Wheeling at 2.30 the day following, thence on to Washington in fifty-five hours.89

At times the mails on the National Road were greatly delayed, taxing the patience of the public beyond endurance. The road itself was so well built that rain had little effect upon it as a rule. In fact, delay of the mails was more often due to inefficiency of the postoffice department, inefficiency of the stage line service, or failure of contractors, than poor roads. Until a bridge was built across the Ohio river at Wheeling, in 1836, mails often became congested, especially when ice was running out. There were frequent derangements of cross and way mails which affected seriously the efficiency of the service. The vast number of connecting mails on the National Road made regularity in transmission of cross mails confusing, especially if the through mails were at all irregular.

To us living in the present age of telegraphic communication

89 The northern and southern Ohio mails connected with the Great Eastern and Great Western mails at Columbus. They were operated as follows:

NORTHERN MAIL: Left Sandusky City 4 A. M., reached Delaware 8 P. M. Left Delaware next day 3 A. M., reached Columbus 8 A. M. Left Columbus 8:30 A. M., reached Chillicothe 4 P. M. Left Chillicothe next day 4 A. M., reached Portsmouth 3 P. M.

SOUTHERN MAIL: Left Portsmouth 9 A. M., Chillicothe 5 P. M., Columbus 1 P. M., day following. Delaware 7 P. M., Sandusky City 7 P. M. day following. A Cleveland mail left Cleveland daily for Columbus via Wooster and Mt. Vernon at 3 A. M., and reached Columbus on the day following at 5 P. M., returning the mail left Columbus at 4 A. M. and reached Cleveland at 5 P. M. on the ensuing day.

and the ubiquitous 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 mail stage and its precious load of papers from Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, was hailed as the latest editions of our newspapers are to-day. Thus it must have been that a greater proportion of the population along the Old National Road awaited with eager interest the coming of the stage in the old days, than to-day await the arrival of the long mail trains from the east.

Late in the 30's and in the 40's, when the mail stage 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 postoffice was reached. These stages were of two kinds, designed to be operated upon routes where the mails 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 National 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 mail stage business 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.90

Newspapers were, nevertheless, carried by express mail stages as far west as Ohio in 1837, as is proven by a newspaper account of a robbery committed on the National Road, the robbers holding up an express-mail stage and finding nothing in it but newspapers.91

The mails on the National 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.

90 "The extreme irregularity which has attended the 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 5 and 19. The cause of this irregularity, we have reason to believe, does not originate in this state." Ohio State Journal, March 30, 1833.

91 Ohio State Journal, August 9, 1837.

CHAPTER IX.

TAVERNS AND TAVERN LIFE.

So distinctive was the character of the National Road that all which pertained 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 and west was very dissimilar. 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 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 fire-place before which to spread one's blankets.92

The first cabins on the old route from the Potomac to the Ohio were at the Wills Creek settlement (Cumberland) and Gists clearing where Washington stopped on his La Boeuf trip on the buffalo trace not far from the summit of Laurel Hill.

92 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.

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 upthe first of the kind west of the Alleghany 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 National Road coincide. On land owned by him along the old miliary road Jesse Tomlinson erected a tavern. When the National Road was built, his first tavern was deserted and a new one built near the old site. Another tavern, erected by one Fenniken, stood on both the line of the military road and the National Road, two miles west of Smithfield ("Big Crossings") where the two courses were identical.

The first taverns erected upon the road which followed the portage path from Uniontown to Brownsville were Collin's Log Tavern and Rollin's Tavern, erected in Uniontown in 1781 and 1783, respectively. These taverns offered primitive forms of hospitality to the growing stream of sojourners over the rough mountain path to the Youghiogeny at Brownsville, where boats could be taken for the growing metropolis of Pittsburg. Another tavern in the west was carried on this road ten miles west of Uniontown. As the old century neared its close a score of taverns sprang up on the road from Uniontown to Brownsville and on the road opened from Brownsville to Wheeling. At least three old taverns are remembered at West Brownsville. Hill's stone tavern was erected at Hillsboro in 1794. "Catfish