daily paper, it may not occur that the mail stages of the old days were the newsboys of the age, and that thousands looked to their coming for the first word of news from distant portions of the land. In times of war or political excitement the express mailstage and its precious load of papers from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, was hailed as the latest editions of our newspapers are today. Thus it must have been that a greater proportion of the population along the Cumberland Road awaited with eager interest the coming of the stage in the old days, than today await the arrival of the long mail trains from the east.

Late in the 30's and in the 40's, when the mailstage system reached its highest perfection, the mail and passenger service had been entirely separated, special stages being constructed for hauling the former. As early as 1837 the Post Office Department decreed that the mails, which heretofore had always been held as of secondary consideration compared with passengers, should be carried in specially arranged vehicles, into which the postmaster should put them

under lock and key not to be opened until the next post office was reached. These stages were of two kinds, designed to be operated upon routes where the mail ordinarily comprised, respectively, a half and nearly a whole load. In the former, room was left for six passengers, in the latter, for three. Including newspapers with the regular mail, the later stages which ran westward over the Cumberland Road rarely carried passengers. Indeed there was little room for the guards who traveled with the driver to protect the government property. Many old drivers of the "Boston Night Mail," or the "New York Night Mail," or "Baltimore Mail," may yet be found along the old road, who describe the immense loads which they carried westward behind flying steeds. Such a factor in the mailstage business did did the newspapers become, that many contractors refused to carry them by express mail, consigning them to the ordinary mails, thereby bringing down upon themselves the frequent savage maledictions of a host of local editors.67

67" The extreme irregularity which has attended the

Newspapers were, nevertheless, carried by express mailstages as far west as Ohio in 1837, as is proved by a newspaper account of a robbery committed on the Cumberland Road, the robbers holding up an express mailstage and finding nothing in it but newspapers.68

The mails on the Cumberland Road were always in danger of being assailed by robbers, especially on the mountainous portions of the road at night. Though by dint of lash and ready revolver the doughty drivers usually came off safely with their charge. transmission of newspapers from one place to another for several months past has been a subject of general complaint with the editors of all parties. It was to have been expected that, after the adjournment of Congress, the evil would have ceased to exist. Such, however, is not the case. Although the roads are now pretty good, and the mails arrive in due season, our eastern exchange papers seem to reach us only by chance. On Tuesday last, for instance, we received, among others, the following, viz., The New York Courier and Enquirer of March 1, 5 and 19; the Philadelphia Times and Saturday Evening Post of March 2; the United States Gazette of March 6; and the New Jersey Journal of March and 19. The cause of this irregularity, we have reason to believe, does not originate in this state.” -Ohio State Journal, March 30, 1833.

68 Ohio State Journal, August 9, 1837

CHAPTER VI

TAVERNS AND TAVERN LIFE

distinctive was the character of the

Cumberland Road that all which per

tained to it was highly characteristic. Next to the race of men which grew up beside its swinging stretches, nothing had a more distinctive tone than the taverns which offered cheer and hospitality to its surging population.

The origin of taverns in the East was very dissimilar from their history in the West. The first taverns in the West were those which did service on the old Braddock's Road. Unlike the taverns of New England, which were primarily drinking places, sometimes closing at nine in the evening, and not professing, originally, to afford lodging, the tavern in the West arose amid the forest to answer all the needs of travelers. It may be said that every cabin in all the western wilderness was a tavern,

where, if there was a lack of "bear and cyder" there was an abundance of dried deer meat and Indian meal and a warm fireplace before which to spread one's blankets, 69

The first cabins on the old route from the Potomac to the Ohio were at the Wills Creek settlement (Cumberland) and Gist's clearing, where Washington stopped on his Le Bœuf trip on the buffalo trace not far from the summit of Laurel Hill. After Braddock's Road was built, and the first roads were opened between Uniontown and Brownsville, Washington and Wheeling, during the Revolutionary period, a score of taverns sprang up- the first of the kind west of the Allegheny Mountains.

The oldest tavern on Braddock's Road was Tomlinson's Tavern near "Little Meadows," eight miles west of the present village of Frostburg, Maryland.

At this point the lines of Braddock's Road and the Cumberland Road coincide.

69 It may be found upon investigation that the portions of our country most noted for hospitality are those where taverns gained the least hold as a social institution. Cf. Allen's The Blue Grass Region of Kentucky, p. 38.