Historic Highways of America Volume X Part 10

[55] _Id._, LXX, p. 194.

[56] _Id._, LXXIII, p. 105.

[57] _Laws of Ohio_, LXXIV, p. 62.

[58] _Report of the Superintendent of the National Road, with Abstract of Tolls for the fiscal year_ (1837).

[59] _Laws of Ohio_, x.x.x, p. 8.

[60] Thackeray's _The Newcomes_, vol. i, ch. x.

[61] In one instance a struggle between two stagecoach lines in Indiana resulted in carrying pa.s.sengers from Richmond to Cincinnati for fifty cents. The regular price was five dollars.

[62] An old Ohio National Stage driver, Mr. Samuel B. Baker of Kirkersville, Ohio, is authority for the statement that the Ohio National Stage Company put a line of stages on the Wooster-Wheeling mail and freight route and "ran out" the line which had been doing all the business previously, after an eight months' bitter contest.

[63] The following appeared in the _Ohio State Journal_ of August 12, 1837: "A SPLENDID COACH--We have looked at a Coach now finis.h.i.+ng off in the shop of Messrs. Evans & Pinney of this city, for the Ohio Stage Company, and intended we believe for the inspection of the Post-Master General, who sometime since offered premiums for models of the most approved construction, which is certainly one of the most perfect and splendid specimens of workmans.h.i.+p in this line that we have ever beheld, and would be a credit to any Coach Manufactory in the United States. It is aimed, in its construction, to secure the mail in the safest manner possible, under lock and key, and to accommodate three outside pa.s.sengers under a comfortable and complete protection from the weather.

It is worth going to see."

[64] Before the era of the c.u.mberland Road the price for hauling the goods of emigrants over Braddock's Road was very high. One emigrant paid $5.33 per hundred for hauling "women and goods" from Alexandria, Virginia, to the Monongahela. Six dollars per hundredweight was charged one emigrant from Hagerstown, Maryland, to Terre Haute, Indiana.

[65] _Ohio State Journal_, February 9, 1838. "The land mail between this and Detroit crawls with snails pace."--_Cleveland Gazette_, August 31, 1837. Cf. _Historic Highways of America_, vol. i., p. 29.

[66] 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.

[67] "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 _Sat.u.r.day 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.

[68] _Ohio State Journal_, August 9, 1837

[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 inst.i.tution. Cf. Allen's _The Blue Gra.s.s Region of Kentucky_, p. 38.

[70] The Virginian House of Burgesses met in the old Raleigh Tavern at Williamsburg, in 1773. (Woodrow Wilson's _George Was.h.i.+ngton_, p. 146.)

[71] For advertis.e.m.e.nt of sale of a c.u.mberland Road tavern see Appendix D.

[72] Mr. Edward P. Pressey in _New England Magazine_, vol. xxii, no. 6 (August, 1900).

[73] Grahame's _The Golden Age_, p. 155.

[74] "The proper limits of the road are hereby defined to be a s.p.a.ce of eighty feet in width--forty feet on each side of the center of the graded road-bed."--Law pa.s.sed April 18, 1870, _Laws of Ohio_, LVIII, p.

140.

[75] Everett's _Speeches and Orations_, vol. i, p. 202.