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Fairfield Conn.

Samuel Smedley, Fairfield’s Boy Commander of the Connecticut Navy

Samuel Smedley captured a dozen British vessels during the American Revolution, but the biggest obstacle to greater glory was the stinginess of Gov. Jonathan Trumbull.

Smedley, the baby-faced captain of the Connecticut Navy brig Defence, had a glorious but brief career in the Connecticut State Navy.

An English brig with captured American ships

Over three years, the Defence captured 12 vessels and brought $500,000 into the treasury of Connecticut. Much of that went to the war effort. But Smedley must have chafed at Trumbull’s refusal to share prize money with the crew the same way it was shared with crews of privateers and the Continental Navy.

And perhaps the Defence wouldn’t have run up on a reef and bilged in Long Island Sound if Trumbull had had a more generous spirit.

Samuel Smedley

He was born March 5, 1753 in Fairfield, Conn., into a prosperous family. Fairfield mariners traded frequently with the West Indies, and Smedley likely grew up on boats.

He married Esther Rowland and had two daughters, Esther and Elizabeth, both of whom died in infancy. The one image of him known to survive shows a baby-faced sailor. When the Defence captured the Admiral Keppel, the captain upon seeing Smedley supposedly uttered an exclamation. ’There is little hope of conquering an enemy whose very schoolboys are capable of valor equaling that of trained veterans of naval warfare.”

Samuel Smedley

When the American Revolution broke out, Connecticut made an easy target for British soldiers and sailors.

The British army encamped directly across the Long Island Sound, and the British fleet tried to control the Sound. So the Connecticut Assembly decided to build a two-ship navy. It bought the Defence and fitted her out for war, and built the warship Oliver Cromwell.

In February 1776, Defence was commissioned in New Haven with Seth Harding as captain, Ebenezer Bartram as first lieutenant and young Samuel Smedley as second lieutenant. Bartram and Smedley had recruited much of the 100-man crew from Fairfield and Stratford.

Four months later, Defence sailed into Boston Harbor with two captured ships and a brig with 330 officers and men from a Highland Regiment. “This event was perhaps about as daring a piece of work that ever happened in the naval history of the Atlantic Seaboard,” wrote Louis F. Middlebrook.

They took the booty to the Admiralty Court, which had to judge whether they’d captured a legitimate prize or committed an act of piracy. The Court ruled the former, and the naval agent sent the supplies for the troops to George Washington’s army, then in New York. The men of the Defence got no reward for their valor, except perhaps bragging rights.

Private vs. Public

Warships had to compete with privateers for crews, which wasn’t easy. Life onboard for the common sailor was disagreeable at best. On top of brutally hard work, danger, foul accommodations and lousy food, he risked violent whippings with the lash. To attract able-bodied mariners, ship captains had to award them with a portion of any prize they captured. Privateers kept nearly all the prize they captured, and typically the crew got half.

But the Continental Congress decided that the crews of the Navy would only get one-third of a prize. They’d get half for warships or English privateers.

A Bermuda sloop engaged as a privateer

That didn’t work—everyone wanted to work on a privateer. So Congress changed the rules. The crews of the Continental Navy would get half of the proceeds from a merchant ship, and 100 percent for a warship.

Connecticut, however, stuck to the original rule – crews only got a third of a prize. And so its Navy – the Defence and the Oliver Cromwell – couldn’t find enough sailors.

By 1777, 23-year-old Samuel Smedley had risen to captain of the Defence after Harding and Bartram took ill. He found a way to recruit enough men: a rather big lie. He promised them half of any prizes they captured.

Blood in his Eye

The Defence cruised down to the Caribbean and captured four merchant ships between March 12 and April 20, a spectacular success. But when the men learned they’d only get a third of the booty, they mobbed the office of the agent responsible for processing the prizes. The agent had to divide 1,200 pounds among the crew to make them go away.

Smedley returned home to find British soldiers had burned his house during William Tryon’s raid on Danbury. No doubt he had blood in his eye as he tried to assemble a crew.

This time he didn’t try to trick the sailors. Instead, he won a concession from Gov. Jonathan Trumbull: He and his crew would get half the proceeds from a captured vessel for just that one cruise. So they sailed to the Caribbean in the spring and summer of 1778 and took three prizes – another wildly successful voyage.

Smedley pleaded with Trumbull to let him offer his mariners half the proceeds if they captured a merchant vessel on the next cruise. Trumbull refused.

Too Late

The captain of the state navy’s other ship, the Oliver Cromwell, also had problems recruiting sailors. Why would a sailor sign on with the Connecticut Navy, which only offered one-third of a prize, when the Continental Navy and privateers would give them half? Still Trumbull refused to change the rule. Finally, the Connecticut Assembly intervened and voted to give its navy crews half the booty from a prize ship.

But by then it was too late. The Continental Navy and privateers had taken all the sailors. So Smedley sailed the Defence to New London, where Continental Army soldiers manned the ship. The outcome was perhaps predictable. The incompetent pilot wrecked the ship on a reef. Four or five men drowned.

Map of the Long Island Sound. Courtesy Library of Congress..

“I never Emplored my pen in writing more Disagreeable News than at this time,” wrote Samuel Smedley, in a letter breaking the bad news to Trumbull in March 1779.

Revenge — Not

Samuel Smedley’s luck had definitely turned. Still vowing revenge for the devastation wrought by Tryon’s troops, he arranged for command and part ownership of a privateer, the Recovery. Ready to weigh anchor in January 1780, the frozen New London harbor delayed his departure. When the Recovery finally sailed in mid-February, she was overtaken by the British warship Galatea after a seven-hour chase. The British took Smedley and all his men prisoner and incarcerated them in a prison ship in New York—probably more dangerous than combat at sea.

The Americans traded him for a British prisoner, and he and his men found another privateer, the Hibernia. Again Smedley had part ownership. It didn’t do him any good, as the British again captured his vessel 14 days after leaving New York Harbor. He ended up in the Old Mill Prison in Portsmouth, England.

Smedley wrote from prison to his wife on May 25, 1781, describing his condition as ‘cruelly treated, half starved and half naked.’

He managed to escape, probably because his friends bribed a guard to look the other way. Then he made his way to France, where he got a loan from Benjamin Franklin. He also had his portrait painted in miniature.

The American legation needed to find a friendly vessel to carry military supplies for the war effort, and found one, the Heer Adams. They engaged Smedley as master of the ship, and he had an uneventful – for once — voyage to Philadelphia.

Smedley in Fairfield

Smedley went back to Fairfield to rebuild his house. In 1789, he wrote a letter to President George Washington, asking him to nominate him as Collector of the Port of Fairfield. He noted that he had ‘sufferd the Loss of the greater part of his Paternal Inheritance by the Ravages of A Cruel Enemy.’

The Old Burying Ground in Fairfield. Image courtesy Google maps.

He got the job, which proved more lucrative – and, apparently, more memorable– than his swashbuckling career at sea. His gravestone in the Old Burying Ground reads:

Samuel Smedley Esqr.

late Collector of Customs

for the District of Fairfield

Died June 13, 1812

Aged 59.

With thanks to Exploits of the Connecticut ship “Defence,” commanded by Captain Samuel Smedley of Fairfield, Ct. by Louis F. Middlebrook and Samuel Smedley and Prize Division by Jackson Kuhl for the Journal of the American Revolution. This story was updated in 2022.

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The Revolutionary Currency Crash Makes William Beadle a Mass Murderer

By the opening of the American Revolution, William Beadle was a successful Connecticut merchant and patriot. Before the end of it, he wasn’t. But he did earn distinction as the first documented mass murderer-suicide in North America.

He had acquired more wealth than most merchants, and most merchants acquired more wealth than ordinary people, according to Beadle’s biographer, James Smart.

He did so well that he could send money for the relief of Boston when Parliament closed the port after the Boston Tea Party.

But then he found himself no longer among Connecticut’s elite, and the reality horrified him.

William Beadle

Beadle was born in London in 1730. He had come to Fairfield, Conn., and married into a well-established family. His wife Lydia and he moved to Wethersfield in 1773. By 1780, they had a son and three daughters.

In 1776, with the Revolution under way, the Continental Congress declared that Continental currency would be its official paper money. It enjoined businesses from inflating prices, and ordered people to accept Continental currency at face value.

Continental Currency

Within five years, the Congress would print so much of the money to pay for the costs of the war that it would have to devalue it. The official devaluation ruined anyone who held large amounts of the currency. And that was what happened to William Beadle.

A great many businesses wrestled with whether or not to raise prices during the war. Most did, to some degree at least. Beadle, an ardent patriot, did not. And he continued to honor Continental currency at its face value. As a result, he accumulated a great pile of currency.

After 1780, when Congress officially devalued the currency so that 40 dollars equaled one dollar, the value of the Continental currency continued to plunge. Eventually, it stopped circulating.

Free Fall

The free fall in the value of the Continental currency and hyperinflation in the American war years would have left Beadle much worse off – if he had lived long enough to see it through. Instead, he took matters into his own hands.

With the war dragging on and his fortunes in ruins, Beadle began to formulate a plan. He thought it preferable to die rather than to go on living in abject poverty. As he had failed to provide for his children, he thought it better that they should die as well.

William Beadle began constructing an unusual set of deistic religious beliefs to justify, or at least excuse, his plans. For nearly three years Beadle brooded over the best course of action. He convinced himself that he did have the right to kill himself and his children, but he was unsure about whether he had the right to kill Lydia, his wife.

Perfect Humanity

On one occasion Lydia left on a trip to Fairfield and William Beadle thought this was his chance to end it all. He began drafting his will. But she returned earlier than expected. Beadle saw it as a sign that she should join the family in death. He wrote in his journal:

“I mean to close the Eyes of six persons thro’ perfect Humanity, and the most endearing fondness & Friendship, For never did mortal father feel more of these tender Ties than myself. I really believe that the true God supports me. For while I am writing these very words and meditate on this intended deed, no singular anguish of mind affects me, and why should it? For my intentions are of the purest kind.”

William Beadle, Murderer

In November of 1782, Lydia told her husband of a dream she had. The dream included a great many important papers, dotted with blood, that seemed to bear on her future. In another dream, she saw a vision of her children, all dead.

William Beadle took the dreams as signs that God approved his plan. On December 11, 1782, he wakened the family maid and asked her to go fetch the doctor. With her out of the house he slit the throats of his wife and children. With the family dead, William Beadle went to his study and placed a pistol in each hand. Pressing the muzzles of the two pistols against his temples, he pulled the triggers and ended his life.

In his will, Beadle directed that his useless pile of Continental currency be retained for seven years in case it ever regained its value.

Had he lived, Beadle would have seen what value his currency retained. Congress would eventually pay its war debts in the 1790s, exchanging Continental currency for Treasury notes, paying one penny on the dollar to buy back the currency.

Connecticut was outraged at Beadle’s actions. His fellow townsmen refused him a burial in the cemetery, instead dumping his body by the Connecticut River. Ministers sermonized his story many times as an example of the evils of Deism.

This story about William Beadle was updated in 2022.

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Caleb Brewster Crosses the Devil’s Belt for the Culper Spy Ring

Caleb Brewster relied on a woman’s underwear and his own seamanship to bring vital intelligence to George Washington during the American Revolution. He belonged to the Culper Spy Ring, which operated from 1778 to 1783.

After the British evacuated Boston, New York City became their base of operations. And intelligence about their movements became critical.

The American Continental Army had, in fact, lost New York in part because of a lack of information. George Washington underestimated the strength of the British troops, which handily drove the Americans out of the city.

Early map of the Devil’s Belt

With Benjamin Tallmadge in charge, the Americans launched a spy ring to infiltrate New York and bring information back to Washington.

Benjamin Tallmadge, Master Spy

Benjamin Tallmadge, a former classmate of Nathan Hale, reported directly to Washington as head of the army’s intelligence gathering operation starting in 1778. Previous efforts had not gone well — in once case, resulting in Hale’s death.

Spymaster Benjamin Tallmadge

From his base in Connecticut, Tallmadge moved away from a system of single spies on specific missions. Instead, he used a network system that passed on what information it gathered through a single source – Tallmadge.

But Tallmadge had to get the intelligence out of New York to Connecticut. And that’s where Caleb Brewster, Anna Strong and her petticoats come into the picture.

The British had imprisoned Anna’s husband Selah for spying for the Americans. Anna negotiated his release through her Tory relatives, and he moved from the family’s Setauket, N.Y., home to Connecticut. He left Anna behind.

Caleb Brewster

Caleb Brewster had worked on whaleboats since childhood. He was intimately familiar with the Long Island Sound – known in colonial times as the Devil’s Belt.

Whaleboat aboard the whaling ship Charles W. Morgan at Mystic Seaport

Caleb Brewster knew both the Long Island side where he grew up as a child and the Connecticut coast around Fairfield and Bridgeport.

Anna’s clothesline was conveniently visible both to Brewster and the coordinator of the New York spies. Her role was to hang her washing as a signal to the spies who visited New York for information.

The black petticoat meant Brewster would soon make a trip from New York to Connecticut. White handkerchiefs signaled to the the spies which cove he waited in with his boat.

The work was dangerous. At one point, Caleb Brewster encountered a British army lieutenant. He attacked the soldier. Rather than take him prisoner, however, Brewster robbed the man to make him think he had happened upon a robber, not a rebel operative.

Washington’s Spies

Secrecy was so important not even Washington knew the identities of all the men in the spy ring. Tallmadge named it for Samuel Culper, the phony name of one of the key spies who slipped in and out of New York City with information.

George Washington, 1776

The Culper Ring provided essential information to Washington, including specific counts of troops and weapons, details of boats being built, information about British plans to use privateers to augment its Navy and names of Loyalists covertly supporting Britain.

As the focus of the war shifted south, the Culper Ring wound down its operation. Caleb Brewster would eventually make Connecticut his home. He became a blacksmith after the war and joined the forerunner of today’s Coast Guard.

Caleb Brewster died in 1827 at the age of 79 in Bridgeport. Near his home in Bridgeport a street bears his name.

This story was updated in 2023. Image of whaleboat By The original uploader was Leonard G. at English Wikipedia. – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by IngerAlHaosului using CommonsHelper., CC SA 1.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9015484

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Roger Ludlow and the 1650 Scourge of Shuffleboard

In 1646, Roger Ludlow had the task of establishing laws for Connecticut. It wasn’t an easy job, but after four hard years he produced the Code of 1650. Sometimes called Ludlow’s Code, it addressed all manner of evils up to and including shuffleboard.

Ludlow belonged to the stauncher group of Puritans who left England during the Great Migration. Arriving in America in 1630, he first lived in Dorchester in Massachusetts before moving to Windsor, Conn. Later he moved to Fairfield, which he founded.

The Hazard Room, a 1792 painting by Thomas Rowlandson.

Roger Ludlow

Ludlow, an Oxford-educated lawyer, had some success in politics – serving as deputy governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and lieutenant governor of Connecticut. But his main contribution to the settlement of New England was his codification of laws for Connecticut. He also co-authored the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the first constitution in America.

Ludlow’s Code proceeded alphabetically from “Ability” to “Wrecks at Sea,” and it covers the typical crimes. Capital offenses included murder, perjury, witchcraft and smiting one’s parents. Burglars were to be branded with the letter “B” and so forth.

Ludlow didn’t stop with major crimes. His code outlawed swearing, heresy, idleness and stubbornness. And he also singled out shuffleboard for elimination.

Monument to Roger Ludlow in East Norwalk

Shuffleboard

Outlawing shuffleboard was not that unusual considering the Puritan’s general orientation and the nature of the game in Britain. Europeans had enjoyed playing it for at least 500 years. In England, it went by names like shove halfpenny and earlier shove groat.

The basics of the game were similar to today’s shuffleboard. People slid a disk down a board and got points based on where it stopped. It was played in public houses in England and was a time-waster that was generally harmless – except when disputes arose between players or large wagers resulted in hard feelings. The Puritans, who opposed most sports played with a ball, had little use for it.

King Henry VIII played at shuffleboard and outlawed it for commoners in England during his reign. There’s little doubt that the Puritans had no use for the people who pursued it. Some tavernkeepers kept the shuffleboard hidden and secret from any strangers, only brought out for trusted regulars.

Aftermath

Arthur Miller in his play about the 1692 Salem witch trials, The Crucible, notes that Bridget Bishop’s tavern had shuffleboard. That hints at the prejudice the residents of Salem would have held against her.

In the long run, of course, shuffleboard prevailed – morphing into various forms and enjoying popular revivals during the Roaring 20s and the 1950s. Even today shuffleboard can be found in its table and floor varieties.

Purchase of Norwalk, a WPA mural by Harry Townsend, in Norwalk City Hall.

As for Roger Ludlow, the publication of his code represented the high-water mark for his career in New England. He did purchase the land that became Norwalk, but he had also gotten involved in various property disputes.

His troubles included a conviction by a court for slandering a woman he had declared a witch. Ludlow left Connecticut to settle briefly with his brother in Virginia in 1654 and then travelled to Ireland. There he won an appointment to a post of magistrate. He did not return to America and died in the 1660s – well before Connecticut became the gaming and gambling capital of New England.

This story was updated in 2022.

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At Half His Age, Sybil Ludington Rode Twice as Far as Paul Revere (But for the Same Reason)

Like Paul Revere, Sybil Ludington took a midnight ride to warn American patriots the redcoats were coming.

Sybil Ludington statue

They were coming to Danbury, Conn., rather than Concord, Mass., and Sybil was half Revere’s age. She also rode twice as far.

Map of troop movements before the Battle of Ridgefield.

Two years into the American Revolution there had been no fighting in Connecticut. There had been in New York, though, where Gen. William Tryon commanded 3,000 British forces. Meanwhile, Gen. William Howe prepared to attack the rebel capital of Philadelphia.

But then Tryon was ordered to attack the Americans’ supplies in Danbury, defended by about 150 American troops. So he assembled a fleet of ships to carry about 2,000 troops from New York to Connecticut.

Tryon set sail on April 22, 1777 and landed three days later in Fairfield, now Westport. Patriots spotted the British fleet as it sailed past Norwalk. Messengers then rode to alert the leaders of the patriot militia, including Col. Henry Ludington in Kent, N.Y.

Ludington commanded the Dutchess County, N.Y., militia, just over the border from Connecticut. He had the only forces between Tryon and Gen. George Washington’s army at Peekskill, N.Y.

Bad News

Late on April 26, a cold, wet, exhausted messenger arrived at the Ludington home to say the British were burning Danbury, about 20 miles away.

The British troops destroyed as many as 5,000 barrels of pork, beef, and flour, 5,000 pairs of shoes, 2,000 bushels of grain and 1,600 tents. They also got drunk on rum. The soldiers set fire to 19 patriot houses, a church, a blacksmith shop and a meetinghouse, but they spared the Tory houses. People could see the glow of the fire for miles.

“It was one of the most brutal and disgraceful performances of British arms in all the war, and was unhesitatingly denounced as such by self-respecting British officers,” according to a memoir of Henry Ludington.

Ludington’s men, however, had dispersed. It was planting season, and they were at home on their farms. The exhausted messenger couldn’t rouse them. And Henry Ludington needed to stay at home to muster his men.

Sybil Ludington

Sybil, the Ludingtons’ oldest child, volunteered. She had just turned 16 on April 5, she rode well and she knew where the militiamen lived.

Sybil Ludington set out at 9 pm and rode along the rugged and lonely roads through a thunderstorm, urging on her horse, Star, with a stick. She rode from Carmel to Mahopac to Stormville. “Gather at Ludington’s!” she cried. “The British are burning Danbury!”

A highwayman tried to stop her, but she fended him off with her stick.

At dawn, Sybil Ludington returned home after riding 40 miles. Her father’s 400 militiamen had assembled there, a motley group. Some were only half dressed and some didn’t have arms, but they were ‘filled with a certain berserk rage.’ Within an hour or two they marched to Connecticut.

By then, thousands of militiamen and Continental Army troops headed toward Danbury. Tryon had hoped his maneuver into Connecticut would inspire an uprising of Loyalist support, but he miscalculated badly. Realizing his peril, Tryon ordered his presumably hungover men to return to their ships in Westport.

Battle of Ridgefield

The British soldiers retraced their steps through Ridgefield, Conn., where Ludington’s militia met up with other militias and Continental troops. The British outnumbered the Americans three-to-one, and managed to push through barricades and march to their ships. But they suffered casualties, as the Americans shot at them from behind rocks and trees as they had after Concord and Lexington.

Tryon’s victory was Pyrrhic. Though he achieved his aims, he galvanized support for the patriot cause in Connecticut. Soon after his troops boarded the ships bound for New York, 3,000 men joined the Connecticut Army of Reserve. Later that year, Connecticut sent cavalry and two regiments to Saratoga, where they defeated forces led by British Gen. John Burgoyne.

Sybil Ludington Stamp

George Washington came to the Ludington home to thank Sybil Ludington for her heroic ride. In 1784, she married Edmond Ogden and they had one child, a son named Henry. Sybil Ludington died in Catskill, N.Y., on Feb. 26, 1839.

Today, historical markers trace the route of her ride. There are statues of her near Carmel, N.Y., on the grounds of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Washington, D.C., at the Danbury Library in Connecticut and at Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina. In 1975, a U.S. postal stamp was issued in her honor. Every year since 1979, the 50-km Sybil Ludington road race has been run in Carmel, N.Y., finishing up near her statue.

This story about Sybil Ludington was updated in 2022.

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Eat Like a President – The Founding Fathers’ Guide to New England Taverns

The first five U.S. presidents, the founding fathers, were all veteran travelers in New England. And in their travels, they left behind tracks of where they stayed that tourists still follow today if they want to eat like a president.

Green Dragon Tavern, Courtesy of the Boston Public LIbrary

Many of the public houses these men stopped at have been obliterated by time. Many more were converted into private houses. But some gems remain where you can still sit down to dinner and eat like a president.

One of them, the Green Dragon in Boston’s North End, claims to be the headquarters of the American Revolution. But it has only an uncertain connection to the original Green Dragon, watering hole of Paul Revere and John Hancock. John Adams liked to stop at the original Green Dragon for a tankard or two.

Washington Ate Here

George Washington left tracks all across New England. First coming to the region in 1756 to visit Governor Shirley of Massachusetts, he made his next trip to assume command of the Continental Army.

His later trips, as president, were political. He needed to thank the wealthy patrons and soldiers who supported the American Revolution. Washington also wanted to get a sense for the mood of the country. For this northern tour, he decided not to stay in the homes of private citizens. Choosing one invitation over another would surely lead to hurt feelings.

Instead, he stayed at public accommodations, following his usual pattern of rising early and starting his travels. Then he’d stop for breakfast and travel to a town where he would receive a hero’s welcome. As a result, he often dined with the public.

In Fairfield, Conn., in October 1789, George Washington stayed at the Sun Tavern. Though you can’t eat like a president there. But you can visit as it’s now part of the Fairfield Museum and History Center.

You used to be able to eat like a president at the Old Sun tavern.

Eat Like a President in New Haven

In New Haven, the Union League was built in 1860 on the site of the home of Roger Sherman, a member of the Continental Congress. The club provided a base of support for Abraham Lincoln. Now a restaurant, the Union League Café, the owners noted that Washington visited Roger Sherman in his home there. So while Washington didn’t exactly eat there, he sort of ate there.

Beer’s Tavern in New Haven played host to Washington in June of 1775 when he traveled north to take command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, Mass. John Adams also reported staying there while travelling to the first Continental Congress in 1774. Adams returned again and again on his trips back and forth to Philadelphia. Over the years, Beer’s went through many iterations, but you can still eat like a president there today. The restaurant now operates under the name ‘Ordinary’. It has a wonderful description of its history here.

On his way north to Cambridge, Washington also stopped at the Silas Deane house in Wethersfield, now part of the Webb Deane Stevens Museum. He later returned to the nearby Joseph Webb House, also part of the museum, in May of 1781. The house then served as his headquarters. It was here he met with French commander the Comte de Rochambeau, who traveled from Newport, R.I., to discuss plans for the siege of Yorktown.

Then on his never-ending quest for supplies for his army, Washington also visited Thomas Leffingwell at the Leffingwell Inn in Norwich, Conn. The inn is open as a museum today.

Presidential Spirit?

In Middletown, Conn., Bigelow’s Tavern was the popular place to dine. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison stayed there on their return trip from Vermont in 1791, and John Adams stayed in 1774 when passing through Connecticut.

Started by Timothy Bigelow, his widow operated the tavern after his death in 1776. She managed it successfully for decades, despite being accused of sympathizing with the Tories during the American Revolution. Unfortunately, it is long since gone, but the building in its place, which also houses the Middletown Police Department, is home to the First & Last Tavern. Perhaps the presidential spirit remains there.

In Greenwich, Conn., Knapp’s Tavern is also known as Putnam Cottage, after its famous guest, Gen. Israel Putnam. But as Knapp’s, innkeeper Isaac Knapp kept it as a tavern and hosted both George Washington and John Adams. No longer a tavern, the building can be visited, however, as it is now a museum.

In Guilford, Conn., Thomas Jefferson and James Madison stayed at the Stone Tavern, with Jefferson rating it above average. That tavern isn’t around anymore, but there is a well-known Medad Stone Tavern in Guilford. Unfortunately, it never opened for business.

Mr. Stone, anticipating a change in the route of the Post Road in 1802, built a new tavern along what he thought was the new route. The road, however, went elsewhere leaving him with a tavern with no customers. Today it’s a museum.

The White Horse?

White Horse Tavern. Eat like a president there, perhaps?

Madison and Jefferson also liked to stay at Bull’s Tavern in Hartford. John Adams visited this tavern, too, and enjoyed his stays. Frederick Bull ran the tavern, now gone, but his brother, Captain William Bull, ran a tavern in Litchfield. The Captain William Bull Tavern moved from its original site and incorporated into the Tollgate Hill Inn and Restaurant.

During George Washington’s celebratory trip to New England in 1789, he left Rhode Island off the itinerary because the state hadn’t taken any action to ratify the U.S. Constitution. When Rhode Island did ratify, Washington made things right in 1790 and traveled to the state for celebrations in Newport and Providence.

In Providence he stayed at the Abner Daggett’s Golden Ball Inn, since demolished. In Newport the only tavern in business today where he might have visited is the White Horse Tavern. French commander Rochambeau frequently patronized the establishment. Though there is no record of it, Rochambeau might have dined with Washington there when Washington came to spend a week in Newport in 1781.

Eat Like a President in Massachusetts

Two locations where Washington definitely dined are Massachusetts museums now. The first, of course, if the Longfellow House in Cambridge, which is where he spent the most time in Massachusetts while commanding the Continental Army. He also dined at the Munroe Tavern in Lexington, a hot spot for anti-British meetings before the war. Washington visited the tavern on his 1789 celebration tour, and today it’s open as a museum.

Several other stops along Washington’s tour in Massachusetts remain open to the public. Ye Olde Tavern in West Brookfield (which also hosted John Adams in addition to Washington) remains a restaurant today.

Washington dined at Faneuil Hall in Boston, though it’s hard to envision the president sitting down at today’s food court. He went on to visit the Jeremiah Lee Mansion in Marblehead, a museum today. And in Newburyport, Washington stayed at the Tracy Mansion, now the public library.

Washington also dined and danced at the Salem, Mass., Cotting-Smith Assembly House, a Federalist club. It’s now used for functions by the Peabody Essex Museum, where guests can perhaps eat like a president.

Faneuil Hall.

James Monroe

James Monroe also made a stop in Salem on his 1817 tour of New England. The fifth U.S. president probably traveled more extensively throughout New England than any of the founding fathers apart from John Adams. He had to take a long road show to try and soothe New Englanders’ hostility over the War of 1812.

His trip took him through all the states, including extensive travels in Maine and Vermont. As with the other presidents, most of the places he stopped at (Clapp’s Inn in Walpole, Mass., Wyatt’s Inn in Dover, N.H., Gilman’s Hotel in Newburyport) no longer serve the public. Salem, Mass. hosted a reception for him at the Old Town Hall, new at the time.

Thomas Jefferson

While Monroe made it to Vermont, Thomas Jefferson has the distinction of visiting the northernmost part of the Green Mountain state. He crossed Lake Champlain from New York and landed at Crown Point and Chimney Point, now an historic site owned by the state. On his travels south through Vermont, Jefferson visited Bennington, and he was so intrigued by Vermont’s maple syrup that he sent 20 maple trees to his Monticello home, in hopes that America could free itself from dependence on sugar from the West Indies.

John Adams, meanwhile, did the most travelling around New England. His diaries tell of many taverns where he stopped — mostly, sadly, now gone. He stayed at Newcomb Tavern on a trip to Barnstable on Cape Cod, now a private house. Ironically, Loyalists tended to patronize the Newcomb Tavern in the run up to the American Revolution.

Adams also visited Allen’s in Biddeford and Webb’s in Falmouth (Portland), an inn that doubled as the town jail. He stopped at Tilton’s in Portsmouth, N.H. Washington also made it to Portsmouth in 1789, dining at the Langdon House, now a Historic New England museum. Washington also visited the Pitt Tavern, now part of Stawbery Banke, and made a stop at the Folsom Tavern, now open in Exeter, N.H., as a museum.

This story about how to eat like a president was updated in 2022. If you’d like to find out how to eat like more modern presidents, click here.

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