[Illustration: CHESS HAS BEEN A FAVORITE PASTIME AT THE CAFE DE LA REGENCE FOR TWO HUNDRED YEARS.] CHAPTER XII INTRODUCTION OF COFFEE INTO NORTH AMERICA _Captain John Smith, founder of the Colony of Virginia, is the first to bring to North America a knowledge of coffee in 1607--The coffee grinder on the Mayflower--Coffee drinking in 1668--William Penn's coffee purchase in 1683--Coffee in colonial New England--The psychology of the Boston "tea party," and why the United States became a nation of coffee drinkers instead of tea drinkers, like England--The first coffee license to Dorothy Jones in 1670--The first coffee house in New England--Notable coffee houses of old Boston--A skyscraper coffee house_ Undoubtedly the first to bring a knowledge of coffee to North America was Captain John Smith, who founded the Colony of Virginia at Jamestown in 1607. Captain Smith became familiar with coffee in his travels in Turkey. Although the Dutch also had early knowledge of coffee, it does not appear that the Dutch West India Company brought any of it to the first permanent settlement on Manhattan Island (1624). Nor is there any record of coffee in the cargo of the Mayflower (1620), although it included a wooden mortar and pestle, later used to make "coffee powder." In the period when New York was New Amsterdam, and under Dutch occupancy (1624-64), it is possible that coffee may have been imported from Holland, where it was being sold on the Amsterdam market as early as 1640, and where regular supplies of the green bean were being received from Mocha in 1663; but positive proof is lacking. The Dutch appear to have brought tea across the Atlantic from Holland before coffee. The English may have introduced the coffee drink into the New York colony between 1664 and 1673. The earliest reference to coffee in America is 1668[87], at which time a beverage made from the roasted beans, and flavored with sugar or honey, and cinnamon, was being drunk in New York. Coffee first appears in the official records of the New England colony in 1670. In 1683, the year following William Penn's settlement on the Delaware, we find him buying supplies of coffee in the New York market and paying for them at the rate of eighteen shillings and nine pence per pound.[88] Coffee houses patterned after the English and Continental prototypes were soon established in all the colonies. Those of New York and Philadelphia are described in separate chapters. The Boston houses are described at the end of this chapter. Norfolk, Chicago, St. Louis, and New Orleans also had them. Conrad Leonhard's coffee house at 320 Market Street. St. Louis, was famous for its coffee and coffee cake, from 1844 to 1905, when it became a bakery and lunch room, removing in 1919 to Eighth and Pine Streets.