314 Percy Wells Bidwell 



Boston, thus described the system in vogue: " . . . . the 

 stones, which for years had been thrown out of the way against the 

 walls, are thrown back, each side of the way is ploughed, the stones 

 are covered with dirt and the middle of the road is left the highest."* 

 Roads so constructed and so repaired were bound to be deep with 

 sand in summer and equally deep with mud in the fall and spring. 

 It is no wonder that travelers complained bitterly of them.^ 



Means of Conveyance. 



The primitive sort of conveyances used at this time is perhaps 

 the best commentary on the state of the roads. The farmer did 

 his errands, and sometimes carried his produce to the country store 

 or his grain to the mill, on horseback. The doctor, lawyer and 

 minister made their professional visits in the same way. Except 

 between towns and cities where stage-coach routes had been estab- 

 lished,^ journeys both long and short were made in the saddle. For 

 the transportation of bulky produce, ox-carts of a construction sub- 

 stantial enough to defy the worst roads were employed. Chaises 

 with two wheels had been introduced in some towns about the mid- 

 dle of the eighteenth century, but four-wheeled wagons did not make 



' Series I. Vol. 3, p. 18. 



^ A traveler from Providence, R. I., to Pomfret, Conn., wrote: "In May, 1776, 

 I went to Pomfret, thirty-six miles in a chaise; the road was so stony and rough, 

 that I could not ride out of a slow walk, but very little of the way; I was near two 

 days in going, such was the general state of our roads at that time." Quoted in 

 Field, Edward. The Colonial Tavern, p. 281. 



^ Stage-coaches began to run regularly between Boston and the larger towns 

 in eastern New England, especially along the coast, about 1760, and between 

 Boston and New York some ten or twelve years later. Passengers and a small 

 amount of personal baggage, and later, after the establishment of the Federal 

 Post Office in 1782, the mails also were transported in this way. The establish- 

 ment of these lines must have led to the improvement of the roads over which 

 they passed and later they probably stimulated the building of turnpikes. Other- 

 wise they had little effect upon internal trade. 



An instance of the connection between the rise of the stage-coach business and 

 the building of turnpike roads is found in the case of Captain Pease, a pioneer 

 stage-coach driver and owner, who began a line from Boston to Hartford in 1783. 

 Of him a historian of Shrewsbury, Mass., writes: "His long career as a stage driver 

 gave him abundant cause to realize the bad state of the roads and the necessity 

 for better ones. After long and earnest efforts he procured from the Govern- 

 ment the first charter granted in the State for a turnpike, and it was laid out in 

 1808 from Boston to Worcester through South Shrewsbury ... He lived 

 to see it completed and to see the benefit it was to the public." Ward, Eliza- 

 beth. Old Times in Shrewsbury. New York. 1892. p. 55. 



