot Peach, who would get to Boston about as soon with crows' meat as moderate drivers did with choice teams of horses ;- what of Albert Knight, always on good terms with passengers and steeds ;- what of stout, little, talkative Major Shaw, who was off at three with the sorrels and the last coach up, rather than not go with whom ladies would often lose the morning stages and some hours of shopping and visiting in Boston ; -what of stalwart, kind-hearted, deep-voiced Adrian Low, whose cheerful life ended in mystery and an un- known grave ;- what, indeed, of the hundred and fifty good, sound, trusty men who, from first to last, drove stages over these routes in the employ of regular or opposition lines, whole families of them, like the four . Potters, the three Annables, the three Akermans, the brothers Canney, Conant, Drake, Knight, Marshall, May, Manning, Patch, Robinson, Shaw, Tenney, Toz- zer, Winchester, seeming to have been born on wheels, or descended from the hippocentaurs of ancient fable, -men who combined energy and good nature in a ratio not likely to be developed by any vocation now in vogne,-men who cracked their joke as they swung their whip,-men who knew what it is vouchsafed us

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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

to know of that fascinating uncertainty, the horse, and supplemented this with a wonderfully shrewd in- sight into the nature of their fellow-creatures ! 1

And what shall be said of those elegant coaches built at the Union Street shop for the Salem and Bos- ton Stage Company,-

" Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linch-pin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue,"

the first in the country mounted on steel springs, and provided behind with a "dicky " and trunk-rack after the English pattern ! And what of those noble teams of blacks and hays and buckskins and roans and chestnuts, clean-limbed and strong, that moved out, with coats like velvet, every afternoon when dinner was over, before the City Tavern in Brattle Street, the Ann Street Stage House or the Marlboro Hotel, sweep- ing the ground with flowing tails, too often, it must be added, tails of fiction, in which the cunning hand of Lancaster had eked out the unsuccessful efforts of na- ture! What of those scores of coach-builders and blacksmiths, and harness-makers, who plied the awl, and bent the tire, and drove the plane, with such pride and spirit in these old days, when Harding shod, and Daniel Manning ran with orders from the Sun Tavern to the yards in Union Street, and William H. Foster balanced accounts and made up dividends, and Mackie, over his saddlery, fought out the battle of Waterloo, in which he took a part, and that shy boy, since known to fame as Nathaniel Hawthorne, was keeping stage-books in his uncle Manning's office! What of that ancient negro hostler at Breed's Hotel, in Lynn, with his little competency accumulated from the trifles dropped into his hat for many a year by kindly travellers as the stage rolled off, who fell on his knees on the stable floor and wept great tears when the steam whistle sounded at last and he felt indeed that he must say with his Shakesperean prototype, " Farewell ! Othello's occupation's gone!" Too many of this company of worthies are now

" Where rolling wheels are heard no more And horses' feet ne'er come."

Twenty-one surviving drivers of the Eastern Stage Company honored themselves and the memory of the agent under whom they served, by attending, in April, 1866, the funeral of Colonel Coleman, the man to

whose vigorous and intelligent oversight that enter- prise had almost owed its success for a quarter of a century. During the same years the Salem and Bos- ton Company was under the courteous management of William Manning, another model stage agent, known among the "whips " as "Sir William," and to have been trusted by whom they thought enough for an epitaph.

We come now to the closing scene of the Eastern Stage Company. In July, 1835, the ominous words " Rail Road " appear for the first time in their volumi- nous records. Let us see what these words meant.

Passengers had been transported in carriages drawn by steam over the Darlington and Stockton Railway in England, for ten years. The engines employed were stationary, and inventive genius had been as busy with the problem of travelling in steam carriages over turnpikes, as with the twin problem, which has since completely overshadowed the other, of locomo- tive machinery for railways. During the first ten years of the century, indeed, the steam engine, both stationary and locomotive, began to be applied to transportation. And long before this, the simple tram- way of wood, stone or iron, operated by horse-power, had been employed for the conveyance of passengers and freight. As early as the settlement of New Eng- land, wooden rails were in use between the coal mines of Newcastle and the river, and these were so far per- fected that in 1765 they had been introduced exten- sively in England, and enabled a horse to drag from two to three tons on an easy grade. Plates and wheels of iron had still further and very largely increased the draft-capacity of the horse. On the Darlington and Stockton road, trains had been provided with stable- cars, in which the horses employed for motive power on level and up grades, rested and fed in quiet while the momentum of the train carried it down hill.

The use of the Railway was no less familiar on this side the ocean. Our former townsman, Wm. Gray, after leaving Salem, in 1809, owned a wharf in Boston on which trucks were moved by hand over a plank- walk, provided on its edges with round iron bars, on which ran grooved wheels, thus forming a freight Railway from the ship in her dock to the warehouses on Lynn (now Commercial) Street. In grading Bea- con Hill for the erection of the State House, late in the last century, an inclined Railway was used, on which the gravity of the loaded cars, in their descent, served to bring up on a parallel track those which had been emptied, and the same expedient, also in use in England, was employed at Quincy when the blue sienite of the quarries began to supplant, as a build- ing material, the familiar gray granite of our hills, ledges and bowlders. The first Railroad charter granted by Massachusetts, authorized, March 4, 1826, the building of a Railway from these quarries to Ne- ponset River, and the first freight transported over it was the corner-stone of Bunker Hill Monument. It was operated by horse-power.

! It was a happy thonght which brought two hundred and fifty "old stagers" of the Connecticut Valley,-Drivers, Proprietors and Agents,- together at Springfield for a merry Christmas in 1859. Hon. Ginery Twitchell aud James Parker, Esq., of the Western Railroad, seem to have been promoters of this "guthering of the whips," and two days wore given up to their entertainment in Springfield during which the hospi- tulities of larder and stable were tested to the ntmost. At a public diu- nor on the occasion were produced those spirited lines of Edwin Bynner, now fumiliar to newspaper readers, beginning,

" Oli ! the days are gone when the merry horn Awakened the echoes of smiling morn As, breaking the slumber of village street, The forming leaders' galloping feet Told of the rattling, swift approach Of the well-appointed old stage coach !"

OLD MODES OF TRAVEL.

1xxiii

That unrest which prognosticates some great step in iuventive art was stirring the public mind and bringing to light every clumsy expedient of cogs and ropes and wheels for mounting grades, and for moving by steam on common roads, as well as on rails, when, in 1829, the Stephensons, father and son, produced the Locomotive "Rocket," and placed it upon the Liverpool and Manchester road. Its success was at once complete and transportation by horse-power was doomed from that hour. In America we were not behindhand in applying steam to propulsion. It was already in use since 1807 on our rivers, canals and lakes. Indeed, the Hon. Nathan Reed, of Salem and Danvers, formerly a member of Congress from this district, had made a paddle-wheel steamboat in 1789, in which he navigated the river from his iron-works to Essex Bridge, taking Governor Hancock, Dr. Prince, Dr. Holyoke and Nathan Dane as passengers with him. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was begun in 1827; other routes from New York and Philadel- phia soon after. In 1829-30-31 Massachusetts char- tered Railroads from Boston to Lowell, to Providence and to Worcester.

In 1833, the Boston and Lowell road was extended to Andover and Wilmington, and to Haverhill in 1835. This was the first incursion of the iron mou- ster into Essex, but he rapidly made his way over the county, enfolding in his fatal coils the poor struggling Stage Companies, whose nightly dreams were dis- turbed by the scream of the whistle, and whose waking eyes, turn where they might, were blasted with those words of doom, "Look out for the engine."1 For a time our directors stood up manfully to their struggle with fate. First they tried to curtail their expenses, -offered to sell real estate,-to bny in their stock at par, then at $60 and then at $50, and pay for it in the personal effects of the company. Fifty horses were to be disposed of at a stroke, and again and again another fifty,-hay and grain were high,-the appetites of live- stock inexorable. To add to their embarrassment, travel went on increasing as the hour of dissolution drew near. More horses and more were required, and

1 Mr. Tony Weller has favored the English-reading public with his views on the Railway and its invasion of his native Island, in words which I am forced to recall at this point. Said that eminent driver, as reported in " Master Humphrey's Clock," "I consider that the rail is noconstitutional, and a inwader o' privileges. As to the comfort-as an old ceachman I may say it-veres the comfort o' sitting in a harm-chair, a lookin' at brick walls, and heaps o' mud, never comin' to a public 'ouse, never seein' a glass o' ale, never goin' thro' a pike, never meetin' a change o' no kind (hosses or otherwise), but always comio' to a place, veo you comes to vun at all, the werry picter o' the last ! As to the honor and dignity o' travellin', vere can that be vithout a coachman, and vats the rail to sich coachmen as is sometimes forced to go by it, but a outrage and a insalt ! and as to the ingen, a nasty, wheezin', creakin', gaspin', puffio', bustin' monster, always out o' breath, with a shiny green and gold back like a onpleasant beetle; as to the ingen as is alvays a pourin' ont red-hot coals at night and black smoke in the day, the seosiblest thing it does, io my opinion, is ven there's somethin' in the vay, and it sets up that 'ere frightful scream vich seems to say 'now eres two hundred and forty passengers in the werry greatest extremity o' danger, and eres their two hundred and forty screams in vun !'"

again and again they were forced to replace those sold. To sell so large a stud at once, when the end came, would bring prices down to a ruinous figure, and the theory was generally accepted, that upon the establishment of steam cars, horse flesh would be worth little more than dog's meat. Before the end of 1835 they had joined the other proprietors of New- buryport turnpike in offering five miles of it for the use of a projected Railroad to Salem. In 1836 the Eastern Railroad was chartered.

Still they go on voting to sell their horses, still buying more. Late in '36 they try adding twenty per cent. to their fares. The directors meet once a month without notice, sometimes at half past six in the morning. They combine with thirteen like com- panies to keep up prices. Opposition coaches take the road and prices come down again. Late in '37, they try a reduction of wages, the peremptory sale of thirty horses, "as the company is fast approaching dissolution," they say,-sell the lease they hold of Henry Codman, of the Ann Street House, and agree with the purchaser to keep their teams from day to day,-sell the Exeter Stables, the Portsmouth and Concord Stages,-apply without success for a short extension of their charter to close the business, and in February, '38,-their charter expired in June,- offer for sale the whole remaining assets of the cor- poration.

This effort failing, the shareholders were for the last time summoned to Hampton Falls,-detailed reports submitted,-a fruitless effort made to start a new company, and the property turned over to trus- tees for final administration. And so this respectable body-corporate died without issue, at the stroke of midnight, June 26, 1838. Says the late Col. Whip- ple, who had been a director for ten years, and be- came its president on the death of Dr. Cleaveland in 1837, "the holders of stock, during twenty years, re- ceived eight and one-third per cent. in dividends an- nually, and after paying all debts, between $66 and $67 on each share. It does not appear that a pas- senger was killed or injured."

In August, 1838, the steam cars from Boston reached Salem. The Register speaks of immense crowds on every arrival and departure, covering the depot grounds and the banks of the mill-pond. In the belfry of the wooden station house hung a bell, taken from a ruined Spanish convent, and sold to one of our West Indiamen for old metal, which was vigor- ously rung to summon passengers on the departure of a train. At first, the cars took eleven hundred per- sons per day, but this, said the papers, was evidently due to their novelty, and could not be expected to continne. From six to eight hundred, it was thought, could be relied on. In about a month, sixteen hun- dred passengers were carried in one day, "the best day's work yet," said the press with enthusiasm ! The Boston Courier stated that the cars used were not of the prevailing style, shaped like a coach-body with

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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

the door on the side, but were of a new pattern, in which a man may stand erect or pass from one to an- other, the whole length of the train, while in motion, with perfect safety. The passage from Salem to the Boston side of the ferry occupied from thirty-five to forty minutes, and it was hoped that about thirty-two minutes would be the average time consumed, when all was completed. The Boston Post announced that the witches came out of their graves to see these new con- veyances. They met all expectations, and Mr. George Peabody, the first president of the road, in his open- ing address delivered before the six hundred stock- holders and others, August 27th, called attention to the fact that those doing business in Boston could now live more cheaply in Salem than in Boston. What the railroad has done for us, in common with all the environs of Boston, cannot be briefly stated. If Boston is the Hub, the railroads seen from the State House dome are the living spokes, which bind it to an outer circle of social and business relations. If these have carried off our men of enterprise in search of a larger market, they have brought back the wealth they accumulate to beautify our estates and elevate our culture, and make of Massachusetts Bay, from Plymouth to Cape Ann, one great suburb in which the arts of cultivated life are brought to aid the native charms of country living.

Of the two presidents of the Eastern Stage Com- pany, the first, Dr. Cleaveland, was a man of no com- mon stamp. Hecame of the staunchest Puritan stock, his great-grandfather, Moses Cleaveland, having emi- grated in his prime from Ipswich, in England, to Eastern Massachusetts and left a numerous and dis- tinguished progeny. Some of them appear among the founders of Connecticut; many of them adorn the learned professions or fill chairs in the universities. Dr. Cleaveland's father died on his 77th birthday, in 1799, having been for more than half a century the pastor of Chebacco Parish in this county-a chaplain in both the French and Revolutionary wars, present with the army at Ticonderoga in 1758, at Lonisburg in 1759, at the siege of Boston in 1775, on the Con- necticut shore in 1776, and in 1778 in New York and New Jersey, and having given three sons to the Con- tinental army.

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History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 17

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