STAGECOACHES AND FREIGHTERS
The great work of building and keeping in repair the Cumberland Road,
and of operating it, developed a race of men as unknown before its era
as afterward. For the real life of the road, however, one will look to
the days of its prime--to those who passed over its stately stretches
and dusty coils as stage- and mail-coach drivers, express carriers and
"wagoners," and the tens of thousands of passengers and immigrants who
composed the public which patronized the great highway. This was the
real life of the road--coaches numbering as many as twenty traveling in
a single line; wagonhouse yards where a hundred tired horses rested over
night beside their great loads; hotels where seventy transient guests
have been served breakfast in a single morning; a life made cheery by
the echoing horns of hurrying stages; blinded by the dust of droves of
cattle numbering into the thousands; a life noisy with the satisfactory
creak and crunch of the wheels of great wagons carrying six and eight
thousand pounds of freight east or west.
The revolution of society since those days could not have been more
surprising. The change has been so great it is a wonder that men deign
to count their gain by the same numerical system. As Macaulay has said,
we do not travel today, we merely "arrive." You are hardly a traveler
now unless you cross a continent. Travel was once an education. This is
growing less and less true with the passing years. Fancy a journey from
St. Louis to New York in the old coaching days, over the Cumberland and
the old York Roads. How many persons the traveler met! How many
interesting and instructive conversations were held with fellow
travelers through the long hours; what customs, characters, foibles,
amusing incidents would be noticed and remembered, ever afterward
furnishing the information necessary to help one talk well and the
sympathy necessary to render one capable of listening to others. The
traveler often sat at table with statesmen whom the nation honored, as
well as with stagecoach-drivers whom a nation knew for their skill and
prowess with six galloping horses. Henry Clays and "Red" Buntings dined
together, and each made the other wiser, if not better. The greater the
gulf grows between the rich and poor, the more ignorant do both become,
particularly the rich. There was undoubtedly a monotony in stagecoach
journeying, but the continual views of the landscape, the ever-fresh
air, the constantly passing throngs of various description, made such
traveling an experience unknown to us "arrivers" of today. How fast it
has been forgotten that travel means seeing people rather than things.
The age of sight-seeing has superseded that of traveling. How few of us
can say with the New Hampshire sage: "We have traveled a great deal 'in
Concord.'" Splendidly are the old coaching days described by Thackeray,
who caught their spirit:
"The Island rang, as yet, with the tooting horns and rattling teams of
mail-coaches; a gay sight was the road in merry England in those days,
before steam-engines arose and flung its hostelry and chivalry over. To
travel in coaches, to drive coaches, to know coachmen and guards, to be
familiar with inns along the road, to laugh with the jolly hostess in
the bar, to chuck the pretty chambermaid under the chin, were the
delight of men who were young not very long ago. The Road was an
institution, the Ring was an institution. Men rallied around them; and,
not without a kind conservatism, expatiated upon the benefits with which
they endowed the country, and the evils which would occur when they
should be no more:--decay of English spirit, decay of manly pluck, ruin
of the breed of horses, and so forth, and so forth. To give and take a
black eye was not unusual nor derogatory in a gentleman; to drive a
stage-coach the enjoyment, the emulation of generous youth. Is there any
young fellow of the present time who aspires to take the place of a
stoker? You see occasionally in Hyde Park one dismal old drag with a
lonely driver. Where are you, charioteers? Where are you, O rattling
'Quicksilver,' O swift 'Defiance?' You are passed by racers stronger and
swifter than you. Your lamps are out, and the music of your horns has
died away."[60]
In the old coaching days the passenger- and mail-coaches were operated
very much like the railways of today. A vast network of lines covered
the land. Great companies owned hundreds of stages operating on
innumerable routes, competing with other companies. These rival stage
companies fought each other at times with great bitterness, and
competed, as railways do today, in lowering tariff and in outdoing each
other in points of speed and accommodation.[61] New inventions and
appliances were eagerly sought in the hope of securing a larger share of
public patronage. This competition extended into every phase of the
business--fast horses, comfortable coaches, well-known and companionable
drivers, favorable connections.
However, competition, as is always the case, sifted the competitors down
to a small number. Companies which operated upon the Cumberland Road
between Indianapolis and Cumberland became distinct in character and
catered to a steady patronage which had its distinctive characteristics
and social tone. This was in part determined by the taverns which the
various lines patronized. Each line ordinarily stopped at separate
taverns in every town. There were also found Grand Union taverns on the
Cumberland Road. Had this system of communication not been abandoned,
coach lines would have gone through the same experience that the
railways have, and for very similar reasons.
The largest coach line on the Cumberland Road was the National Road
Stage Company, whose most prominent member was Lucius W. Stockton. The
headquarters of this line were at the National House on Morgantown
Street, Uniontown, Pennsylvania. The principal rival of the National
Road Stage Company was the "Good Intent" line, owned by Shriver, Steele,
and Company, with headquarters at the McClelland House, Uniontown. The
Ohio National Stage Company, with headquarters at Columbus, Ohio,
operated on the western division of the road. There were many smaller
lines, as the "Landlords," "Pilot," "Pioneer," "Defiance," "June Bug,"
etc.
Some of the first lines of stages were operated in sections, each
section having different proprietors who could sell out at any time. The
greater lines were constantly absorbing smaller lines and extending
their ramifications in all directions. It will be seen there were trusts
even in the "good old days" of stagecoaches, when smaller firms were
"gobbled up" and "driven out" as happens today, and will ever happen in
mundane history, despite the nonsense of political garblers. One of the
largest stage companies on the old road was Neil, Moore, and Company of
Columbus, which operated hundreds of stages throughout Ohio. It was
unable to compete with the Ohio National Stage Company to which it
finally sold out, Mr. Neil becoming one of the magnates of the latter
company, which was, compared with corporations of its time, a greater
trust than anything known in Ohio today.[62]
To know what the old coaches really were, one should see and ride in
one. It is doubtful if a single one now remains intact. Here and there
inquiry will raise the rumor of an old coach still standing on wheels,
but if the rumor is traced to its source, it will be found that the
chariot was sold to a circus or wild west show or has been utterly
destroyed. The demand for the old stages has been quite lively on the
part of the wild west shows. These old coaches were handsome affairs in
their day--painted and decorated profusely without, and lined within
with soft silk plush.[63] There were ordinarily three seats inside,
each capable of holding three passengers. Upon the driver's high outer
seat was room for one more passenger, a fortunate position in good
weather. The best coaches, like their counterparts on the railways of
today, were named; the names of states, warriors, statesmen, generals,
nations, and cities, besides fanciful names, as "Jewess," "Ivanhoe,"
"Sultana," "Loch Lomond," were called into requisition.
The first coaches to run on the Cumberland Road were long, awkward
affairs, without braces or springs, and with seats placed crosswise. The
door was in front, and passengers, on entering, had to climb over the
seats. These first coaches were made at Little Crossings, Pennsylvania.
The bodies of succeeding coaches were placed upon thick, wide leathern
straps which served as springs and which were called "thorough braces."
At either end of the body was the driver's boot and the baggage boot.
The first "Troy" coach put on the road came in 1829. It was a great
novelty, but some hundreds of them were soon throwing the dust of
Maryland and Pennsylvania into the air. Their cost then was between four
and six hundred dollars. The harness used on the road was of giant
proportions. The backbands were often fifteen inches wide, and the hip
bands, ten. The traces were chains with short thick links and very
heavy.
But the passenger traffic of the Cumberland Road bore the same relation
to the freight traffic as passenger traffic does to freight on the
modern railway--a small item, financially considered. It was for the
great wagons and their wagoners to haul over the mountains and
distribute throughout the west the products of mill and factory and the
rich harvests of the fields. And this great freight traffic created a
race of men of its own, strong and daring, as they well had need to be.
The fact that teamsters of these "mountain ships" had taverns or "wagon
houses" of their own, where they stopped, tended to separate them into
a class by themselves. These wagonhouses were far more numerous than the
taverns along the road, being found as often as one in every mile or
two. Here, in the commodious yards, the weary horses and their swarthy
Jehus slept in the open air. In winter weather the men slept on the
floors of the wagonhouses. In summer many wagoners carried their own
cooking utensils. In the suburbs of the towns along the road they would
pull their teams out into the roadside and pitch camp, sending into the
village to replenish their stores.
The bed of the old road freighter was long and deep, bending upward at
the bottom at either end. The lower broad side was painted blue, with a
movable board inserted above, painted red. The top covering was white
canvas drawn over broad wooden bows. Many of the wagoners hung bells of
a shape much similar to dinner bells on a thin iron arch over the hames
of the harness. Often the number of bells indicated the prowess of a
teamster's horses, as the custom prevailed, in certain parts, that when
a team became fast, or was unable to make the grade, the wagoner
rendering the necessary assistance appropriated all the bells of the
luckless team.
The wheels of the freighters were of a size proportionate to the rest of
the wagon. The first wagons used on the old roads had narrow rims, but
it was not long before the broad rims, or "broad-tread wagons," came
into general use by those who made a business of freighting. The narrow
rims were always used by farmers, who, during the busiest season on the
road, deserted their farms for the high wages temporarily to be made,
and who in consequence were dubbed "sharpshooters" by the regulars. The
width of the broad-tread wheels was four inches. As will be noted, tolls
for broad wheels were less than for the narrow ones which tended to cut
the roadbed more deeply. One ingenious inventor planned to build a wheel
with a rim wide enough to pass the tollgates free. The model was a wagon
which had the rear axle four inches shorter than the front, making a
track eight inches in width. Nine horses were hitched to this wagon,
three abreast. The team caused much comment, but was not voted
practicable.
The loads carried on the mountain ships were very large. An Ohio man,
McBride by name, in the winter of 1848 went over the mountains with
seven horses, taking a load of nine hogsheads weighing an average of one
thousand pounds each.
The following description is from the _St. Clairsville_ (Ohio) _Gazette_
of 1835:
"It was a familiar saying with Sam Patch that _some things can be done
easier than others_, and this fact was forcibly brought to our mind by
seeing a six-horse team pass our office on Wednesday last, laden with
_eleven hogsheads of tobacco_, destined for Wheeling. Some speculation
having gone forth as to its weight, the driver was induced to test it on
the hay scales in this place, and it amounted to 13,280 lbs. gross
weight--net weight 10,375. This team (owned by General C. Hoover of this
county) took the load into Wheeling with ease, having a hill to ascend
from the river to the level of the town, of eight degrees. The Buckeyes
of Belmont may challenge competition in this line."
Teamsters received good wages, especially when trade was brisk. From
Brownsville to Cumberland they often received $1.25 a hundred; $2.25 per
hundred has been paid for a load hauled from Wheeling to Cumberland.[64]
The stage-drivers received twelve dollars a month with board and
lodging. Usually the stage-drivers had one particular route between two
towns about twelve miles apart on which they drove year after year, and
learned it as well as trainmen know their "runs" today. The life was
hard, but the dash and spirit rendered it as fascinating as railway life
is now.
Far better time was made by these old conveyances than many realize. Ten
miles an hour was an ordinary rate of speed. A stage-driver was
dismissed more quickly for making slow time, than for being guilty of
intoxication, though either offense was considered worthy of dismissal.
The way-bills handed to the drivers with the reins often bore the words:
"Make this time or we'll find some one who will." Competition in the
matter of speed was as intense as it is now in the days of steam. A
thousand legends of these rivalries still linger in story and tradition.
Defeated competitors were held accountable by their companies and the
loads or condition of their horses were seldom accepted as excuses.
Couplets were often conjured up containing some brief story of defeat
with a cutting sting for the vanquished driver:
"If you take a seat in Stockton's line
You are sure to be passed by Pete Burdine."
or,
"Said Billy Willis to Peter Burdine
You had better wait for the oyster line."
According to a contemporary account, in September, 1837, Van Buren's
presidential message was carried from Baltimore (Canton Depot) to
Philadelphia, a distance of one hundred and forty miles, in four hours
and forty-three minutes. Seventy miles of the journey was done by rail,
three by boat, and eighty-seven by horse. The seventy-three by rail and
boat occupied one hundred and seventeen minutes and the eighty-seven by
horse occupied the remaining two hundred and twenty-six minutes, or each
mile in about two minutes and a half. This time must be considered
remarkable. The mere fact that these figures are not at all consistent
need occasion no alarm; they form the most consistent part of the story.
The news of the death of William the Fourth of England, which occurred
June 20, 1837, was printed in Columbus, Ohio papers July 28. It was not
until 1847 that the capital of Ohio was connected with the world by
telegraph wires.
Time-tables of passenger coaches were published as railway time-tables
are today. The following is a Cumberland Road time-table printed at
Columbus for the winter of 1835-1836:
COACH LINES
WINTER ARRANGEMENT
THE OLD STAGE LINES with all their different connections throughout the
state, continue as heretofore.
THE MAIL PILOT LINE, leaves Columbus for Wheeling daily, at 6 A. M.,
reaching Zanesville at 1 P. M. and Wheeling at 6 A. M. next day, through
in 24 hours, allowing five hours repose at St. Clairsville.
THE GOOD INTENT LINE, leaves Columbus for Wheeling, daily at 1 P. M.,
through in 20 hours, reaching Wheeling in time to connect with the
stages for Baltimore and Philadelphia.
THE MAIL PILOT LINE, leaves Columbus daily, for Cincinnati at 8 A. M.,
through in 36 hours, allowing six hours repose at Springfield.
Extras furnished on the above routes at any hour when required.
THE EAGLE LINE, leaves Columbus every other day, for Cleveland, through
in 40 hours, via Mt. Vernon and Wooster.
THE TELEGRAPH LINE leaves Columbus for Sandusky City, every other day at
5 A. M., through in two days, allowing rest at Marion, and connecting
there with the line to Detroit, via Lower Sandusky.
THE PHOENIX LINE, leaves Columbus every other day, for Huron, via Mt.
Vernon and Norwalk, through in 48 hours.
THE DAILY LINE OF MAIL COACHES, leaves Columbus, for Chillicothe at 5 A.
M., connecting there with the line to Maysville, Ky., and Portsmouth.
For seats apply at the General Stage Office, next door to Col. Noble's
National Hotel.
T. C. ACHESON, _for the proprietor_.
The following advertisement of an opposition line, running in 1837, is
an interesting suggestion of the intense spirit of rivalry which was
felt as keenly, if not more so, as in our day of close competition:
OPPOSITION!
DEFIANCE FAST LINE COACHES
DAILY
FROM WHEELING, VA. to Cincinnati, O. via Zanesville, Columbus,
Springfield and intermediate points.
Through in less time than any other line.
"_By opposition the people are well served._"
The Defiance Fast Line connects at Wheeling, Va. with Reside & Co.'s
Two Superior daily lines to Baltimore, McNair and Co.'s Mail Coach
line, via Bedford, Chambersburg and the Columbia and Harrisburg Rail
Roads to Philadelphia, being the only direct line from Wheeling--: also
with the only coach line from Wheeling to Pittsburg, via Washington,
Pa., and with numerous cross lines in Ohio.
The proprietors having been released on the 1st inst. from burthen of
carrying the great mail, (which will retard any line) are now enabled to
run through in a shorter time than any other line on the road. They will
use every exertion to accommodate the traveling public. With stock
infinitely superior to any on the road, they flatter themselves they
will be able to give general satisfaction; and believe the public are
aware, from past experience, that a liberal patronage to the above line
will prevent impositions in high rates of fare by any stage monopoly.
The proprietors of the Defiance Fast Line are making the necessary
arrangements to stock the Sandusky and Cleveland Routes also from
Springfield to Dayton--which will be done during the month of July.
All baggage and parcels only received at the risk of the owners thereof.
JNO. W. WEAVER & CO.,
GEO. W. MANYPENNY,
JNO. YONTZ,
_From Wheeling to Columbus, Ohio_.
JAMES H. BACON,
WILLIAM RIANHARD,
F. M. WRIGHT,
WILLIAM H. FIFE,
_From Columbus to Cincinnati_.
There was always danger in riding at night, especially over the
mountains, where sometimes a misstep would cost a life. The following
item from a letter written in 1837 tells of such an incident:
"One of the Reliance line of stages, from Frederick to the West, passed
through here on its way to Cumberland. About ten o'clock the ill-fated
coach reached a small spur of the mountain, running to the Potomac, and
between this place and Hancock, termed Millstone Point, where the driver
mistaking the track, reined his horses too near the edge of the
precipice, and in the twinkling of an eye, coach, horses, driver, and
passengers were precipitated upward of thirty-five feet onto a bed of
rock below--the coach was dashed to pieces, and two of the horses
killed--literally smashed.
"A respectable elderly lady of the name of Clarke, of Louisville,
Kentucky, and a negro child were crushed to death--and a man so
dreadfully mangled that his life is flickering on his lips only. His
face was beaten to a mummy. The other passengers and the driver were
woefully bruised, but it is supposed they are out of danger. There were
seven in number.
"I cannot gather that any blame was attached to the driver. It is said
that he was perfectly sober; but he and his horses were new to this
road, and the night was foggy and very dark."
An act of the legislature of Ohio required that every stagecoach used
for the conveyance of passengers in the night should have two good lamps
affixed in the usual manner, and subjected the owner to a fine of from
ten to thirty dollars for every forty-eight hours the coach was not so
provided. Drivers of coaches who should drive in the night when the
track could not be distinctly seen without having the lamps lighted were
subject to a forfeiture of from five to ten dollars for each offense.
The same act provided that drivers guilty of intoxication, so as to
endanger the safety of passengers, on written notice of a passenger on
oath, to the owner or agent, should be forthwith discharged, and
subjected the owner continuing to employ that driver more than three
days after such notice to a forfeiture of fifty dollars a day.
Stage proprietors were required to keep a printed copy of the act posted
up in their offices, under a penalty of five dollars.
Another act of the Ohio legislature subjected drivers who should leave
their horses without being fastened, to a fine of not over twenty
dollars.
As has been intimated, passengers purchased their tickets of the stage
company in whose stage they embarked, and the tolls were included in the
price of the ticket. A paper resembling a waybill was made out by the
agent of the line at the starting point. This paper was given to the
driver and delivered by him to the landlord at each station upon the
arrival of the coach. This paper contained the names and destinations of
the passengers carried, the sums paid as fare and the time of departure,
and contained blank squares for registering time of arrival and
departure from each station. The fares varied slightly but averaged
about four cents a mile.