USA > Pennsylvania > Westmoreland County > History of Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, Vol. I > Part 30
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HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY.
time the drover had another lot of cattle collected and ready for the long journey.
But the most romantic feature of the pike to our generation, as we look back through the dim years to the forties, is the stage-coach. No one, it is said, who ever saw a genuine old stage-coach in use, can forget it. The outside of the coach was tastefully painted and beautified with bright colors, while the inside was lined with soft silk plush. There were three seats within splendidly cushioned, and three people could ride on each seat. There was also another seat by the side of the driver, which was very desirable in
STAGE COACH USED IN EARLY TURNPIKE DAYS BETWEEN PITTSBURGH AND PHILADELPHIA.
fine weather. Then on the top, others could ride in a way, if the manage- ment allowed it, and these in turn took the inside seats as they were vacated in the journey. Thus sometimes a stage bore as many as fifteen people, while its capacity was nine or ten and the driver. It was without springs, as springs are now, but the bed or top part was swung on large leather girders called thorough-braces, which were stretched between high bolsters or jacks on the front and rear axles. By this arrangement stiff springs were obviated, and, whether heavily laden or nearly empty, the passenger rode
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with equal ease, a feature of comfort which could not be obtained with our modern springs of steel. This gave it, moreover, a gentle swinging back and forth, or rocking motion, which was not by any means unpleasant to the passenger. At the extreme rear of the stage was the boot, a three-cornered leather-covered affair, in which baggage was carried. The driver sat high up in front, swinging his long whip and handling the lines of the four spirited horses with a grace and skill which has never been equaled since his day.
The horses were invariably showy animals, selected because of their lightness of foot, and yet they were strongly built. Most of them were of the "North Star," the "Murat," "Hickory" or Winflower" breed-strains which are now extinct, but which for beauty of carriage, speed and endurance com- bined, have not been surpassed by the best of our modern thoroughbreds. They were driven very rapidly, generally making ten miles in an hour if conditions were at all favorable. The object of the stage line was to speed the passenger, and every possible arrangement was made to facilitate his journey. To this end a system of relays was established all along the pikcs where stage-coach lines were operated. By this means fresh spans of horses were hitched to the stage-coach about every ten or twelve miles. With his long whip the driver could touch his horses gently, or at his will lash them into their highest speed. Under ordinary circumstances they made from six to eight miles an hour, and by relays kept that speed up all day. The mail stage stopped at the postoffices, at the relay stations, at taverns at meal times to accommodate passengers, and not otherwise. They often came into Greensburg, Youngstown or Ligonier at a dead run, and drew up at the principal tavern for fresh horses. There awaiting its arrival was the relay of horses, each span held by a groom. The driver threw down the lines, the grooms unhitched the panting horses and "almost in the twinkling of an eye," says an old stager, the new spans took their places, the lines were handed to the driver, who, without leaving his seat, cracked his whip and away rolled the coach for the next station. If it was at meal times the stay was longer, but even then did not exceed twenty or twenty-five minutes. The mail coaches had to stop at the postoffices long enough to leave the in- coming and secure the outgoing mail. This was called "changing the mail," a correct term in that age to signify the changing done by the postmaster. But the word has come down to us so that we now often hear the word "changed" used in country offices in place of the word "distributed," a re- minder of the days of long ago. This changing of the mail took perhaps not over five minutes, for letters were not so numerous then as now.
The main pike in Westmoreland county was, as we have said before, the one running from Pittsburgh through Greensburg, Bedford, Carlisle, Harris- burg, Reading, etc., to Philadelphia. On this highway in its popular days there were regularly two or more daily stages each way, that is, two going
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HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY.
east and two going west each day. Leaving Pittsburgh in the early morn- ing, the coach reached Greensburg about ten o'clock, having already exhausted three relays, that is twelve horses. Greensburg, to most of the stage lines, was a relay station, with another at Youngstown, another at Ligonier, etc. So by rapid driving the passengers who left Pittsburgh in the morning took dinner in Ligonier, having come fifty miles in about six and a half hours. The next fifty miles took them to Bedford, but the time occupied in the trip was much longer, for they had two ranges of moun- tains to climb. The regular time between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia was fifty-six hours, and a good line of stages invariably made it on time, or nearly so. Of course there were more than two lines of stages on the eastern part of the road where the more thickly populated districts gave rise to more travel, and part of the time there were more than two on the western end. Later in the day another stage line sent a coach out of Pittsburgh which fol- lowed the first and kept up the same general rate of speed. This was kept up from day to day, from one year's end to another.
One of these lines was called the United States Mail Line. It was owned by a company which changed some of its members from time to time, but its prominent and main owners were James Resides, Noah Mendell, Abraham Harbaugh and Joseph Henderson. This line carried the mail, and while they lost more or less time in waiting for the "changing" of the mail, they made it up by a faster rate of speed at other times. Another line was called "The People's Line," or the "Good Intent Line." Colonel Samuel Elder, William McCall, and Samuel Ricker were its chief owners and proprietors. These rival lines, as may be supposed, prompted each to give the best possible service and a rapid passage from one end of the line to the other.
The fare from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia was twenty dollars. Passengers generally changed coaches about every fifty miles. The heavier coaches were used in the mountainous regions between Ligonier and Bedford, while the newer and handsomer ones were near the cities at the beginning and the end of the line. Teams were also arranged to suit the road, the heavier and stronger ones being used to draw the coaches over the mountains, and the most showy horses being near the cities. The relays of horses journeyed back and forth over the same road, and thus learned its easy and hard places thor- oughly. The four horses which hauled the morning stage to Youngstown then rested from ten to twelve hours, when they hauled a west bound stage coach back to Greensburg.
The coaches did not stop at night. Passengers were required to travel in them night and day in a continuous passage, till they reached their destination. Each driver had a given length of time to make his run from one relay station to another, and he invariably made it on time. Going up the mountains in the eastern part of the county, or up the Alleghenies, not infrequently the pas- sengers got out to walk for exercise and to enjoy the beautiful scenery.
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HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY.
A stage driver never attended to his teams, though doubtless he assured himself that they were well cared for. No position seemed so commanding in the eyes of a boy as that of the stage driver. Many a youth looked forward with bright anticipations to the time in manhood when he could reach that acme of fame in his estimation, viz., the seat of a professional- stage driver. He was paid about fifteen dollars per month and board, and the best of them never received as much as twenty dollars per month, and that was considered good wages in that day. A good horse could be purchased in those days for fifty or sixty dollars, and a span of horses, with an occasional rest, was good for eight or ten years. While they were being driven they were made to strain every nerve. They went slowly up a hill or mountain where the pulling was heavy. As soon as the top was reached, or a little before it, they started off more rapidly, and on the level rarely ever went slower than a trot, while down grade or down the mountain side they sometimes went on a steady gallop. It was thus often that a stage driver coming east started his team on a fast trot at the top of Laurel Hill, and made each horse strain every nerve to keep out of the way of the stage, and thus kept up this speed for six miles until the first hill was reached, more than a mile east of Laughlinstown. The horses invariably came up to the relay stations panting and covered with foam, but they had then a rest of ten or eleven hours before another effort was required of them. There was very little holding back done by the wheel-horses of the average stage-coach when going down a hill or down the mountains. The wheel-horses, if made to hold back, in time became "sprung in the knees," and this was an evidence of bad driving.
The regularity of their arrival at given points was remarkable. It was rarely ever that a coach was more than a few minutes either behind or ahead of time. Excitement, therefore, followed the whirl of the stage-coach all along the pike. The driver invariably carried a horn with a very highly keyed loud sounding tone, which he winded at the brow of the last hill before entering a village or town, to give notice of his approaching stage. New passengers, the relay horses and the postmaster or the landlord, were all therefore ready and waiting for its arrival. To the country villages the arrival of the stage-coaclı was the leading event of the day, much more so than the arrival of an import- ant train is to us. Loafers collected around the stations to learn the latest news, or become acquainted with the newest arrival, should there be any. Farmers and workmen along the pike stopped their work when the stage passed by. They could regulate their work in a measure without a timepiece for they knew the time that the stage was due to pass them.
Washington Irving took great interest in the stage driver and wrote of him as follows :
"The stage-driver had a dress, manner, language and air peculiar to himself and prevalent throughout the fraternity. He enjoyed great consequence and consideration along the road. The women looked up to him as a man of great trust and dependence.
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and he had a good understanding with every brighteyed country lass. His duty was to drive from one station to another, and on his arrival he threw down the lines to the hostler with a lordly air. His dress was always showy, and in winter his usually bulky form was further increased by a multiplicity of coats. At the villages he was surrounded hy a crowd of loafers, errand boys and nameless hangers-on, who looked up to him as an oracle and treasured up his cant phrases and opinions about horses and other topics. Above all, they endeavored to imitate his air and rolling gait, his talk and slang, and the youth tried to imagine himself an embryonic stage driver.
"The horn he sounded at the entrance of the village produced a general bustle, and his passage through the country put the world in motion. Some hastened to meet friends, some with bundles and bandboxes to secure seats, and in the hurry of the moment could hardly take leave of the group that accompanied them. As the stage rattled through the village everyone ran to the window, and the passenger had glances on every side of fresh country faces and blooming giggling girls. At the corners were assembled the village idlers and wise men, who took their station there to see the company pass."
The stage-driver carried a long whip composed of a stock, lash and silk cracker. The stock was made of hickory, heavy at the hand end, but tapering till it was very slender and flexible at the lash end. It was about a yard long. The lash was made of platted rawhide, and was much thicker at the upper mid- dle than at the ends This shape and the flexible stock made it possible for the driver to handle it by a series of curves and swings that were very accurate and made it very severe in its work when he chose to make it so. With years of practice they learned to handle the whip with great dexterity. An old friend has assured the writer that he has often seen an expert knock a fly from the back and shoulders and even from the necks of his leaders with his whip and do it so gently that it would not injure the horse nor urge him to greater speed. When the driver cracked this long whip over the horses, it was like the report of a small gun, and without anything else urged every horse to strain every muscle. It was seldom that a careful driver was com- pelled to use the whip severely.
Sometimes when one line stage tried to pass another, then the driver used his whip with all the skill he could command. Two stages abreast have more than once gone down the mountain into Ligonier valley, going west, every horse galloping and at his utmost speed, and the drivers lashing them to still greater exertions. In a race of this kind the rumbling of the stages could be heard for miles. The heavy bed with its tightly drawn sides and top, its glass doors and the heavy thorough-braces laden to their utmost strength, gave it at all times a rumbling noise, but when several of them were racing or making time coming down a mountain, the road bed of which was stone, the noise is said to have been terrific. If the driver knew his business well there was little danger in such a race, and it was to the passengers one of the most exciting events of their lives.
The old stage driver of a day gone by, has been written of in song and story. We subjoin a fragment of verse found in a book entitled "Searight's National Road," written, we believe, by James Newton Matthews. These
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HISTORY OF WESTMORELAND COUNTY.
verses were read on a recent occasion by one whose reading is not of the best, to an old stage driver who was moved to tears by the memories they awakened :
"It stands all alone like a goblin in gray, The old-fashioned inn of a pioneer day, In a land so forlorn and forgotten, it seems Like a wraith of the past rising into our dreams ; Its glories have vanished, and only the ghost Of a sign-board now creaks on its desolate post, Recalling the time when all hearts were akin As they rested at night in that welcoming inn.
"Oh the songs they would sing and the tales they would spin, As they lounged in the light of the old country inn. But a day came at last when the stage brought no load To the gate, as it rolled up the long, dusty road. And lo! at the sunrise a shrill whistle blew O'er the hills-and the old yielded place to the new- And a merciless age with its discord and din Made wreck, as it passed, of the pioneer inn."
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CHAPTER XIX
Canals.
At the close of the Revolution our people, as we have seen, began to agitate the transportation question. The first result was the formation of state and county roads, which served their day and generation. Next after these came the canals. Water always had been and perhaps always will be, the cheapest medium of transportation when practicable, and where speed was not a re- quisite. Wind has been the great power which carried the wealth of the East to the old time centers of industry in western Asia and eastern Europe. But this was out of the question as a motive power for internal navigation.
In honoring Robert Fulton as the father of steam navigation, it is generally forgotten that he was an apostle of canal building prior to the invention so in- separably connected with his name and fame. He was a native of Lancaster county, and spent several years in England studying the question of internal navigation. There he published a book illustrated with drawings of canal boats, aqueducts, and locks for lifting and lowering boats. On his return to his native land he urged canal building as a method of internal navigation for the people of the United States. In a letter which he wrote to Governor Penn, of Pennsylvania, he used these words: "The time will come when canals shall pass through every vale, wind round every hill, and bind the whole coun- try in one band of social intercourse." This became an oft-quoted sentence by the early advocates of canal building as a means of internal improvement.
It must not be supposed that canals were then new in the world's history. They had been used.in Egypt and China before the days of Julius Caesar, and had for centuries been in use throughout Europe. But most of the places of canals in Europe, although of ingenious conception, were not practicable in America, and none were so valuable to us as those outlined and advocated by Robert Fulton.
In 1791 a "Society for Promoting the Improvement of Roads and Inland Navigation" was formed in our state, and it gave a great deal of attention to the surveying of several routes across Pennsylvania by which the Delaware river might be connected with the northern lakes. At that time the Mississippi was closed to American commerce, for the Spaniards owned Louisiana, and they
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were hostile to the United States. Nor was the situation improved by its sale to France. But when Thomas Jefferson purchased it from Napoleon Bona- parte for the United States in 1803, thenceforth the great object sought by our people was a water connection between the Delaware and the Ohio river. The great utility of such an achievement is patent to any one who contemplates our surroundings at that time. The "Louisiana purchase" meant more to western Pennsylvania then than we are likely to imagine now. It gave an isolated section, rich in products, or, rather, rich in the possibility of its pro- ducts, its first real outlet to the seaboard and to the commerce of the world. So the eastern sections of Pennsylvania, far in advance of us in wealth, became greatly interested in a canal across our state, so that our products might not reach them by sailing first westward on the Ohio river.
The canal from Buffalo to New York, was built largely through the efforts of DeWitt Clinton, and was opened up on November 4, 1825. The result was that the cost of carrying freight over the route was reduced from $100 per ton to $Io per ton. This awakened our people to the importance of a similar waterway across Pennsylvania. The legislature took up the question at once, and had surveys made of all the principal rivers in order that the most prac- ticable route might be selected. A canal across the Alleghenies was impossible, but the gap was to be supplied by good roads across the mountains. Much time was spent in trying to locate the canals on either side, so that the roads crossing the mountains would he as short as possible. In 1824 the assembly authorized the appointment of three canal commissioners to explore a route from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and on April 11, 1825, they were appointed. The Union Canal had already been built connecting the Schuylkill river with the Susquehanna, its western terminus being near Harrisburg. The commis- sioners appointed by the Governor reported the route by the Juniata and the Conemaugh to be the most practicable. Accordingly, in 1826, the legislature provided for the construction of the Pennsylvania Canal. It was to begin at the western terminus of the Union Canal, and extend to the mouth of the Juniata river. West of the mountains it was to extend from Pittsburgh to the mouth of the Kiskiminetas river, the object undoubtedly being that both the Juniata and the Kiskiminetas rivers should be made navigable by slackwater. The legislature appropriated three hundred thousand dollars, so that work could be begun on it at once. This was done, and it was pushed so rapidly that in 1827 the water was turned into the levels at Leechburg. Later the slack- water projects for the navigation of the Juniata and Kiskiminetas rivers were abandoned, and the canal, when completed, reached from the Susquehanna to. Holidaysburg, at the base of the eastern slope of the Alleghenies and from Johnstown at the foot of the western slope to Pittsburgh. These canals were managed by a board of canal commissioners consisting of three men appointed hy the Governor. The appointment was then one of the most important in the state ,and almost invariably our leading business men were selected.
No improvement up to that time in the history of Pennsylvania was at-
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tended with so much benefit to the west as the completion of this canal. Towns and villages sprang up all along its route, and the population was everywhere increased. Blast furnaces were started at once. Mountains which had hitherto been regarded as worthless at once became of great value because of the deposits of iron ore which they contained. The furnaces afforded a market for the timber, for they were operated entirely by charcoal. The canal came west from Johnstown on the north bank of the Conemaugh, passing near the towns of Nineveh, New Florence, Lockport, Bolivar, Blairsville, Bairdstown, Liver- more, Saltsburg, Leechburg and thence to Freeport. It crossed the Con- emaugh river on a beautifully arched stone aquaduct at Lockport. It will thus be seen that it passed along and through the northern part of our county for a distance of about sixty miles, and that, though part of this distance it was not within our limits, it was at all points within our reach and benefitted our county correspondingly. The first canal boat on our part of the canal was built at Apollo, and was called the "General Abner Leacock." It was in- tended as a freight and passenger boat, and had berths, etc., like the steamboats of a later period.
In 1834 the Philadelphia and Columbia railroad was completed, and also the Portage railroad over the mountains, which latter connected the two canals. So a canal boat was brought from the east over the canal and over the moun- tains on trucks to Johnstown, where it was put on the canal and finally reached Pittsburgh. The newspapers of the day hailed this as one of the great feats of modern times. Capitalists invested money in schemes all along the canal route, and business men who were not interested in canal lines, its boats, or its adjuncts such as turnpikes, stages, etc., were not regarded as wealthy nor enterprising nor on the true highway to fortune.
A canal may be briefly described as an artificial waterway over which boats were drawn by mules. Beside the canal was a narrow path called a tow- path, on which the mules were driven. They were hitched tandem to a long rope which was fastened to the front part of the boat. By means of the rud- der the boat was kept in the middle of the canal and could be landed at the side opposite the towpath when necessary. Each section of the canal was neces- sarily level from one end to the other. The next section of the canal being either lower or higher than the first, the boat was lowered or raised, as- might be necessary, by means of a lock, which was practically the same in con- struction as the locks now used on rivers which are made navigable by slack- water dams. The average canal was about thirty feet wide, and held about four feet of water. Canal boats varied in length and somewhat in width ; they were generally about twelve feet wide and from twenty-five to fifty feet long. Two boats could therefore pass each other, for they were never quite half as wide as the canal. They sometimes passed through hills by tunnels, and like- wise over small valleys or rivers by embankments or bridges, the latter being called aqueducts. The canal was fed at the beginning of its highest section, usually by a dam across a stream or river, and the water moved so slowly in
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the canal, passing from one basin to another, that it often became stagnant. There being no current, the boat could be landed at any time, and the draft was about the same going either way. It was a very cheap system of trans- portation. Two mules could easily draw fifty tons, and average about two miles per hour. The mules were driven on a rapid walk unless the boat was un- usually heavily laden. While this speed was sufficient for iron, coal, lumber, or almost any species of freight, it was too slow for passenger traffic, and the canals therefore were never much opposition to the stage lines passing over our turnpikes. They were, however, of great advantage in the transportation of freight. They are now nearly all abandoned, and one sees only the remnants of a lock or basin that is slowly filling up with sediment, so thoroughly have they been supplanted by railroads.
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