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Boston Post Road

When Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Honeymooned (and Partied) in Westport, Conn.

In 1920, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald honeymooned in Westport, Conn., so he could write, she could swim and they could both party their brains out.

The Fitzgeralds reigned as the king and queen of the Jazz Age. He was 23, she was 19, and their reckless high spirits – plus their drinking — had gotten them kicked out of several New York hotels.

American literature probably owes a debt of gratitude to the New York hotel managers who disinvited the Fitzgeralds. It was in Westport, after all, that Scott met a wealthy neighbor who inspired Jay Gatsby.

About a year after Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald honeymooned in Westport, they visited his family in Minnesota. Here Zelda is pregnant with their only child.

Westport

When Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald honeymooned in Westport, the town had not yet evolved into a tony New York suburb. But it was getting there. A 50-mile train ride to Times Square brought commuters to Times Square, and it began to attract literary and theater types from New York.

In the Fitzgeralds’ era, Westport brought literary critic Van Wyck Brooks, Dorothy and Lillian Gish and Broadway producer John Williams for weekends in the country. A New York culture took root in the town, and by 2014, the local historical society exhibited many of the 767 New Yorker covers produced by artists living in and around Westport.

Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Martha Stewart, Sandy Dennis, Harvey Weinstein and Shirley Jackson all made their homes in Westport.

Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald honeymooned in this Westport, Conn., house. Image Courtesy Google Maps.

How Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Honeymooned

The Fitzgeralds blew into town in a secondhand sports car in May of 1920. Neither had a clue how to keep house, so closets filled with dirty laundry and neither of them cooked. Eventually they hired a house boy named Tana.

Earlier that year, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s debut novel, This Side of Paradise, sold out within four days of publication. It won him celebrity, a healthy income and Zelda’s Sayre’s hand in marriage.

Scott and Zelda wed on April 3, 1920 in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and frolicked in New York City. But Scott needed to get back to writing his second novel, and so they honeymooned in Westport from May to September. Zelda rented a large colonial home where he had a separate room in which to write. She could also swim every day. Their neighbor, a multimillionaire named F.E. Lewis, let her cut across his property to walk to Compo Beach.

Compo Beach

Lewis had inherited a fortune – what would amount to $300 million in today’s dollars — and he lived on a 175-acre estate called Longshore.

Today, it’s the Inn at Longshore, hosting corporate events and destination weddings. Back then, Lewis threw extravagant parties that Scott and Zelda attended. They weren’t the only celebrities he invited. Dancer Anna Pavlova, magician Harry Houdini and movie star Marie Dressler came too. At one party he featured camels, elephants, vaudeville acts and a cowboy and Indian show. Theatrical producer David Belasco, mentioned in the Great Gatsby, came, and John Philip Sousa wrote music for one of his parties.

Drinking Again

When Scott and Zelda didn’t go to New York for weekend parties they invited friends to stay with them. They drank heavily and fought often.

A Princeton friend came to visit and wrote,

Went to visit Fizgeralds in Westport…stayed drunk for two weeks straight. Atmosphere of crime, lust, sensuality, pervaded the home.

Another classmate, critic Edmund Wilson, found the couple ‘reveling nude in the orgies of Westport.’

They tore along the Boston Post Road in their sports car with occasional stops at roadhouses to replenish their gin supply. Then Zelda wrecked the car by driving over a fire hydrant.

At a party, they reported a false fire alarm. According to one story, the firefighters asked where the fire was and Zelda pointed to her breast and said, “Here.”

Westport from across the Saugatuck River in 2010

Gatsby

After the Fitzgeralds honeymooned in Westport, they moved to a New York City apartment near the Plaza Hotel. They later moved to Great Neck, Long Island, from 1922 to 1924, then to Paris, all the while spiraling downward into alcoholism, madness and early death. Scott managed to finish only four novels.

For many years, people thought Scott Fitzgerald patterned the setting for his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, on Long Island.

Then in 1996, a New Yorker writer named Barbara Probst Solomon asked whether Gatsby included a blend of their time in Great Neck and that first beachy summer when Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald honeymooned in Westport?’

Author Richard Webb, Jr., grew up in Westport, and he was sure the answer was yes. In 2018 he published his book, Boats Against the Current: The Honeymoon Summer of Scott and Zelda: Westport, Connecticut 1920.

The book that tells the story of how Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald honeymooned in Westport.

The title alludes to the ending of Gatsby, one of the most famous in American literature:

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

This story about how Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald honeymooned in Westport was updated in 2023.

Images: Westport in 2010 by WalkingGeek via Flickr, CC by 2.0. Compo Beach by Carol M, Highsmith, estport United States Connecticut, 2011. August. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2012630296/.

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How Scottish POWS Were Sold as Slave Labor in New England

As many as 400 Scottish POWS captured in the Battles of Worcester and Dunbar were shipped to New England in the 1650s as temporary slaves to work in iron mills, saw mills and farms.

The Great Migration of Puritans had ended, and the colonists badly needed workers. Across the sea, Oliver Cromwell’s new government had the costly and vexing task of managing thousands of Scottish POWs. One solution: deport them to New England, Virginia and Barbados.

Some of the Scottish POWs sent to New England were sold as a group to work in the Saugus Iron Works or the saw mills of Berwick Maine. Others went to York as servants. Still others were sold individually.

The Puritan minister John Cotton defended the practice. He wrote, “The Scots, whom God delivered into your hands at Dunbarre, and whereof sundry were sent hither, we have been desirous (as we could) to make their yoke easy. Such as were sick of scurvy or other diseases have not wanted physick and chyrurgery. They have not been sold for slaves to perpetual servitude, but for 6 or 7 or 8 yeares, as we do our owne [indentured servants] …”

As one historian noted drily, “Cotton’s sanction deadened the New England conscience.”

Cromwell Captures Scottish POWs

Cromwell and his Puritan followers executed King Charles I in January 1649. The Scottish people had largely sided with Cromwell, but they turned on Cromwell and declared Charles’ son king.

In the summer of 1650, Cromwell and his forces invaded Scotland. The Scottish Parliament, in response, conscripted thousands of young Scottish men between the ages of 19 and 25, though some were as young as 12. They clashed at the short, brutal Battle of Dunbar. Within an hour, 12,000 Parliamentarians defeated 11,000 Scots, killing as many as 2,000 while losing only 20 men.

scottish-pows-cromwell-dunbar-andrew-carrick-gow

Cromwell at Dunbar by Andrew Carrick Dow

Cromwell’s army released thousands of sick and wounded Scotts, but marched the Scottish POWs like cattle to Durham, 100 miles away. Many perished of hunger or disease on the march, though some escaped. Some were executed.

In Durham, the English imprisoned the Scottish POWs in the castle and cathedral. About 1600 died of dysentery, disease or starvation. The English had them buried in mass graves, only recently discovered.

The Unity

Two months after the battle, 150 Scottish POWs boarded the Unity and sailed to London, then to Charlestown, Mass. The shipmaster, Augustine Walker, paid five pounds for each man and sold them for 20 to 30 pounds.

Technically they signed contracts agreeing to ‘indentured servitude,’ but in reality most spoke Gaelic and many couldn’t read or write.

About 50 went to the Saugus Iron Works, the first successful iron works in the colonies. It produced much-needed iron bars for tools, building materials and cooking implements. The Scottish POWs worked 12-hour days at hard, dangerous labor. They worked as woodcutters to supply the wood to make charcoal, or as forge hands, as blacksmiths, as miners and farmhands.

Saugus Iron Works

Another 25 Scottish POWs were taken to the Newichwannock River, now the Salmon Falls River in Berwick, Maine. They went with an Englishman named Richard Leader, who got hold of an abandoned mill. Leader put the Scottish laborers to work sawing Maine white pine trees, needed for the British Navy.

Valentine Hill also bought some of the Scottish POWs from the Battle of Dunbar, and worked them in his sawmills at Durham Falls and the Lamprey River in New Hampshire.

Battle of Worcester

Exactly one year after the Battle of Dunbar, Cromwell’s much larger force defeated 16,000 mostly Scottish army at Worcester, England.

It was the last battle of the English Civil War. Three thousand men died in battle, and 10,000 taken prisoner.

The Battle of Worcester.

According to tradition, the English lined up the Scottish POWs in order to shoot every tenth man. A Highlander named Micum McIntyre saw his number would soon be up, broke rank and ran for his life. A horseman chased after him and wounded him, but spared his life.

The English then drove the Scottish POWs like cattle to London.

A witness described them.

…all of them [were] stript, many of them cutt, some without stockings or shoes and scarce so much left upon them as to cover their nakedness, eating peas and handfuls of straw in their hands which they had pulled upon the fields as they passed.

In London, the English confined them outdoors on artillery fields. Again, many died of disease, starvation and exposure while the government debated what to do with them.

John and Sara

About 275 Scottish POWs were sent to Boston about the John and Sara, where Thomas Kemble, a Charlestown merchant, took them on consignment.

Kemble found a ready market among planters and mill owners for the human cargo, as the news spread about the first shipment of Scottish POWs. So when the second shipment arrived, Kemble easily sold the Scottish POWs in the Massachusetts towns of Boston, Charlestown, Cambridge, Dedham, Concord, Hingham, Ipswich, Reading and Salem.

Kemble sold others in Exeter, N.H., and in Durham, where he partnered with Valentine Hill. So many ended up in York, Maine, that for years the town had the nickname ‘Scotland.’

Servitude

Some of the Scottish POWs were sold individually as servants. Alexander Gordon, for example, ‘agreed’ to seven years of slavery under Samuel Stratton of Watertown. Under his contract, he could never leave his master’s premises without his permission and he couldn’t marry. He had to do everything Stratton told him to do, so long as it was legal.

Gordon complained to the court of ill-treatment and petitioned for his freedom, apparently without success. A sawmill owner in Exeter, N.H., named Nicholas Lissen bought him and six other Scottish POWs. His slavery did end, however, and he married the boss’s daughter, Mary Lissen. Alexander Gordon died in Exeter in 1697, and his children had many descendants.

Daniel Blacke, who came over on the John and Sara, probably got sold to the son of the Rev. Zechariah Symmes, one of Charlestown’s most prominent citizens. In 1654, Blacke assaulted and beat up his master, and a court sent him to prison in 1654. Blacke apparently left prison, married and had children. New York Gov. Frank S. Black traced his ancestry to the Scottish POW.

Freedom for Scottish POWs

The Scottish POWs were all still of marriageable age when freed from bondage, and many did marry. Some married Irish housemaids, also brought to the colonies as slaves. Few ever returned home to Scotland.

The lucky ones married the bosses’ daughters, won land grants and appeared on tax rolls.

Seven of Valentine Hill’s Scottish POWs, for example, were listed as taxpayers in Dover, N.H., after their slavery ended.

David Hume, who came over on the John and Sara, settled in Dedham, Mass., where his name morphed into Holmes. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the poet, was sixth in descent from him.

William Furbish (probably Farrabas, which became Forbes in Massachusetts) bought land in Kittery sometime before 1664, but was punished in 1681 for calling the King’s officials, ‘Divills and hell bound.’ Furbish apparently had not forgiven the English for the Battle of Dunbar. He had seven children and many descendants. Micum McIntyre, the Scottish POW who ran for his life, worked in Cocheco Mills and then got a land grant in Kittery, Maine.

2nd Class Citizens

The less lucky Scottish POWs drifted to Boston when their slavery ended, destitute and without jobs. Bostonians viewed them with scorn and classed them with African-Americans and Indians. On Jan. 6, 1657, several Scottish POWs formed the Scots’ Charitable Society for the relief of Scotsmen, the oldest charity in the Western Hemisphere.

By the 19th century, the Scots’ Charitable Society maintained the Scots Temporary Home in Boston and a burial plot in Mt. Auburn Cemetery.

Scots’ Charitable Society burial plot at Mt. Auburn Cemetery

Some of the Scottish POWs like David Hamilton survived Cromwell’s forces only to die at the hands of Indians. Hamilton came over on the John and Sara and got sold to a saw mill owner in Southern New Hampshire. Then he was moved to York, Maine, where he was killed on Sept. 28, 1691.

In 1656, Thomas Kemble spent two hours in the stocks for kissing his wife on Sunday. His daughter, Fanny Kemble Knight, took a famous horseback ride alone along the Boston Post Road.

End Notes

Note: We deliberately chose the words ‘slave,’ ‘slavery’ and ‘slave labor’ because we view any kind of forced labor as slavery. That includes sex trafficking, forced labor, debt bondage, domestic servitude or unlawful recruitment. There are tens of millions of slaves in the world today. If you want to comment that it’s racist to call white indentured servants slaves, we suggest a better use of your time would be to help one of the many anti-slavery organizations in the world today. A list of them can be found here.

Descendants of the Scottish POWs from the Battles of Dunbar and Worcester have a web site. The Saugus Iron Works is now a national historic site.

Images: Saugus Iron Works By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16192079; Mt. Auburn burial plot, By Bill Ilott from Boston, USA – https://www.flickr.com/photos/bostonphotosphere/4185723469/ Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10902508. Battle of Worcester By Published by Machell Stace – http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/civilwar/g5/cs2/s5/, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1943037. This story was updated in 2023.

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Six Indian Trails That Turned Into Scenic Highways and Byways

The Indian trails that crisscrossed New England go back to prehistoric times.

Native Americans migrated from summer to winter homes along the paths, often worn bare by centuries of travel. They used the trails for hunting, trading and making war.

When the English colonists arrived, they owed a debt of gratitude for the Indian trails, wrote Chester B. Price in his book, Historic Indian Trails of New Hampshire.

“[T]hanks to the Indians, the early New Englanders inherited a vast network of trails which not only covered the New England states, but extended as far west as the Rocky Mountains,” Price wrote.

The Mohawk Trail and Kennebec Trail were two of the most famous Indian trails in New England. During the American Revolution, they were used for military maneuvers. Benedict Arnold followed both, the Kennebec Trail to his regret and the Mohawk Trail to his satisfaction – he captured Fort Ticonderoga at the end of it.

We identified six scenic driving routes that follow old Indian trails, at least one in each state. Some have been researched more thoroughly than others. If you know of scenic old Indian trails that can be driven today, please share them in the comments section.

The Old Connecticut Path

The Oliver Ellsworth House lies near one of Connecticut’s Indian trails.

The Old Connecticut Path was one of the most important Indian trails, stretching from Massachusetts Bay to the Connecticut River. In the early 1630s Nipmuck Indians loaded their surplus corn onto birch-bark backpacks and walked from the Connecticut River to Massachusetts Bay. There they traded their corn for copper and iron goods and woolen cloth.

John Oldham, whose death started the Pequot War, followed the Old Connecticut Path to explore the continent’s interior in 1633.

In 1636, the Rev. Thomas Hooker spent two weeks on the Old Connecticut Path with his followers to Hartford.

The Rev. John Wareham also led his congregation along the Old Connecticut Path to Windsor, Conn. John Adams followed that route from Tolland to Windsor in 1771. “Today I rode through paradise,” Adams wrote.

There is no consensus the exact location of the Old Connecticut Path from beginning to end, though genealogical researchers are working on it.

They concluded Adams took a part of the path that goes from the Tolland Green Historic District through the towns of Ellington, East Windsor and South Windsor. Then he went on to the Palisado Green in Windsor.

Generally, the Old Connecticut Path went through Massachusetts heading west along the Charles River in Cambridge, curved south in Wayland through Framingham, to Webster and to Lake Chaubunagungamaug. In Connecticut it continued to Hartford, Wethersfield and Windsor.

Today you can download apps that guide driving tours along parts of the Old Connecticut Path in Northeast Connecticut. You can follow John Adams’ route, or you can take other routes that go from Webster, Mass., to Tolland or Woodstock in Connecticut. Another Connecticut route goes from Woodstock to the Willimantic River. (Click here for more information about driving tours.)

Waldoboro Mast Trail (Route 220)

Downtown Waldoboro, which hasn’t changed much since this postcard was published, lies at the end of one of Maine’s old Indian trails.

Maine’s Indians used a vast network of canoe trails to get around, and to reach them they used a series of Indian trails from the interior to the coast. Carrying places, or portages, gave Maine tribes mobility throughout the region. It also let them trade extensively with each other and later with Europeans.

Indian paths from inland Maine to the coast also gave the Native Americans access to fur, birch bark and moose hide. One such path is known as the Waldoboro Mast Trail, which now follows Route 220 from Montville to Waldoboro. It was the most direct route from Lake St. George to the shellfish beds of the seacoast.

Wawenoc Indian families migrated along the path from the seasonal hunting camp to the seasonal fishing camp. They hunted for moose and beaver in the winter and brought their fur as trade goods to the coast using snowshoes, sledges and toboggans.

English settlers found the trail a convenient route to carry masts and spars for hundreds of the King’s ships built in Waldoboro.

Today Route 220 winds through rural Maine from Montville, which has several historic properties and the Frye Mountain Wildlife Management Area. It passes through the scenic towns of Liberty, home of Lake George and the Davistown Museum, and Washington. Travelers know Waldoboro for its commercial clutter on Route 1, which includes the popular eatery Moody’s Diner. The town itself has five nature preserves, a traditional downtown and eight sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

For a map of Route 220, click here.

Mohawk Trail

The Mohawk Trail.

The Mohawk Trail, one of the most famous Indian trails, today is one of the most beautiful drives in Massachusetts. Originally a trade route, it connected the Atlantic Indian tribes with the Iroquois tribes in Upstate New York and Canada.

The trail became a warpath when Mohawk war parties traveled it to destroy Pocumtuck settlements. Metacomet, or King Philip, took the Mohawk trail in 1676 to try to enlist the Mohawks in his cause (he failed). Benedict Arnold then took the Mohawk Trail on his way to capture Fort Ticonderoga.

In 1914, the Massachusetts General Court declared the 63-mile Mohawk Trail a scenic tourist route – the first in the United States.

Today Routes 2 and 2A follow the Mohawk Trail in Massachusetts from Athol to Williamstown. Boosters claim 100 scenic and culture attractions, including the Hail to the Sunrise statue, the Bridge of Flowers, a natural bridge, glacial potholes, pre-revolutionary homes in Old Deerfield, old growth forests and views of the Berkshire and Taconic Mountains.

Highway markers designate the trail. Click here for Mohawk Trail driving tours.

Winnicoek Trail

A seaside estate at Little Boar’s Head along one of New Hampshire’s many old Indian trails.

The Winnicoek Trail ran along the coast from the Merrimack River in Massachusetts through Winnicoek, now Hampton, and along the seashore to the Piscataqua River at Strawbery Banke, now Portsmouth.

The Pennacook and Abenaki Indians migrated along the path in the summer to what is now Odiorne Point. It’s a wooded park along the shoreline with sweeping views of the Atlantic Ocean and the Town of New Castle.

When the English colonists arrived in 1635, they used the Winnicoek Trail as a bridle path. Today it’s scenic Route 1A, also known as Ocean Boulevard, running along New Hampshire’s 18-mile shoreline.

Ocean Boulevard passes the wide, sandy beaches in Salisbury, Mass., and Hampton, N.H., then climbs a rocky promontory. Seaside estates begin at the Little Boar’s Head historic district and continue through Rye. Take a detour along Route 1B to wind through the quaint town of New Castle and past the grand old Wentworth-By-The-Sea Hotel. Route 1A finally ends in Portsmouth, a historic seaside city with many fine restaurants and Federal style homes.

Click here for a map of Route 1A.

Pequot Path

Route 1A turns into Ocean Road and the Narragansett Pier.

For hundreds of years, Narragansett and Pequot Indians traveled along the Pequot Path. It ran about 69 miles near the mainland shore from Providence to New London, Conn.

In 1636, Roger Williams took the Pequot path through Apponaug (Warwick) on his journey from Providence to the trading post at Cocumscussoc (near Wickford). “It is admirable to see what paths their naked hardened feet have made in the wilderness in the most stony and rockie places,” he wrote. Williams probably saw a dozen Narragansett villages along 20 miles of the path.

English settlers began using the Pequot Path until it evolved into the lower part of the Boston Post Road. Today, parts of scenic Route 1A (not to be confused with US Route 1A) follow the old Pequot path along the South Coast.

Scenic Route 1A follows the shore from Wickford to Narragansett, past the John H. Chafee Nature Preserve, a good spot to get out and walk to Narragansett Bay. Or, take a detour to the Gilbert Stuart Birthplace. The road passes large, exclusive homes, with views of the bay and the historic Casey Farm. FInally it feeds into Ocean Road past Town Beach to Narragansett Pier.

Click here to see how the Lower Post Road follows existing roads in Rhode Island.

Route 22A

Vergennes, a city that grew up along one of Vermont’s Indian trails.

Route 22A through the Lake Champlain Valley in Vermont was once part of a network of well-worn Indian trails linking villages and other overland trail networks. The western Abenakis of Vermont also used waterways such as the Connecticut River and Lakes Champlain and Memphremagog.

The St. Francis Indians came down from Canada along the trail by Lake Champlain to find warmer fishing grounds. The trail finally stretched to the Bronx, N.Y., where it became known as ‘the road to Bedford and Vermont.’ Today Vermont Route 22A is a continuation of New York Route 22A and a scenic drive in foliage season.

Route 22A goes from Ferrisburgh to historic Vergennes, Vermont’s oldest city. It then runs through Addison, Bridport, Shoreham, Orwell and Fair Haven on the New York border. Along the way lie the Chimney Point State Historic Site, dairy farms, rolling hills, white church steeples, and country inns.

Images: Old County Jail and Museum, Tolland, Conn. By Photograph by Greg O’Beirne – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1391441; Hail to the Sunrise, By This mediaToddC4176 (talk)Original workJoseph Pollia, 1893-1954. – self-made, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36285807; Bridge of Flowers By FFM784 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61250392; https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57432594; Little Boar’s Head By Teemu08 at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1798424; Narragansett Pier By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57432594.

This story about New England Indian trails was updated in 2023.

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The Boston Post Road Historical Markers That Get The Facts Wrong

The historical markers along the Boston Post Road are many, but their history is often fake.

One of the historical markers along a Boston Post Road milestone in East Brookfield, Mass.

Since 1673, post riders have ridden the old road to deliver mail between New York and Boston. The Boston Post Road has three major branches: the Lower Post Road along the Long Island Sound through Providence; the Upper Post Road from New Haven through Springfield; and the Middle Post Road, which diverges from the Upper Road in Hartford and runs east to Boston by way of Pomfret.

Many of the milestones set down in the 18^th century still lie next to the old road. Next to some of them are historical markers that don’t quite get it right.

As Benjamin Franklin, deputy postmaster general from 1753-74, once wrote, “Historians relate, not so much what is done, as what they would have believed.”

Fake Historical Markers

Sometimes the Post Road historical markers simply fall short of telling the whole story. There’s a historical marker in front of the D’Angelo’s sub shop on Rte. 20 in Marlborough, Mass., which used to be the Upper Post Road. The marker in 2014 read, ““Here the early circuit courts convened, and stage coaches changed horses, and historic personages tarried.”

The ‘historic personage’? George Washington, who stopped there once on his way to take over the Continental Army in Cambridge, and then again on his presidential visit.

Historical marker in 1995 by the Quaboag Historical Society.

About 10 miles west on the Upper Post Road in Shrewsbury, Mass., two mile markers stand quite close to each other. One is near the entrance to Dean Park, the other across from the Artemas Ward House. One says it’s 35 miles to Boston, but the other says it’s 43 miles to Boston. (According to Google Maps, they’re both wrong: it’s 39.6 miles.)

That’s not the only thing that’s wrong about the Shrewsbury milestones. They’re also called the Franklin Mile Markers because Benjamin Franklin supposedly set them when he served as deputy postmaster general.

The Franklin Myth

The myth lives on that Benjamin Franklin either set out or ordered the Boston Post Road milestones.

It goes back at least to 1866, when the Boston Daily Advertiser reported on a milestone “erected by Benjamin Franklin, when he was postmaster general [he was deputy postmaster general] and was measuring the stage road between Philadelphia and Boston.”

Ben Franklin

Franklin supposedly rode the Post Road in a carriage, measuring out the miles in a homemade odometer and ordering his assistants to place the stones.

A historical marker next to the East Brookfield, Mass., milestone 62 says Franklin laid out the post road in 1753. The next milestone on mile 63 of the Upper Post Road has the date 1763 — 10 years later — carved into it.

Historical markers in Brookfield, West Brookfield and Spencer say Franklin set the milestone in 1767 — when Franklin was in Great Britain.

A historical marker in Northborough, Mass., manages to fudge the issue:

Franklin is said [emphasis added] to have measured the road himself with an odometer strapped onto his carriage wheel. One of Franklin’s granite milestones still survives on East Main Street – 33 miles from Boston.

Some of the historical markers along the Post Road say Franklin simply ordered the milestones planted. In 1995, the Quaboag Historical Society in West Brookfield put up a historical marker 62 miles from Boston that reads, “He ordered the erection of milestones for the purpose of regulating postal rates.”

It never happened.

The three branches of the Boston Post Road.

The Real Story

In 1971, Leonard Labaree, editor of the Benjamin Franklin papers at Yale, set the record straight.

Labaree wrote that after detailed study of the Franklin papers, “Not one document in this very substantial mass of contemporary documents has been found to contain so much as a single reference to roadside milestones, erected by Franklin or by any other persons.”

Further, he wrote, Post Office officials had neither responsibility nor budget for building and maintaining roads, bridges, ferries and milestones.

The editors of the Franklin papers concluded, “Milestones were of no particular use to the postal service, for the postriders were thoroughly familiar with the roads they traveled. The convenience of other travelers, on the other hand, was not the Post Office’s responsibility or concern. There seems to have been no good reason why Franklin should have spent time, energy, or Post Office money in erecting milestones, and…there is no documentary evidence that he ever did.”

A Boston Post Road rider. He didn’t need any historical markers.

Six Historic Post Offices

New England is dotted with historic post offices, from simple clapboard buildings to grand Beaux Arts palaces. In the earliest days of European settlement, the mail was delivered to coffeehouses and taverns.

In 1673, mail delivery was improved with the creation of the Boston Post Road, along which post riders carried letters and guided travelers. The Continental Congress established the U.S. Postal Service shortly after declaring independence.

New England is the site of the first post office, the oldest continuously operating post office and the second oldest continuously operating post office.

Many post offices moved from building to building and became something else. Sadly, the first post office in the United States was paved over and built up with modern commercial buildings.

Here are six historic post offices, one for each state. If you know of another, please mention it in the comment box below.

Greenwich Post Office

Restoration Hardware

The historic post office in Greenwich, Conn., is now a luxury retail store that sells items for historic restoration.

It was built in 1915, one of the last of the era when government buildings were designed by private architects and intended to raise the design standards of federal buildings outside of Washington, D.C.

The post office was nominated for the National Register of Historic Places because it is ‘an inspired example of urban design.’ The federal government sold it in 2012 to Peter Malkin, who owns the Empire State Building and chairs the board of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Malkin rented the building to Restoration Hardware, which describes itself as ‘a curator of the finest historical design the world has to offer.’ The interior of the post office was completely gutted to accommodate the store, proving that historic preservation doesn’t necessarily begin at home.

The Greenwich Post Office is part of the Greenwich Avenue Historic District, which includes 162 structures, mostly commercial and municipal buildings.

310 Greenwich Ave., Greenwich, Conn.

Castine Post Office

The Castine Post Office is the second-oldest continuously operated post office in the United States, according to the USPS historian. In 1833, the federal government began leasing the building, built in 1817, and later bought it.

Castine is a picturesque seacoast town listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was settled by Europeans seven years before the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth. Its public library is the oldest in Maine.

43 Main St., Castine, Maine

Old Fairbanks Tavern

The current neighborhood of the Fairbanks Tavern

A tavern run by Richard Fairbanks became the first post office in the United States. The Puritans had brought with them the European practice of delivering mail to coffee houses and taverns. On Nov. 6, 1639, the General Court ordered that the Fairbanks tavern was the place ‘for all letters which are brought from beyond the seas.’ Fairbanks was to take care that they be ‘delivered or sent according to their directions.’ He was given a penny for every letter he delivered.

Benjamin Franklin, a Boston native, became the first postmaster in the United States in July 1775 under the Continental Congress. He served for fewer than four months.

The Old Fairbanks Tavern is located approximately at 244 Washington St., Boston, once known as ‘Newspaper Row.’

Former Santuit Post Office

If you’re looking for a historic post office building in Massachusetts, head to Cape Cod. The Santuit Post Office in Barnstable is a typical seaside cottage except that it served Santuit Village as a post office from 1846 to the 1970s. It’s now a private home on Main Street.

Hinsdale Post Office

Hinsdale Post Office

The clapboard post office in Hinsdale, N.H., celebrated its 200^th birthday in 2016. It’s the oldest continuously operating post office in the United States.

Nathan Babbitt appointed himself Hinsdale’s first postmaster in 1815 and had the building constructed the next year. The post office tucked in a corner of what was then a general store. Eventually the post office took over the entire first floor. The original brass postal boxes date from the 19^th century.

In the early 20^th century, the post office survived a fire that destroyed Town Hall next door.

It marked its bicentennial with a celebration that included music, a cake, tote bags and T-shirts.

13 Main St., Hinsdale, N.H.

Providence Post Office

U.S. District Courthouse

As in Greenwich, Conn., the Providence Post Office was designed by an architectural firm. Clarke & Howe of Providence won the design competition. Their Beaux Arts building was considered ‘artistic’ and ‘excellently planned for its purpose.’

Congress authorized $1 million to be spent on the building, which was also a courthouse and customs house. It was finished in 1908 and lauded as one of the finest federal buildings outside Washington, D.C. The post office and customs operations were relocated and the building became the U.S. District Courthouse.

Providence has another historic post office: the oldest automated postal facility. Built in 1960, it was the first to use machines to sort the mail. It’s still in operation.

The ‘first automated post office’ was honored with a stamp in 1960 over the objections of the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee, which called it ‘obviously self-serving.’ The stamp, however, proved popular.

Kennedy Plaza, Providence, R.I.

Grafton Post Office

Former Grafton Post Office

The old post office in Grafton, Vt., is part of a small cluster of buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built in 1855 for the town’s third postmaster. The little clapboard building was used as a post office for 103 years, until 1958. In 1938, it was lifted from its foundation by flooding caused by the Great New England Hurricane and moved to a new foundation.

The Grafton Historical Society bought the historic post office in 1962 and ran it as a museum until 1978. Now the society leases the building.

205 Main St., Grafton, Vt.

Images: Castine Post Office, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=696891; Santuit Post Office, By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52892609; By User:Magicpiano – Own work, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26869304; Grafton Post Office By Samturgeon – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21064003.

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6 Historic Stagecoach Stops You Can Visit

The history of New England’s post roads and their stagecoach stops mirror the history of the country. The roads date back to the Pequots who used the trails that grew into the post roads for generations. The same trails carried John Winthrop on his journeys from Boston to Springfield.

Traffic on the roads shrank as King Philip’s War turned them into dangerous gauntlets. They expanded again as the war ended and horses made travel more enticing and the mails more efficient.

The heyday of the stagecoaches in the 1800s really drove a blossoming of the post roads. They grew from the first Upper Post Road into a maze of roads that wound their way into every corner of New England.

These stagecoaches created economic booms wherever they went, bringing commerce as well as jobs. Stagecoach stops, needed every 12 to 20 miles or so, were essential, especially in the early days of the stagecoach era. These inns provided income to their owners, and many others: drivers, ticket agents, coach makers, blacksmiths, stable hands and farmers.

Today, the vestiges of the stagecoach era remain with us. Many of the roads New Englanders travel today were once used by the stagecoaches. And along those roads, some of the old stagecoach stops still serve up food, drink and comfort to the weary traveler.

Here are six still open to the public today, one in each New England state:

Old Riverton Inn

The Old Riverton Inn, one of Connecticut’s many, many stagecoach stops back in the day.

Several years before the American Revolution, stagecoaches and stagecoach stops appeared on the Upper Post Road from New York to Boston, and from Hartford to Norwich and Providence. The war interrupted service, but resumed when it wound down. Stagecoach service expanded quickly on the new turnpike roads and postal routes.

Levi Pease began a stage service between New York and Boston on the Upper Post Road. He got the mail contract for all of New England from the U.S. Congress in 1789. Then he expanded his business into Northern New England and to Albany.

By 1827 Connecticut had 26 stage routes. By then it took only 36 hours to travel between New York and Boston vs. the previous six days. Taverns were generally 12 to 18 miles apart. Drivers announced their arrival at stagecoach stops by blowing on a trumpet.

During the early part of the 19^th century, Connecticut developed the most complex network of toll roads in New England. The state had few centers of wealth like Providence or Boston, and market towns competed fiercely for the trade of the back country. Between 1792 and 1839, 1,600 miles of turnpike road were created in Connecticut. The Talcott Mountain Turnpike was a key part of the route from Hartford to Albany.

Jess Ives opened the Ives Tavern or Ives Hotel in 1796 along the Hartford-to-Albany Route in Riverton, Conn. Today it’s known as the Old Riverton Inn and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It overlooks a wild and scenic section of the Farmington River.

The artist who painted murals on the walls of the Hobby Horse Bar also painted murals for the 1936 New York World’s Fair. The inn features bar stools made of saddles on kegs.

For more information about the Old Riverton Inn, click here.

Coach Stop Inn

The Coach Stop Inn, one of the stagecoach stops along the way from Bar Harbor to Maine’s interior.

Stagecoach lines began regular service between Maine towns after the Revolutionary War. The first stages ran between Portland and Portsmouth, N.H., a journey that took three days in 1787. By 1825, a stage could make the journey between Bangor and Portland in 36 hours.

The Coach Stop Inn in Bar Harbor was built in 1804 for newcomers who came to build homes, farms and ships on Mount Desert Island. Known as the Halfway Tavern, it often hosted sailors in the early days. Patrons would arrive by sea and take a stagecoach from the tavern into Maine’s interior towns.

Wealthy patrons charmed by fresh air, beautiful scenery and hiking trails made Bar Harbor a fashionable summer resort during the Gilded Age. In 1947, a fire that burned much of Maine also destroyed some of Bar Harbor’s hotels and mansions. The oldest hotel to survive the fire is now the Coach Stop Inn, a luxurious bed and breakfast.

For more information, click here.

Longfellow’s Wayside Inn

The most famous of the stagecoach stops, The Wayside Inn.

The Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Mass., boasts that it’s the oldest operating inn in the United States. It has accommodated travelers along the Boston Post Road since 1716. Just a few miles down the road from historic Minuteman National Historical Park in Concord, it began life 300 years ago as Howe’s Tavern. David Howe ran it as an extension of his own home.

David handed the property to his son Ezekial – a soldier in Sudbury’s militia during the American Revolution. The Howe family continued to operate and expand the inn until 1861, serving traffic between Worcester and Boston.

The inn stopped operating as a traditional inn in 1861. The owners converted it into something more like a boarding house and dance hall.

But in 1862, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow sealed the inn’s place in history. Longfellow visited the building and published his now-famous Tales of the Wayside Inn in 1863. From that time on, the inn was the destination of tourists and literary pilgrims who wanted to see first-hand the inspiration for Longfellow’s book.

In 1923, the inn took another important step into immortality when automobile magnate Henry Ford bought the property. Ford then began the restoration and expansion that gave shape to the inn’s current configuration.

For more information, click here.

Coach Stop Restaurant & Tavern

The Coach Stop, one of New Hampshire’s many stagecoach stops in the early 19th century.

In 1786 the legislature in New Hampshire expanded the system of post roads to travel to four sections of the state. Though the earlier post roads moved mail and people between Portsmouth and some points west and north, only later did the routes reach deep into the western portion of the state.

One such line ran from Portsmouth across the state’s southern tier over to Amherst and back, creating the need for taverns and inns along the way.

Londonderry’s Coach Stop Restaurant & Tavern began life in 1810 as the home of the town’s doctor. Later in the 1800s it was maintained as Plummer’s Tavern, located at the junction of two post roads. One carried coaches east and west to Nashua and the other carried traffic north and south to Manchester and Concord. For a map of all stagecoach lines operating in New Hampshire in 1833, click here.

Today the restaurant and inn maintains much of its historical charm, with signs of the original elements of its days as a coach stop remaining intact.

For more information, click here.

Stagecoach House Inn

The Stagecoach House Inn, for many years one of the stagecoach stops along the New London Turnpike.

Settlers first came to Wyoming, a historic village in Richmond, Rhode Island, in 1757. Wyoming grew and prospered when the Brand’s Iron Works was founded across the Wood River in Hopkinton in 1787. Sometime around 1800, an inn was built at a strategic crossroads in Wyoming.

Textile mills sprang up in the area, and in 1815 the New London Turnpike opened right past the inn. The new road brought stagecoach riders between Richmond and New London, Connecticut

By 1835, the New London Turnpike – now Route 3 – connected Providence and New London. It proved to be faster and more direct than the Old Post Road, which followed the coastal route. The village thrived, and for many years an inn once known as Dawley Tavern continued as a stagecoach stop.

By the 20^th century, industry began to founder along the Wood River. That, however, allowed Hopkinton and Wyoming to retain much of their historic 19^th century character. The National Register of Historic Places lists almost a square mile of the two villages as the Wyoming Village Historic District. It includes the old ironworks, Greek Revival, Late Victorian, and Federal architecture in both Wyoming and Hopkinton.

Today the Dawley Tavern is called the Stagecoach House Inn at 1136 Main Street.

For more information, click here.

Stagecoach Inn

The Stagecoach Inn, a fitting name for one of Vermont’s old stagecoach stops.

At the start of the 19th century, ancient footpaths connected Burlington and Montpelier in Vermont. In 1805, the 36-mile Winooski Turnpike along the Winooski River was chartered to connect the two major towns.

The old Winooski Turnpike turned into U.S. Route 2, the main highway connecting the White Mountains to the Adirondacks. It cuts through Waterbury, the town where Ben and Jerry’s make their ice cream.

In 1826 either a Mr. Parmalee or a lawyer named Dan Carpenter had a structure built on the corner of the Winooski Turnpike and what is now Route 100. The building served as a tavern and inn for travelers and as a meeting place for locals.

By the mid-1800s, a farming family named the Henrys owned the inn. Their eccentric daughter Nettie married an Ohio rubber baron, Albert Spencer. Nettie smoked cigarettes, chewed tobacco and wore a celluloid eyeshade. She expanded and improved the old family house in Queen Anne Style.

Nettie Spencer died in 1947. The home was later run as a rooming house and fell into disrepair. A young couple from Boston bought the property in 1985 and rebuilt the house. Today it’s the Old Stagecoach Inn, a historic bed-and-breakfast in the center of downtown Waterbury.

For more information about the Stagecoach Inn click here.

This story about New England stagecoach stops was updated in 2021. If you enjoyed this story, you may also want to read about six Revolutionary taverns here.

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