An Adventuresome Editor Recalls Stagecoach Travel

In the days before the railroad, the most popular one of the most popular ways of travelling was by stage coach. The following excerpt from Charles Fenno Hoffman's 1835 book “A Winter In The West. By A New Yorker.” is provided to give a clearer idea of what stagecoach travel was like in this era. Hoffman resigned his position as editor of the Knickerbocker in 1833, and decided to tour the new Northwest Territories.

"The clock was striking three, when at the call of the porter I rose and descended to the bar-room. The attentive landlord, himself in waiting, was ruminating before a large coal-fire; and stretched upon the floor in a corner lay the tired domestic, who, having just fulfilled a part of his duty, in awakening the various passengers, was catching a dog-nap before the stage-coach should drive to the door. The flavour of last night's potations still hung around the scene of so many symposia, and the fragrance of more than one recently smoked segar stole, charged with the aroma of whiskey, upon the senses.

"Cold as it was, I was not sorry to snuff a less scented atmosphere, as each stage that passed the house in succession hurried me vainly to the door. My own proper vehicle came at last, and by the light of the stage lamps,--the only ones, by-the-by, which shone through the sleeping city,--I climbed to the coachman's box, and took the traveller's favourite seat by his side… Wrapped up warmly, I rode along, watching the cheerful dawn, streaking the east with pencillings of light, and dappling with ruddy rays the broad bosom of the Ohio… The November winds had been at work in the woods. The gorgeous panoply of autumn no longer hung on the forest. The trees stood bare in the growing sunlight, and the thick-strewn leaves rustled to the tread of the gray squirrel that leaped from the naked boughs by the roadside.

"We stopped to breakfast at a low log-built shantee, within a stone's throw of the river, and being asked into a narrow chamber, half-parlour, half-kitchen, I had for the first time an opportunity, as we collected around the breakfast table, to survey my fellow-passengers. They were chiefly plain people, small farmers and graziers, returning perhaps from market, where they had been to part with their produce. Their manner, like most of our countrymen of the same class, was grave and decorous at table, to a degree approaching to solemnity, though they ate with the rapidity characteristic of Americans at their meals.

"The ceremony of the board commenced by the oldest man in the company taking a beef-steak before him, and cutting it into small pieces with his own knife and fork. He then passed the dish around to each, and finally, when all were served, helped himself. The bread was in the same way circulated by the youngest of the company, and then, each having as fair a start as his neighbour, we all fell to work with a lustihood that would have done beef-eating Queen Bess good to witness.

"The appetites of those present were generally sharpened by the morning's ride; and, maugre the huge piles of buckwheat-cakes that smoked along the board flanked each by a cold apple-pie, the beef-steak was decidedly the favourite dish; and was meted out again and again, by the same knife and fork that played a private part the whiles for the stout yeoman who thus plied them for the public good... There was but one of my fellow-passengers I observed, who ate with his fork.

"He was better dressed, and sat somewhat apart from the rest, interchanging with them none of the homely but hearty civilities which they proffered to each other. I set him down as some Eastern shop-keeper, who, though he might have been envied by a Chinese for the chop-stick dexterity with which he managed to pitch the morsels of food into his mouth with a two-pronged fork, might better have passed the time spent in acquiring his sleight-of-hand in gaining real good-breeding, from those whom he evidently set down in his own mind as far beneath him.

"Pursuing our journey, ...we reached the thriving town of Beaver about noon, and crossing the creek of the same name by a high wooden bridge, struck inland, and soon lost sight of the beautiful Ohio in the broken country that here approaches its banks. A cold shower drove me for protection inside the stage, and there, wrapping myself up as comfortably as I could, I passed the night. The passengers had gradually dropped off along the road, leaving only a solitary country merchant and myself. We beguiled the time for a while in conversation, and then, as midnight came on, and he grew drowsy, I resigned myself to the same influence that had begun to send sounds anything but musical from his "innocent nose."

"Awaking with the sun, I found that we were in the midst of new clearings, the road leading through a level country as far as the eye could reach, and having its sides faced beyond the fields with trees, which, with tall stems and interlacing summits, stood like giants locking arms along the highway. I must now be in Ohio, thought I; and I was right. The effect of this magnificent vegetation was striking even at this season; but after riding for half a day along such a wood, with not a valley to break the view, nor a hill to bound it, it could not but be monotonous. We passed two lakes in the course of our ride, approaching one of them near enough to see that it was a clear sheet of water, with a pretty yellow sand-beach.

"The most interesting objects on this route are decidedly the growing towns and hamlets which abound along the road. Some of them have been manufactured only this season; and it is really surprising to see rude log huts of two years' date standing side by side with tasteful edifices..."