Stage Coach Travel

How did early settlers travel to and from Quincy? Americans tended to drift west from where they started, following lines of least resistance, which were the rivers and the drainage routes that became stage roads. Stage coaches were the first form of public transport between towns. In those days, if you wanted to travel, it was on foot, by boat, by horseback, or by wagon or cart. As the Post Office extended its reach and its contracts, construction of the stages gradually changed and morphed into the shape with which we are familiar. it was truly a democratic method of transport with everyone squeezed into the conveyance. Accidents, breakdown and robberies were three hazards to content with on any trip.

Since the roads then were not maintained or graded or even well marked, the roadbeds were rutted, strewn with rocks and/or boulders, full of holes and swampy places, with no bridges over most creeks and certainly no guardrails along steep hillsides. If the stage overturned, passengers would have to walk to the next town. Of course, the horse teams could also be blamed for some accidents. Careless or inattentive driving could be a disaster, as well as competition between companies, which led to racing to keep schedules. Travel was not for the faint of heart.

Accidents were more frequent than robberies, but bandits were feared the most. The easiest and least dangerous robbery was to creep up behind a slowly moving coach and cut the ropes holding a trunk or two onto the back platform. It was likely that the missing luggage or freight would not be discovered until the next stage stop. It is actually surprising that there were not more gangs of men committing armed robberies at this time. The Post in the “Great Mail” pouches often carried $50,000 to $100,000 in cash before the Postal Money Order was invented in 1864 and removed cash from the mail. This was on top of what the passengers themselves had to carry. Any needed funds for the journey had to be brought along.

The ruler of the road was the stage coach driver. The American driver was a character whose word was law for the passengers.  Since his wages were paid by the company rather than the passengers, the driver felt no need for subservience toward them. Occasionally a driver was thrown from the coach. Unlike the passengers who had a coach frame and each other, a driver had only the reins, his feet braced against the footboard and his balance. More than once a stage team arrived at the next stop driverless. The noise of the passage having masked the driver’s calls for help as the stage left him behind.

Stages usually stopped to change teams every twelve miles, thereby making the stagecoach tavern an important part of any journey. At one time on a sixty-two-mile stretch of the Pennsylvania turnpike, 63 taverns were functioning. Stage stops required good stabling for both the horses and passengers. Stage passengers required better sleeping arrangements than livestock drovers or the freight drivers who brought their own bedrolls. Each stage company patronized a different tavern, and the tavern owner paid a commission to the line for stopping at his facility.

Foreign travelers did not adjust well to American stage coach travel. The hardest concept for them to absorb was the equality of the tavern keeper to the passengers. In general, the barroom was the office of the tavern and across a hall would be a parlor for women and families to occupy.

All meals were served at a single table, with no preferential seating. It was easier on the help to place all the dishes on the table instead of serving each guest individually. There was no removal of dishes between courses, since all the courses had been placed on the table at once, another time saving device. Everyone helped themselves without waiting. Many foreigners were amazed to see Americans could finished a meal in less than a quarter hour.

Breakfast was the most anticipated meal of the day.  To meet the schedule’s promised arrival times, often the stage left at 2, 3, or 4 in the morning and travelled until seven or eight before its first stop. Breakfast menus could include buckwheat cakes, cold apple pie, beef steak, veal cutlets, sweetmeats, cheese, eggs and ham. Dinner at noon was the same menu with spirits instead of coffee and added meats such as game, and potatoes and hominy.  Wine was not served, usually ‘small cider, rum, whiskey and brandy’ were put on the table. Tea in the afternoon passed for supper.

The least tended to aspect of accommodations was the lodging.  Passengers were often on the road until nine pm, and as roads improved and night travel became more feasible, stages left as early as one a.m.  If the stage was late for any reason in arriving, the passengers hardly had enough time to eat before catching the next stage in their journey.

When there was time to rest, the charge of 25 cents or even 12 ½ cents was cheap enough but it did not guarantee a room to yourself, or even a bed to yourself. Most rooms held several beds. Travelers often were awakened by the candle of their landlord showing another guest to the other half of their double bed.  By the second half of the 1800’s things were improving.  Patrick Shireff, traveling east from Illinois remarked that “the hotels gradually improve on leaving Springfield, Illinois and many of those in the state of Ohio appeared to be everything a reasonable person could [wish], with the exception of the want of single-bedded rooms.” Accommodations in larger cities were more private.

Stage lines reached southern Illinois and struggled across it. By 1821 a stage line began from Vincennes, Indiana to St. Louis. And local stages radiated out from St. Louis, but the river was king.

The stage network was an industry which employed many people during its heyday, 1820 to 1840, before the railroads developed. Besides the drivers and tavern owners, there were ticket agents, managing agents for the stage line business, stable hands, help at the taverns, the coach smith, blacksmith and farriers and the farmers who raised the horses and the food they ate.

Beth Lane is the author of Lies Told Under Oath, the story of the 1912 Pfanschmidt murders near Payson, Illinois and a former Executive Director of the Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County.

Sources:

Gale, Neil. The Digital Research Library of Illinois History Journal™ : Stagecoach Travel in Early Chicago and Illinois.

Holmes, Oliver W. Stagecoach East. Washington D. C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983.

Mingay, G. E. “A Scottish Farmer in North America,” History Today, 13, no.10, (1963).

Shirreff, Patrick. A Tour Through North America. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1835.