The kitchen of the old inn was an important feature, especially as many of the taverns were little more than restaurants where stage-passengers hastily dined. The food provided was of a plain and nourishing character, including the famous home-cured hams, which Andrew Jackson preferred, and the buckwheat cakes, which Henry Clay highly extolled. In this connection it should be said that the women of the old West were most successful in operating the old-time taverns, and many of the best "stands" were conducted by them. The provision made in a license to a woman in early New England, that "she provide a fit man that is godly to manage the business," was never suggested in the West, where hundreds of brave women carried on the business of their husbands after their decease. And their heroism was appreciated and remembered by the gallant aristocracy of the road. The old Revolutionary soldiers who, quite generally, became the landlords of New England, did not keep tavern in the West. But one Revolutionary veteran was landlord on the Cumberland Road. The road bred and brought up its own landlords to a large extent. The early landlords were fit men to rule in the early taverns, and provided from forest and stream the larger portion of food for the travelers over the first rough roads. It is said that these objected to the building of the Cumberland Road, through fear that more accelerated means of locomotion would eventually cheat them out of the business which then fell to their share.