As elsewhere noted, there was no earlier road between Zanesville and
Columbus which the Cumberland Road followed. West of Zanesville but one
tavern was opened in the first decade of this century. Griffith Foos's
tavern at Springfield, which was doing business in 1801, prospered until
1814. The other taverns of the West, at Zanesville, Columbus,
Springfield, Richmond (Indiana), and Indianapolis, are of another era
and will be mentioned later.
The first taverns of the West were built mostly of logs, though a few,
as noted, were of stone. They were ordinary wilderness cabins, rendered
professionally hospitable by stress of circumstance. They were more
often of but one or two rooms, where, before the fireplace, guests were
glad to sleep together upon the puncheon floor. The fare afforded was
such as hunters had--game from the surrounding forest and neighboring
streams and the product of the little clearing, potatoes, and the common
cereals.
At the beginning of the new century a large number of substantial
taverns arose beside the first western roads--even before the Cumberland
Road was under way. The best known of these were built at Washington,
The Sign of the Cross Keys (1801), the McClellan (1802); and at
Uniontown the National and Walker Houses. At Washington arose The Sign
of the Golden Swan (1806), Sign of the Green Tree (1808), Gen. Andrew
Jackson (1813), and Sign of the Indian Queen (1815). These were built in
the age of sawmills and some of them came well down through the century.
It is remarkable how many buildings are to be seen on the Cumberland
Road which tell by their architectural form the story of their fortunes.
Many a tavern, outgrowing the day of small things, was found to be
wholly inadequate to the greater business of the new era. Additions were
made as circumstances demanded, and in some cases the result is very
interesting. The Seaton House in Uniontown was built in sections, as was
the old Fulton House (now Moran House) also of Uniontown. A fine old
stone tavern at Malden, Pennsylvania was erected in 1822 and an addition
made in 1830. A stone slab in the second section bears the date "1830,"
also the word "Liberty," and a rude drawing of a plow and sheaf of
wheat. Though of more recent date, the well-known Four Mile House west
of Columbus, Ohio displays, by a series of additions, the record of its
prosperous days, when the neighboring Camp Chase held its population of
Confederate prisoners.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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