Colonial Travel
THE vast body of colonists stayed at home. They lived quiet and
uneventful lives, little disturbed by the lust for travel and seldom
interrupted by journeys from their place of abode. There were, of course,
always those whose business took them from one colony to another or over
the sea to the West Indies or to England; there were the thousands, north
and south, who at one time or another went from place to place in an
effort to improve their condition; and, finally, there were the New
Englanders, the Germans, and the Scotch-Irish who, in ever-increasing
numbers, wandered westward towards the uplands and the frontier, led on by
that unconquerable restlessness which always seizes upon settlers in a new
land.
Of these the most enterprising wanderers and the forerunners of the
tourists of today were the voyagers overseas to England, the Continent,
and the West Indies for business, education, health, and pleasure. Many
who went to England on colonial employment or for education, took
advantage of the opportunity to see the sights or to make the "grand tour"
of the Continent. One of the earliest of New Englanders to visit the
Continent was John Checkley of Boston, who studied at Oxford and traveled
in Europe before 1710. Another was Thomas Bulfinch, whose father wrote to
him in Paris in 1720: "I am glad of your going there, it being, I doubt
not for your good, though somewhat chargeable. " Elizabeth, wife of
Colonel Thomas Jones, who went abroad in 1728 for her health, had one of
her husband's London correspondents look after her, provide her with
money, arrange for her baggage, and purchase what was needful. She stayed
for a time in London, where she consulted Sir Hans Sloane, went to Bath,
where she took the waters, and was gone from home nearly two years.
Laurens went to England in 1749, a nine weeks' voyage, to study the
conditions of trade, and traveled on horseback to Manchester, Birmingham,
Worcester, and other towns, where he was entertained by merchants to whom
he had letters or with whom he did business. The many Virginians —
Randolphs, Carters, and others — who were at Gray's Inn or the Middle
Temple, probably traveled elsewhere to some extent, while of the South
Carolinians who visited Europe Ralph Izard went to Dijon, Geneva,
Florence, Rome, Naples, and Strasbourg. Charles Carroll of Maryland was
away from home at his studies and on his travels for sixteen years, living
at St. Omer in France, studying law in England, visiting the Low
Countries, and even planning to go to Berlin, which he did not reach,
however, partly for lack of time and partly because he heard that the
accommodations were bad and the roads were infested with banditti. Many
members of the Baltimore family traveled widely; Copley the painter in
1774 went to Rome, Marseilles, Paris, and London; Boucher speaks of a
"gentleman-clergyman" in Virginia who had made the grand tour and was
exceedingly instructive and entertaining in his conversation; and
doubtless there were many others who made trips to foreign cities but
whose travels remain unrecorded. On the other hand members of English and
Scottish families were often widely scattered throughout the colonial
world and travelers from the British Isles would occasionally go from
place to place in America visiting their relatives, trying new business
openings, or seeking recovery of their health.
Those who visited only the British Isles were very numerous. The voyage
from the colonies Was not ordinarily difficult, though the dangers of the
North Atlantic and inconveniences on shipboard in those days were
sometimes very serious. "We had everything washed off our decks," wrote
one who had just arrived in England, "and was once going to stove all our
water and throw our guns and part of our cargo overboard to lighten the
ship; four days and nights at one time under a reef mainsail, our decks
never dry from the time we left Cape Henry. " But despite the difficulties
ships were constantly coming and going, and ample provision for passengers
was made. The trip from London to Boston sometimes lasted only twenty-six
days, and five weeks to the Capes was considered a fine passage. Chalkley,
the Quaker, was eight weeks sailing from Land's End to Virginia, and
Peckover nine weeks and five days from London to New York. An Irish
traveler was forty-two days from Limerick to the same city. Sailing by the
southerly route and into the Trades made a longer voyage but a pleasanter
one, and those who were able to pay well for their cabins and to take
extra provisions were in comfort compared with the servants and other
emigrants, whose experiences below decks aft in the steerage during stormy
and protracted voyages must have been harrowing in the extreme.
There was scarcely a merchant ship but took on passengers going one way or
the other, and of the life on board we have many accounts.
Hundreds of colonists went to the West Indies to search for employment, to
investigate commercial opportunities, to visit their plantations — for
there were many who owned plantations in the islands — or merely to enjoy
the pleasures of the trip. The voyage, which was in any case a
comparatively short one, varied slightly according to the port of
departure and the route. It usually occupied two weeks from the Northern
colonies. David Mendes thought a trip of twenty-nine days from Newport to
Jamaica a very dismal and melancholy passage, but another Rhode Islander
in 1752 estimated a trip to the Bahamas and back, including the time
necessary for selling and purchasing cargoes, at from two to three and a
half months. In Virginia it was customary to sail from Norfolk, the center
of that colony's trade with the West Indies.
Travel from one continental colony to another merely for pleasure was not
of frequent occurrence,as far as the colonists themselves were concerned.
It was more common for men and women from the South and the West Indies to
visit the North to recover their health and to enjoy the cooler climate
than it was for the Northerners to go southward. William Byrd, 3d, and his
wife planned to travel in the North in 1763, and in 1770 thirty-two people
from South Carolina went to Philadelphia, New York, Newport, and Boston
either as invalids or as tourists. Men on business were constantly moving
about from colony to colony. Visitors from England, Scotland, and the West
Indies made long journeys and were often lavishly entertained as they
passed from town to town with letters of introduction from one official or
merchant to another. James Birket of Antigua traveled from Portsmouth to
the Chesapeake in 1750, and the record of his journey is a document of
rare value in social history. Lowbridge Knight of Bristol went from
Georgia to Quebec in 1764. The travels of George Whitefield, the preacher,
Peter Kalm, the Swedish professor, Thompson, the S. P. G. missionary, and
Burnaby, the Anglican clergyman, are well known.'
Other interesting accounts will be found in the records of the Quakers
Edmundson, Richardson, Chalkley, Fothergill, Wilson. Dickinson, Peckover,
and Esther Palmer.
In 1764-1765, Lord Adam Gordon spent fifteen months going from Antigua
through the colonies to Montreal and Quebec, returning by way of New
England to New York, whence he sailed for England. In 1770 Sir William
Draper made the tour, with a party consisting of his nephew, his nephew's
wife, and a Mrs. Beresford. The visit of these two titled Britishers made
a considerable stir in American society and was duly chronicled in the
papers. The impression made by Lord Adam and others may be inferred from
Mrs. Burgwin's remarks to her sister: "In my last I was going to tell you
about the great people we had in town [Wilmington], really a colection of
as ugly ungenteal men as I've seen, four in number. Lord Adam is tall,
slender, of the specter kind intirely; Capt. McDonnel a highlander very
sprightly; the other two are Americans just come from England where they
have been educated, both very rich, which will no doubt make amends for
every defect in Mr. Izard and Wormly. "
Travelers in the early part of the century were obliged to go chiefly by
water, and they continued to use this method in the colonies south of
Pennsylvania in which the wide rivers, bays, and swamps rendered the land
routes difficult and dangerous. At all times, indeed, the waterways were
quicker and less fatiguing, particularly in the case of long journeys. The
travelers used the larger vessels, ships, pinks, barks, brigs,
brigantines, snows, and bilanders, for ocean voyages and frequently for
coastwise transportation from colony to colony.
For coastwise and West India trade the commoner colonial craft in use were
shallops, sloops, and schooners, of which those built in New England were
the best known. Bermuda sloops or sloops built after the Bermuda model,
which were prime sailers and often engaged in the colonial carrying trade,
were common in the South. For passage up and down inland waters such as
the Hudson River and Chesapeake Bay, and for supplying the big merchant
ships in Southern waters, sloops were the rule. Rafts contrived for
carrying lumber and partly loaded before launching with timber so framed
as to be almost solid, were floated down the rivers. For ordinary purposes
— for transporting wood, lumber, tobacco, rice, indigo, and naval stores
on shallow inland watercourses —the colonists used various kinds of
flatboats, each with its boss or patroon and often carrying mainsail and
jib for sailing before the wind. For short distances they used dingies,
yawls, and longboats as well as canoes fashioned in many sizes and shapes
— either dugouts or light craft made of cedar and cypress, propelled by
paddles or oars, and in some cases fitted with thwarts and steps for masts
and some even with cabins and forecastles.
Flat-bottomed "fall-boats " were used for freighting and passenger travel
on the Connecticut River above Hartford, but they had no sleeping
accommodations and passengers had to put up for the night at taverns along
the route. Such wealthy planters as the Carters on the Rappahannock had
family boats with four and six oars and awnings. The customs officials at
all the large ports had rowboats and barges. Some of these craft were
handsomely painted, and at New York, for example, carried sails, awnings,
a coxswain, and bargemen in livery.
As the colonists made little provision for the improvement of navigation,
shipwrecks were of all too frequent occurrence. Vessels ran ashore,
grounded on sand bars, or went to pieces on shoals and reefs. Many
lighthouses were built between 1716 and 1775, chiefly of brick and from
fifty to one hundred and twenty feet high, but the lights were poor and
unreliable. The earliest beacon showed oil lamps in a lantern formed of
close-set window sashes. The most important early lights were in Boston
Harbor, off Newport, on Sandy Hook, on Cape Henry, in Middle Bay Island,
Charleston, and on Tybee Island, Savannah, and toward the end of the
period in Portsmouth Harbor and at Halifax. The Boston light had a glazed
cage, roofed with copper and supported on a brick arch. The lamps had to
be supplied with oil two or three times in the night and even though they
were snuffed every hour the glass was never free from smoke. Not until the
lighthouse at Halifax was erected in 1772 was a better system adopted. In
many of the more important and dangerous channels, as at the eastern end
of Long Island Sound, in the North Carolina inlets, and among the bars of
the Southern rivers, buoys were placed, often at private expense, and
everywhere pilots were required for the larger vessels entering New
London, New York, and other harbors, passing through the Capes of
Virginia, navigating Roanoke and Ocracock inlets, going up from Tybee to
Savannah, and sometimes on the more dangerous reaches of the rivers.
As population increased and settlement was extended farther and farther
westward from the region of coastwise navigation to areas not easily
reached even from the rivers, the colonists were forced to depend more and
more upon travel by land. Trails were widened into tote roads and bridle
paths, and these in turn into carriage roads, until they grew into
highways connecting towns with towns and colonies with colonies. The
process of developing this vast system of pathways through the back
country was slow, expensive, and very imperfect. Nothing but sheer
necessity could have compelled men to drive these roads through the dense
forests and tangled undergrowth, across marshes, and over rocky hills;
nothing else could have made them endure the arduous and dangerous riding
through "the howling wilderness," as the colonists themselves called it,
particularly in the South and the back country, where the roads ran always
through lonely woods. The menace of treacherous ground, falling trees,
high river banks, and dangerous fords were real to every traveler. All the
records of these early journeys refer to the ever present danger from the
accidents and injuries of highway travel. In the South guides were
particularly necessary, for to miss one's way was a harrowing and
dangerous experience.
But necessity won the day. Tremendous advances were made in the eighteenth
century, when
ONE-HORSE CHAISE OF ABOUT 1780
In the Essex Institute, Salem, Mass. This is said to be the only chaise
of the Revolutionary period in any museum.
COLONIAL TRAVEL 215
the need of more rapid and extended communication by land became
imperative and the postal service in particular was demanding better
facilities. The colonies now made strenuous efforts to improve their
roads, increase the number of their ferries, and build causeways and
bridges wherever possible. New England soon became a network of roads and
highways, with main routes connecting the important towns, country roads
radiating from junction points, and lanes, pent roads, and private ways
leading to outlying sections. Philadelphia became the terminus of such
roads from the country behind it, as those running from Lancaster, York,
Reading, and the Susquehanna. From Baltimore, Alexandria, Falmouth, and
Richmond roads ran westward and joined the great wagon and cattle
thoroughfare which stretched across Maryland and Virginia, by way of York,
the Monocacy, Winchester, and Staunton, to the Indian country of the
Catawbas, Cherokees, and Chickasaws.
The great intercolonial highways, which were also used as post roads, ran
from Portsmouth to Savannah. Starting from Portsmouth in 1760, the
traveler would first make his way over an excellent piece of smooth,
hard-graveled road available for stage, carriage, or horse, southward to
the Merrimac, which he would cross on a sailing ferry, and thence proceed
by way of Ipswich to Boston. William Barrell started on this trip by stage
in August, 1766, but, finding the vehicle too crowded for warm weather got
out at Ipswich and finished the journey in a chaise. From Boston one would
have the choice of four ways of going to New Haven : one by way of
Providence to New London; a second by way of Providence, Bristol, and
Newport, a troublesome journey involving three ferry crossings; a third
over the Old Bay road to Springfield and thence south through Hartford and
Meriden; and a fourth, much used by Connecticut people, diagonally through
the northeastern part of the colony, crossing the dangerous Quinebaug and
Shetuckit rivers, and reaching New Haven by way of either Hartford or
Middletown. At Springfield, if the traveler wished, he could continue
westward to Kinderhook and Albany along a road used by traders and the
militia, or at Hartford he could take through northwestern Connecticut one
of the newest and worst roads in New England, to be known later as the
Albany turnpike. Lord Adam Gordon, who passed over this road in going from
Albany to Hartford in 1765, described that section which ran through the
Greenwoods from Norfolk to Simsbury as "the worst road I have seen in
America, " and the colony itself so far agreed in 1758 as to consider it
"ill-chosen and unfit for use and not sufficiently direct and convenient.
" Though efforts were made to repair it, the road remained for years very
crooked and encumbered with fallen trees.
Once he had reached New Haven, the traveler would find that the road to
New York, which stretched along the Sound, still required about two days
of hard riding or driving. These Connecticut roads had indeed a bad
reputation. The traveler's progress was interrupted by troublesome and
even dangerous ferries and he frequently had to ride over much soft,
rocky, and treacherous ground. Mrs. Knight described their terrors in
1704; Peckover says in 1743 that he "had abundance of very rough, stony,
uneven roads "; Birket in 1750 calls parts of them "most intollerable" and
"most miserable"; and Barrell on "old Sorrell" was nearly worn out by them
sixteen years later. Though Cuyler of New York, who went over them to
Rhode Island in 1757 in a curricle or two-horse chair, failed to complain
of his journey, his good nature may be due to the fact that he went for a
wife, "a very agreeable young lady with a gentle fortune." Quincy
preferred to take boat from New York to Boston rather than face the
inconveniences of these notorious roads. Many travelers took a sloop from
Newport or New London, and by going to Sterling or Oyster Bay, in order to
avoid the pine barrens in the center of Long Island, and proceeding thence
to New York, they not only saved fifty miles but also had a better road.
There was a ferry from Norwalk to Huntington, but that was chiefly for
those who desired to go to Long Island without taking the roundabout
journey through New York.
The traveler might go to Albany from New York, either by sloop or by road,
preferably along the eastern bank. If he were going southward, he might
select one of three ways. He could cross to Paulus Hook (now Jersey City)
by ferry or could go to Perth Amboy by sloop through the Kill van Kull and
Staten Island Sound, or by ferrying to Staten Island he could traverse the
northern end of the island and take a second ferry to Elizabeth-port. Once
on New Jersey soil, he would find two customary routes to Philadelphia:
one by road to New Brunswick and Bordentown and down the Delaware by
water; the other by the same road to Bordentown, thence by land to
Burlington, and across the river by boat. In 1770 a stage company offered
to make the trip in two days, and thus rendered it possible for a New York
merchant to spend two nights and a day in Philadelphia on business and be
back in five days, a rapid trip for the period.
Unless one were going into the back country by way of Lancaster and York
southwestward or from Lancaster or Reading northwest to Fort Augusta (now
Sunbury) and the West Branch, there was but one road which he could take
in leaving Philadelphia. It ran by way of Chester along the Delaware,
crossed the Brandywine toll-bridge to Wilmington, and ran on to Christiana
bridge, the starting point for Maryland and the Chesapeake as well as the
delivery center for goods shipped from Philadelphia for transfer to the
Eastern and Western shores. Here the road divided: one branch went down
the Eastern Shore to Chestertown, from which point the traveler might
cross the Bay to Annapolis; the other rounded the head of the Bay, crossed
the Susquehanna near Port Deposit, and so ran on to Joppa, Baltimore, and
Annapolis. Birket tells of passing over the Susquehanna in January on the
ice, and describes how the horses were led across and the party followed
on foot, with the exception of two women who sat on ladders "and were
drawn over by two men, who slipt off their shoes and run so fast that we
could not keep way with them." From Annapolis the traveler could go
directly to Alexandria by way of Upper Marlboro, or he could take a
somewhat more southerly route to Piscataway Creek and thence across the
Potomac by ferry until he reached the road from Alexandria to Richmond and
proceeded southward by way of Dumfries and Fredericksburg. From
Fredericksburg and Falmouth a road ran to Winchester through Ashby's Gap
and was much used for hauling supplies northwest from the stores there and
for bringing down flour and iron from the farms and Zane's iron works in
the Shenandoah. From Richmond one might go directly to Williamsburg, cross
the James at Jamestown by the Hog Island Ferry, and continue by a rough
road through Nansemond County, skirting west of the Dismal Swamp to
Edenton; or he might cross the James farther down the peninsula at Newport
or Hampton, go to Norfolk by sloop, and thence continue south on the other
side of the swamp by way of North River, and southwest through the
Albemarle counties to the same destination. Another road which ran through
Petersburg and Suffolk was sometimes used.
The traveling and postal routes south of Annapolis were much less fixed
than those in the North, for transit by water was as frequent as by land,
and the possible combinations of land and water routes were many and
varied. According to the regulations of 1738, which for the first time
established a settled mail service from the North to Williamsburg and
Edenton, the postrider met the Philadelphia courier at the Susquehanna,
rode thence to Annapolis, crossed the Potomac to New Post — the plantation
of Governor Spotswood, the deputy postmaster-general, on the Rappahannock
just below Fredericksburg — and ended his trip at Williamsburg, whence a
stage carried the mail to Edenton by way of Hog Island Ferry and Nansemond
Court House. The uncertainties of the Eastern Shore postal connections as
late as 1761 can be judged from a letter which John Schaw wrote in that
year: "You'll observe," he says, "how difficult it is to get a letter from
you, that post office at Annapolis being a grave of all letters to this
side of the Bay. I am sending this by way of Kent Island, and am in hopes
it will get sooner to you than yours did to me."
From Edenton there was but a single road which ran as directly as possible
to Charleston, but nevertheless it was long, arduous, and slow. There were
many rivers to be crossed, including a five-mile ferry across Albemarle
Sound, detours to be made around the wide mouths of the Pamlico and the
Neuse, and much low and wet ground to be avoided. Frederick Jones took six
days to go from Williamsburg to New Bern. Schoepf records how he was
delayed at Edenton four days because the ferryman had allowed his negroes
to go off with the boat on a pleasure excursion of their own — an
indulgence which shows that even after the Revolution travelers in that
section were few and far between. From New Bern to the Cape Fear or
Wilmington was not a difficult journey, for Peter du Bois accomplished it
on horseback in 1757 with no other comment than an expression of
satisfaction at the fried chicken and eggs that he had for breakfast and
the duck and fried hominy that he ate for dinner. From Wilmington, after
ferrying over to Negro Head Point with bad boats and very poor service in
1764, the traveler might continue, by a lonely, desolate, and little
frequented way, to Georgetown and Charleston. It was a noteworthy event in
the history of the colonies when the firstpost stage was established in
1739 south of Edenton and postal communication was at last opened all the
way from Portsmouth and Boston through the principal towns and places in
New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina to
Charleston, and even thence by the occasional services of private
individuals to Georgia and points beyond. At Charleston, which was the
distributing center for the far South, the road branched, and one line
went back through Dorchester, Orangeburg Court House, and Ninety-Six, to
the towns of the lower Cherokee, a route used by caravans and Indian
traders; another turned off at Dorchester for Fort Moore and Fort Augusta
on the upper Savannah; and a third curved away from the coast to Savannah
to avoid the rivers and sounds of Beaufort County. In 1767 the mail was
carried from Savannah to Augusta and on to Pensacola by way of St. Marks
and Appalachicola, but the journeys were dangerous and sometimes the
postman could not get through on account of raids by the Creek Indians.
Land travel before 1770 had become very common even in the South. Laurens
wrote to John Rutherfurd of Cape Fear: "I believe you are the greatest
traveler in America. You talk of a 400 mile ride as any other man would
one of 40. I hope these frequent long journeys will not prejudice your
health." Laurens himself usually went by boat to visit his plantations in
Georgia — a single day's journey instead of two by horseback; but in 1769
he went off for seven weeks almost a thousand miles through the woods to
visit his upriver properties. Governor Montagu in 1768 went all the way
from Boston to Charleston by land; and the Anglican missionaries traveled
long distances in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina to visit their
parishioners and baptize the children. Merchants are known to have
journeyed far to collect their debts. Allason speaks of going from forty
to ninety miles from house to house on collecting tours; merchants who
sold their goods "in the lumping way" rode up and down the river towns and
plantations in their efforts to dispose of their consignments; and
itinerant pedlars, with their horses and packs, wandered on from place to
place, South as well as North, retailing their wares.
Though journeying by land was at all times an arduous experience, it was
particularly difficult during heavy rains and freshets, in the winter
season, and when forest fires were burning. The winters were as variable
then as now. Often therewas no ice before February and many a green
Christmas is recorded.' In other years the season would be one of
prolonged cold, the winter of 17711772 having nineteen "plentiful
effusions of snow." Checkley records a frost in Boston on June 14,1735,
and a snowstorm on the 30th of October in the same year. In December,
1752, the temperature in Charleston dropped from 70° to 24° in a single
day, and there were many winters in the South when frost injured the crops
and killed the orange blossoms. Once, in the winter of 1738, no mail
reached Williamsburg for six weeks on account of the bad weather. Mrs.
Manigault of Charleston notes in her diary that the burial of her daughter
in February had to be postponed on account of the deep snow.
Rivers were crossed at fords whenever possible, but ferries were
introduced .from the first on the main lines of travel. All sorts of craft
were utilized for crossing: canoes for passengers, flatboats and scows for
horses and carriages, and sailing vessels,
'New England. " Feb. 12, 1703. Summer weather, no winter yet." Green's
Diary. Yet on the 28th of September following there were two inches of
snow. Preston in his diary says of the winter of 1754-1755: " This winter
was open, no sledding at all." Essex Institute, Historical Collections,
vol. yin, p. 222; vol. xi, p. 258, note.
226 COLONIAL FOLKWAYS
chiefly sloops, where the crossings were longer and therefore more
dangerous. Rope ferries were necessary wherever the current was swift,
though they were always an annoying obstruction on navigable rivers. At
much traveled places two boats were frequently required, one on each bank.
The ferryman was summoned usually by hallooing, by ringing a bell, or by
building a fire in the marshes. Licenses for ferries were issued and rates
were fixed by the Assembly in the North and the county court in the South.
Passage was ordinarily free to the postrider and to public officials, and
in Connecticut to children going to school, worshipers going to church,
and sometimes to militia men on their way to musters.
Bridges over small streams were built before the end of the seventeenth
century, but those over the larger rivers were late in construction,
because as a rule the difficulties involved were too great for the
colonial builders to cope with. Many of these bridges were the result of
private enterprise, and toll was taken by permission of Assembly or court.
First they were always built of timbers, in the form of "geometry work, "
with causeways. The raising of a bridge in New England was a public event,
at which the people of the surrounding country appeared to offer their
services. Bridges constructed over such swift rivers as the Quinebaug in
Connecticut had to be renewed many times, as they were frequently carried
away by ice or freshets. Stone bridges could be built only where the
distances were short and the water was comparatively shallow. Peter Kalm
mentions two stone bridges on the way from Trenton to Philadelphia. There
was a very good wooden bridge over the Charles River between Boston and
Cambridge, and others were built over the Mystic, the Quinnipiac, the
Harlem, the Brandywine, Christiana Creek, and
One of these is described by another traveler as follows: "Sd Bridge
stands on two pillars of stone and arched over makes three arches. The
middlemost is something largest and is about 20 foot wide. The river was
low it having been a very dry time. I rid through under the bridge up
streem to view the under side. I counted the stones that go round the
mouth of one arch and there is sixty. One arch hath eighty stones round
the mouth of it. They seem all of a size and seem to be about 18 inches
long and 2 broad and six inches thick. The lower end of each stone is much
less than the upper end and laid in lyme (as all the bridge is) and it
looks in the shape of an ovens mouth. The bridge is about 20 rod in length
and gradually rounding, the stones covered over on the top with earth and
wide enough for 2 or 3 carts to pass a breast. On each side is a stone
wall built up about 3 foot and an half, a flat hewn stone on the top about
4 foot in length and 12 or 14 inches wide and about 4 inches thick and an
iron staple let in to each joynt, one part of said staple in one stone and
the other part of said staple in the other stone, and 80 stones covers the
wall on one side which I counted and the other I suppose the same. The
bridge is much wider at each end than the midle and was built at the cost
of the publick for the benefitt of travelers."
228 COLONIAL FOLKWAYS
many of the upper waters and smaller streams in the South.
In the early days riding on horseback was the chief mode of traveling on
land, but in the seventeenth century wheeled vehicles appeared in Virginia
and to a limited extent in the North, though for the purpose of carting
rather than for driving. Hadley in Massachusetts had only five chaises in
the town before 1795. The usual styles were the two-wheeled and
four-wheeled chaises with or without tops, the riding chair, sulky, and
solo chair, which were little more than chaise bodies without tops, the
curricle, phaeton, gig, calash, coach, and chariot. Sedan chairs could be
hired by the hour in Charleston, and stagecoaches were in use in all the
colonies. Four-wheeled chaises drawn by two horses could be transformed
into one-horse chairs by taking off the front wheels, but coaches and
chariots were generally drawn by four, six, and even eight horses.
Chaises, curricles, and phaetons were the rule in the North, and coaches
and chariots in Virginia and South Carolina; yet chairs and chaises were
common enough in the South, and
Hempstead, though mentioning a few chaises and chairs in New London, makes
it clear in his diary that he never rode in one himself. He traveled
always on horseback.
THE FAMILY COACH OF JAMES BEEKMAN, NEW YORK,
ABOUT 1760
In the collection of the New York Historical Society.
COLONIAL TRAVEL
Henry Vassall of Massachusetts had his coach and chariot as well as his
chaise and curricle. Many of the coaches and chariots were very ornate,
neatly carved, handsomely gilded, lined with dove-colored, blue, and
crimson cloth, and sometimes furnished with large front glass plates in
one piece, with the arms of the owner on the door panels. The harness was
bright with brass or silver-gilt metal work and ornamented with bells and
finery, and coach and horses were adorned with plumes. Equipages of such
magnificence appeared in Virginia as early as the first quarter of the
eighteenth century. Chaises were more somber, though occasionally set off
to advantage with brass hubs and wheel boxes. Though vehicles and harness
were at first usually imported from England, chaise making in the North
gradually developed into an industry, and chairs, chaises, and phaetons
were frequently exported to Southern ports. Beverley once wrote to England
for a set of secondhand harness from the royal mews, under the impression
that some of them were very little the worse for wear, but when the
consignment arrived he was greatly disappointed to discover that the
harness was "sad trash not worth anything. " In the Middle and New England
colonies people usually traveled in winter in sleighs. These vehicles are
described by Birket as standing "upon two pieces of wood that lyes flat on
the ground like a North of England sled, the forepart turning up with a
bent to slyde over stones or any little rising and shod with smooth plates
of iron to prevent their wearing away too fast."
We have now described in somewhat cursory fashion the leading
characteristics and contrasts of colonial life in the eighteenth century.
The description is manifestly not complete, for many interesting phases of
that life have been :left out of account. Little or nothing has been said
of trade and business, money, newspapers, the postal service, prose and
poetry, wit and humor, and the lighter side of government, politics, and
the professions. To have made the account complete, something of each of
these aspects of colonial life should have been included; but there are
limitations of space and of material. Extensive as is the evidence
available regarding the weightier aspects of early American life, there is
but a slender residue from the vicissitudes of history to throw any
sufficient light upon some of the habits, practices, and daily concerns of
the colonists in the ordinary routine of their existence. Our forefathers
on this continent were not given to talking about themselves, to gossiping
on paper and in print, however much they may have gossiped in their daily
intercourse, and to recording for future generations everyday matters that
must have seemed to them trivial and commonplace. They have left us only a
few letters of an intimate character, few diaries that are more than
meager chronicles, and scarcely any picturesque anecdotes or narrations
that have illustrative value in an attempt to reconstruct the daily life
of the colonist.
Perhaps the greatest omission of all in a book of this character is the
failure to speak of mental attitudes and opinions. What did the colonists
think of each other, of the mother country, and of the foreign world that
lay almost beyond their ken? One may readily discover contrasts in
government, commerce, industry, agriculture, habits of life, and social
relations, but it is not so easy for us nowadays to penetrate the
colonist's mind, to fathom his motives, and to determine his likes and
dislikes, fears and prejudices, jealousies and rivalries. In matters of
opinion the colonists, except in New England, were not accustomed to
disclose their inner thoughts, though it is not at all unlikely that large
numbers of them had no inner thoughts to disclose. Moreover the people
were of many origins, many minds, many varieties of temper, and grades of
mental activity, and, as was to be expected, they differed very widely in
their ideas on religion, conduct, and morals. They were Puritans, Quakers,
and Anglicans; they were English, French, Germans, and Scots; and they
were dwellers in seaports and inland towns, on small farms and large
plantations, in the tidewater, in the upcountry, along the frontier, under
temperate or semitropical skies.
As a consequence it is not to be wondered at that to the New Englander the
well-known hospitality, good breeding, and politeness of the Southerners
seemed little more than a sham in the face of their inhumanity and
barbarity towards servants and slaves, their looseness of morals, and
their fondness for horse racing, drinking, and gambling. Even Quincy
himself, no ill-natured critic, could find in Virginia no courteous
gentlemen and generous hosts but only "knaves and sharpers" given to
practices that were "knavish and trickish." Fithian was warned that when
he went to Virginia he would go "into the midst of many dangerous
temptations; gay company, frequent entertainment, little practical
devotion, no remote pretention to heart religion, daily examples in men of
the highest quality of luxury, intemperence, and impiety. "
Little more exact, on the other hand, was the Southerner's opinion of New
England, to him a land of pretended holiness and disagreeable self -
righteousness. He doubted the willingness of the New Englander to carry
out his promises or to live up to his resolves; he dubbed him a saint,
criticized his Yankee shrewdness, and charged him with business methods
that were little short of thievery. These sentiments were not confined,
however, to the people of the South. The Quakers also had a deep-seated
antipathy for New England, in part because they remembered with bitterness
and reproach the old-time treatment of their forerunners there. Stephen
Collins of Philadelphia once called the merchants of Boston "deceitful,
canting, Presbyterian deacons." Beekman of New York voiced a widespread
feeling when he charged the men of Connecticut with selling goods
underweight, "a cursed fraud," and added that "seven-eights of the people
I have credited in New England has proved to me [such] d—d ungreatful
cheating fellows ',hat I am now almost afraid to trust any man in
Connecticut though he be well recommended from others. " Often the lack in
the North of open-handed hospitality and a polite demeanor toward
strangers called forth remark. One traveler wrote that "the hospitality of
the gentlemen of Carolina to strangers is a thing not known in our more
northern region"; and John London of Wilmington said of New Haven, where
he lived for some time, that "in general the manners of this place has
more of bluntness than refinement and want those little attentions that
constitute real politeness and are so agreeable to strangers. " Such
criticism was not unknown from New Englanders themselves, for Dr. Johnson
once said that Punderson's failure as a clergyman was due to his "want of
politeness," and Roger Wolcott named censoriousness, detraction, and
drinking too much cider as the leading "blemishes" of Connecticut.
The fondness for innuendo and disparagement which these citations disclose
was a characteristic colonial weakness. Virginians would speak of the
ladies of Philadelphia as "homely, hard favored, and sour"; dwellers in
Charleston would deem themselves vastly superior to their brethren of
North Carolina; the old settlers of Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston
had little liking for the immigrant Germans and Scotch-Irish, were glad to
get them out of the tidewater region into the country beyond, and looked
upon them throughout the colonial period as inferior types of men, a
"spurious race of mortals," as a Virginian called the Scotch-Irish.
Dislikes such as these cut deeply and found ample expression at all times,
but were never more freely and harshly stated than in the years preceding
the Revolution. The Stamp Act Congress, which was a gathering of a few
high-minded men, was no real test of the situation. The Non-importation
Movement, as the first organized effort at common action against England
on the part of the colonists as a whole and the first movement that really
tested the temper of every grade and every section, made manifest, to a
degree unknown before, the apparently hopeless disaccord that existed
among the colonists everywhere on the eve of their combined revolt from
the mother country. But this disagreement was more the inevitable
accompaniment of the growth of national consciousness on the part of the
American colonists than it was the manifestation of permanent and
irreconcilable differences in their political, economic, and social life.
To the early colonists must be given the credit of having laid a broad and
stable foundation for the future United States of America, and their
subsequent history has been the indisputable record of a growing national
solidarity. Even the Civil War, which at first sight may seem conclusive
contradiction, is to be regarded as in its essence the inevitable solution
of hitherto discordant elements in the democracy which had their
beginnings far back in the complex spiritual and social inheritance of the
early colonial generations.
From the vantage point of the twentieth century, with its manifold legacy
from the past and its ample promise for the future, it has been
interesting to glance backward for a moment upon colonial times, to see
once again the life of the people in all its energy, simplicity, and vivid
coloring, with its crude and boisterous pleasures and its stern and
uncompromising beliefs. Those forefathers of ours faced their gigantic
tasks bravely and accomplished them sturdily, because they had within
themselves the stuff of which a great nation is made. Differences among
the colonists there indubitably were, but these, after all, were merely
superficial distinctions of ancestral birth and training, beyond which
shone the same common vision and the same broad and permanent ideals of
freedom, of life, opportunity, and worship. To the realization of these
ideals the colonial folk dedicated themselves and so endured.
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