THE {saws OF NEW ENGLAND, mun-1m Thesis {:09 {rho chno of pit. D. MECHEGAN STATE UNIVERSITY Roger N. Park: 1966 {THESIS L I B R A R Y ‘ Michigan State - University W W W W \\\\\\\|\\\\\|\\H\\I 3 1293 10468 5460 This is to certifg that the thesis entitled THE ROADS OF NEW ENGLAND, 1790-18uo presented by Roger N. Parks has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for M degree in Mar—J— Wgew Major professor Date May 10, 1966 0-169 ROOM Ubt UNU ("V The impusy ' , o! pant 101w 22-» '7'. 't fires to M. brxogion 51 nr'a: _ (:E . 1: means 0;" 5L- “: IC-I‘ “ .. 1Illdorgoimg r:" 1) -: a“ L'. H bctterment L. L. V until .bO‘L lf‘W'V‘J, -‘.'s’f ‘ . V .:—J'V~ a" transported-m. ,..a ‘ - . ' Ham“: and county «mug»; \, ; — ,- . t- sure-s. "Counts, Mafia. .m A first two Mutter- ‘m ' ~ 01’ _t and It? ran; ; ' ;. r; . t‘J‘; n- ions 95 Bin: t.:~;n « a; Hunting 11- Motor Lo nhout. L: ' T‘ y.:i-- :' "t muons in both tran’q'c‘vfli tin -.-._»\ Jar; ABSTRACT THE ROADS OF NEW'ENGLAND, 1790-18h0 by Roger N . Parks The importance of roads to economic and social de- ' tolepment long has been recognized. The purpose of this study was to examine the development of the highway systems “J or-one “region during a period in which roads were virtually , . the only means of accessibility to most inland areas and Otigers» undergoing considerable improvement. A movement for Mia: betterment began in New England about 1790 and con- . Q Vina“ until about 181.0, when railroads began to dominate .‘ 0'0er tranSportat'ion. The study was based on research . _ Estate and county archives, turnpike company records, \‘W; 701 accounts, diaries, and newspapers. '7' ngee The first two chapters trace the background or Pv’ 'fiemovment and the reasons for the development of turn— ; corporations as the principal means of effecting im- ‘ mats prior to about 1808. For a number of reasons .: d L Roger N. Parks ”ifemal government nor any of the New England states was '53? ght in a position to give any significant aid and it ’I felt that as long as the towns retained their tradi- I“iiichal responsibility it was unlikely that good roads could be obtained. Great Britain during the eighteenth - century had some success in improving highways by means ‘ givturnpike trusts and all of the New England states dur- ting the 1790's similarly began establishing toll roads, -which, however, were under the control of profit-seeking leorporations. 1‘ The third and fourth chapters deal with the turn- era, discussing the reasons for an early decline of r.;fg:torest in toll roads among investors and for the finan- ztlgial'difficulties that beset many corporations. Motives f lib! invasting are treated, as well as the effects of turn- épikee on the economy. Maintenance and collection costs and the ease with which tollgates could be avoided are v shown to have been important factors that influenced 2‘ Roger N. Parks ,E5fithen the authority of counties in holding the towns “hge.», responsibilities. It is shown that although turn- }:Iure unpopular with a large segment of the population, ~t f3 ~a1eo was considerable opposition to paying the cost Ehe final chapter touches upon construction and main- ce practices. The straightening of routes, crowning 1’f‘v r ., blitching, and an increased use of gravel are shown to been the principal developments in road-building tech- ' . There is a discussion of the failure to improve cantly'maintenance procedures and practices. .' .L 1m ‘p. , 1 fi: some or saw mum), 1790-18t0 - . an HT-"I ‘ 3! \ Roger N fa Parks A-‘EISIS Submitted to - p. 7 Iiehigen State University “partial fulfilInent of the requirements '- for the degree of mm or PHILOSOPHY Department of History 1966 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS i I with to thank Dr. Stuart w. Bruchey and 1'."‘~'"1.2 _ . rflihe ‘I'ennelly, former Director of Research Whlientions at Old Sturbridge Village, Sturbridge, ,hneetts, for their advice and criticism. This 5 was Fbegun as a research project for Old Sturbridge l‘- J .' «*1 , 111 TASK! 0! GOITINTS fluctuation The Background of the Improvements " ' Movement Eein Responsibility and the Movement for Inprovements The Toll-Road Movement: 1792-1808 furnpikes: financial Problems Decline of Turnpikes and Return to Public Responsibility lcenstruction and maintenance Bibliographical Essay Appendices laps Page 67 11k 161 189 260 268 LIST 0!‘ mums t;)'.' :“55s or ca.ku ' . P33. ' ' ‘1' mike Incorporations by States ' C’P‘ 179h-18h0 ’ 260 .- h” fleet Per mile of New England Turnpikes 262 _""-'1 has 5: “8 Short—Term Earnings of Thirty ,‘ ‘9 Connecticut Ii'urnpikes Prior to 1808 266 use or we Page of connectiout , ° 268 " efi‘laseachubetts - 269 If”! Hampshire and Vemont 270 hilt-"node Island 271 lCHLeJ. “719;." justice or 13;: z';r v - .J‘ kl "(bur centu"? , ' « ,. -. .1 ~ we: r»: it ~- _ .. It. era, Ohm 17" :vJ'Tr. sr'. =w .' qr ». “:1 -, .- u INTRODUCTION The period 1790 to 18h0 was a time of road build- l ing in New England. As the volume of tranSportation and travel increased during the late eighteenth century and particularly during the years following the American Revo- '1ution, the inadequacy of primitive colonial roads became dpparent and efforts were made to improve them. Adopting at first the British idea that those who ; used the roads should pay for their maintenance, New England states.during the 1790's and the early 1800's chartered a Zpiunher of turnpike corporations which took over many of the thbgion's main highways and a number of minor ones. Except \7ém Connecticut, the turnpike movement lasted only a little ';fi~re than a decade, few charters being granted after about T“@1868. For a number of reasons New England turnpikes like ’3hose in England and other parts of the United States, usual— iid'had poor earnings and potential investors soon became ‘1'. \ iii}- of them. A number of companies still were in business ”‘9‘: late, when railroads were coming to be important, but V,”t}y had experienced financial difficulties long before 'Ei: introduction of this formidable competition. The half century prior to 18h0 often is referred to ‘turnpike era, obscuring the fact that a great many 1‘; 1 '1. ““I ll hi" V 2 1life-highways were built during those years. The rate -£3j‘struetion was particularly rapid during the 1820's : L“ $3330's and most of these new roads were built and ‘ gainined by the towns. in In one sense, however, the years 1399 to 18h0 truly .ififif' ghetturnpike era. Most roads, whether public or iv” 1hy private corporations, were built in "turnpike Iiihtel, Erhat is, they incorporated construction methods 'hfl’llerised by the turnpikes. Foremost among these were if ling and ditching, the purpose of which was to provide tints .lreinage. These roads left much to be desired 'jinre good only part of the year, but they represented :.,I‘ H? Jteidereble advancement over earlier ones. ‘ ?;cvenson #. '2, if": $15."? CHAPTER I ‘THE BACKGROUND OF THE IMPROVEMENTS MOVEMENT ‘ In few ways was the United States more backward during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries than in its highways. Even in long-settled parts of the country, poor roads contributed greatly to slowness and difficulty of movement by land. During the spring of 1800 it took four hours to negotiate on horseback the muddy roads between Germantown and Philadelphia, still thezna- fl.iti°n'8 capital.1 The traveler Isaac weld during the fall . of 1795 had his vehicle sink hub-deep in mud near the i~p1ace on the road between washington and Baltimore where t ..i: the President of the United States recently had suffered a similar indignity. Shortly thereafter Weld was detained ,r 1. nmre than a week in Baltimore because the road to Philadel- V.‘ 3&1; was so muddy that stages were not operating.2 The "'5‘iggglishman Henry wansey in 179A found the road between New 14Q§Etnswick and Princeton, New Jersey, "very bad, full of 5‘igégpqegotones and deep holes, in going over which in our {' . :7; 1Stevenson W. Fletcher, Penns lvania riculture 7 countr Life (Harrisburg, 1§50}, p. 550. is} gIsaac Weld, Travels through the States of North o -37 (Landon, 180 , pp. . - - A .l E' { w’oarriage, we were so violently shook, that when we _ 'égét down many of us could scarcely stand; and the extreme i.§iiat of the weather made us very sick for an hour after.”3 ' In Virginia, long after many northern highways had been improved, Irancis Hall found that teamsters still had to make their own paths through the sticky clay of upland re— glans.“ In newer parts of the country, road conditions often were even worse. In the cotton-growing states prior to the Civil war rainy seasons often coincided with marketing time and teams of mules and oxen laboriously dragged mud boats, loaded with cotton, through seas of mud, to the nearest river bank.5 An Englishman traveling through west- é'ern New York during the 1820's found "the scene . . . had ‘ _ its solitude now and then broken, by the wreck of a coach 5:.Dr.wagon, sticking in picturesque attitudes in some hole -ri? an the log road . . . while the -forlorn passengers are L hevering with hopeless laments and draggling in the mud 1 , 3hout the foundered and impracticable mass which still T, \ \ P. . "‘ , 7 3Henry wansey, An Excursion to the United States m North America in the ummer of 1 Sa sbury, _7sland,19 ,p.5. . “Francis Hall, Travels in Canada and the United ~63 0 in 1816 and 181 :03 on, :1: , p. 0:. 7x ' 5George Rogers Taylor, The Trans ortation Revol- ‘9! 181 -1860 (New York, 19515. PP. 15-17. 5 7.§fif*1ns their baggage.”6 Margaret Van Horn Dwight, a I asha- of President Timothy Dwight of Yale, migrated to ‘ some with a Connecticut family in 1810 and found that (#the farther west they proceeded, the worse the route be- :oeme. Near Morristown, New Jersey, she thought she had 'seen "the worst road you can imagine," but was told "it was a little like some of the [Pennsylvania] mountains only not half so bad." By the time they reached western Penn- sylvania, she had ”concluded the reason so few are willing to return from the western Country, is not that the country is so good, but because the journey is so bad."7 Many New England roads were somewhat better than those in other parts of the country. The rocky soils from which it was difficult to earn a living made better mate- n7 rials for roads than the rich earths of more fertile re- :d; gions, which easily were churned into' mud. Relatively t1;,harsh winters permitted New Englanders to rely more heavily .tf‘than could many other Americans on frost and snow to pro- We vide a hard and smooth surface for sledding. Such winters gt Stare less destructive to roads than the alternate freezing ”:‘snd thawing common in the Middle Atlantic states and the a {-3— , is: -- 6 alu~ _ Bradford Perkins (ed.), Youthful America: Selec- Vai;.3?s from Henr' Unwin Addin;ton's Residence IE the fihIted =§ ‘.\9339' Amer Ga. 1:2 , 23, 2h, 25 (Berkeley, l960),p.75. ‘ . .7lax Farrand (ed.), A Journe to Ohio in 1810 as i~ ed in the Journal of Marraret Van Horn fiEigEt (New 2,ppe ' ‘ e —t , ‘ vingr r5133 in the south. wansey, whose vivid descrip- _'.fi?mn of his ride across New Jersey was quoted above, had “ l‘,‘ 7 7‘few complaints about a trip he made by stage between Boston ‘7and New York, while another Englishman, John Bernard, called New England's highways "far better than in any other quarter of the Union."8 To describe them as being better, however, was too often only another way of saying that reads elsewhere were even worse. As Bernard himself put it, a typical New England highway presented a "sad comparison with the bowling-greens of England." Very often [on the road between Boston and Newport] we surprised a family of pigs taking a bath in .a gully of suf- ficient compass to admit the coach. As often such chasms were filled by piles of stones that, at a distance, looked like Indian tumuli. The driver's skill in steering between these dangers was eminent. I found there were two evils to be dreaded in New England travelling - a clayey soil in wet weather, which, un- qualified with gravel, made the road a canal; and a sandy one in summer, which might emphatically be called an enormous insect preserve. Here, as around the swamps, reigns and revels the mosquito - lord of the lance - that Arab of the air whose weapon is against every man. ‘B‘Bflrnard claimed that several hours' travel on this road led K his companion, a seemingly disaffected Englishman, to ex- ‘ glen, ”England, I love thee still.'"9 1“. 5"“ _ , \ '4 t‘ t 4— 3‘ chhn Bernard, Retrospections of America, 1797-1811 term-r 1887). p. 35. 119212.. pp. 35-36. 7 Other travelers also recounted unpleasant expe- g¥?;rionces on some of the region's highways. The Marquis I do chastellux, riding from Providence to Hartford during the Revolution, found the road between Scituate, Rhode Is- land, and the Connecticut line "very bad" and complained that his baggage cart had one wheel broken and the other "greatly damaged" from striking rocks.10 Another French visitor, J. P. Brissot de warville, after being "bumped over rocks for thirty miles" on the post read between Spencer and Wilbraham, Massachusetts, in 1788, concluded flthat a coach with springs would have very soon upset and been smashed to pieces."11 The networks of local roads that often radiated in all directions from a New England meeting house and its sur- "rounding settlement were especially poor. They were wind— ”ing, hilly, strewn with obstacles, and at many times of the :fyear muddy - a condition that was to remain in effect for ‘5‘ Fanny years. Even as late as the 1830's, according to ‘ 5‘53rencis H. Uhderwood, one of the founders of the Atlantic ';_"‘--._ r . -“!enthly, the roads of a typical hill town in central or 4;;fiiestern Massachusetts "furnished all the facilities ;' V1.31; 1““ i”’°""' 10Marquis de Chastellux, Travels in North America “$«athe Years 1 80 1781 and 1782 (Chapel Hi11,19535, I, . D A a ‘ ‘ 7 11.17. P. Brissot de warville, New Travels in the -‘States of North America in the ummer o 1, -» I’[ we, 19 h , pp. 109, 11 -11h. 8 hag: discomfort." There were no high hills to be crossed, but, to make up for their absence, plenty of sharp 'pitches,' with sinuosities and angles favorable to overturns, and with project- ing points and edges of underlying ledges, so as to give a series of shocks to each vehicle. Other hill-roads were strewn with loose stones of assorted sizes, over which horses stumbled and wagons rattled. One of these was in the centre of the town; a short descent, but rough as the moraine of a glacier; and a man who drove down toward the tavern at a trot was tossed about as if he were in a boat on breakers. Others had a bed of deep clay, into which in rainy weather the wheels sank almost to the hubs. Some of the roads over pine plains and through wet valleys had a covering of sand, which, while wet, was imp pacted and smooth but in dry weather was in yellowish granules, through which the wagon-whigls squealed in making their furrows. . Even in"a flourishing and beautiful Country town" the ;'T wide main street at the beginning of the nineteenth century 7 4‘was likely to be littered with "fragments of old fences, 'i“éeards, clapboards, wood piles, heaps of chips, old sleds 5‘Enhottom upwards, carts, casks, weeds and loose stones, 1y- gt-ing along in wild confusion," while the roadway itself was '!W§candalously bad; foot ways, or cross paths, ruts and gut- X. era, with stones at every step, disturb the traveller in his Carriage, and the teamsters with their loads. In a ~ited of 80 miles, the worst part is that which passes .fiiiglrancis n, Underwood, @Eabbin (Boston, 1893), as. 9. 9 fix 7"" 1 u“éyqu this charming street." 3 ~ i . 0 »ns: The main highways, however, were almost as poor as ‘54 the town roads and streets. Among their more glaring O .J infilts was indirectness. In sparsely settled Grafton O ; b ‘Oounty, New’Hampshire, where there were few roads, the 1 , _traveled distance between Shelburne and Chatham in 1801 was more than fifty miles, although the towns were only 1h 5rp‘ about twelve miles apart. One of the main routes be— ’tween Boston and northern Vermont, in passing through the 5}“. Sam. county, followed a circuitous route of about five 5 a, times the seven-mile distance between Canaan meeting house 1“ ”and Lyme.15 Even in Connecticut, which by the time of the .QHIRBVolution had a fairly complex network of highways, it i;] was complained in 1797 that "in many instances we travel :‘gsix miles for five, and sometimes more than this proportion rctetr. . In some instances great roads instead of passing ~ . 1 ‘;~gectly out of one town into another, run for some dis- 1 fl“, g jtanees in an oblique direction."16 As late as 1823 one of "n , '. [*ore: :13uonitor (Litchfield, Conn. ), June 29, 1803 '53?" 1"Grafton County, N. H., Highway Petitions, 3—1800, Courthouse, Woodsville, N. }a c 151bid. 16bonnecticut Courant (Hartford), May 8, 1797. Iafi'aTFCBEfiEEtIEfit‘EIghways at the end of the 3‘ period see Isabel S. Mitchell, Roads. and &w_;v in Colonial Connecticut (Terce ntenary Comp waist e State of Connecticut, 1933), p. 32. v . {'1‘ 1. . $ . 10 “5"Qmain routes through Windham County, Connecticut, "in "Iahy places forms almost right angles."17 .51. f ‘ L' Rather than follow river valleys, where soft soils 1" 5.5. ‘K“ often necessitated the building of expensive log causeways, ‘. 7 'z 1 many main highways were laid over steep hills. It took ’DQ Bernard, riding in a stage wagon, seven hours to travel twenty-five miles from Rutland to Whitehall, Vermont, on a road that lay "over high, stony, almost perpendicular hills."18 In the vicinity of Litchfield, Connecticut, 1 8,2?9JChastellux found himself on a road that "seemed formed ~ ‘for the roebuck rather than for carriages and laden horses" 'hand had to walk much of the way to avoid exhausting his "=:horse.19 President Josiah Quincy of Harvard traveled through southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island in a 5 chair in 1801 and wrote, "rocks, deep ruts, and hills cov- .*s‘7 ‘cred with stones made it impracticable for us to put our 1”? -~ horse on any other gait than a walk during this day's jour- 4. . B. h.y. ”20 -;#- Host of the region's highways also were very narrow, .~v< ~3,§even though wide rights—of—way - ten, twenty, even forty ‘MWS‘ - ‘ ,5 17Windham County,. Conn., Court Records, Connecticut _ ate Library, XXXVIII, 8h. ‘5 ,‘41SBernard, p. 3L6. . 521'9chaste11ux, I, 83. ii. 2 {.oProceedi s of the Massachusetts Historical ,§erIes I¥, Vol. IV (1889}, p. 126. 11 '77afilf often had been taken for early roads - a system tu.‘ lwpfiiggably brought over from England, where for centuries '5 roads were "'but tracks over unenclosed grounds, where #:the passenger selected his path over the space which pre- sented the firmest footing and fewest impediments.”21 ‘1 Thus a Massachusetts law of 16A? had required public of- ' _ ficials "in common grounds or where the soyle is wet, my- rie, or verie rookie [to] lay out such high—wayes the wyder, viz: six, eight, ten or more rods."22 But settlers could afford little more in the way of time and labor than to clear a single bridle path, which in time might be widened to accommodate carts.23 As late as the post—Revolutionary .I‘period,.when vehicular traffic, as we shall see, was be- coming common, as important a highway as Connecticut's fjilbmer Post Road still in "many parts" was "not constructed ‘9‘ch sufficient width for two Carriages to pass each other."2A 7 ' Roads already narrow had been constricted even fur- $[.E?°r in many instances by the encroaching fences of neighbor- ;i}ing land owners. In his charge to the Cumberland County ' k Zlndwin A. Pratt, A Histor of Inland Trans ort and gomunication in England T—L—T—T—L—London 1912 , p. 2 '7 a $‘§ , . ”7 2ZThe Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts (Cambridge, fl929), p. 25. ‘ACIL A 23 7,L~nr , William Allen, The Histor of Norri ewock, [Me.] ' 7-idgewock,18b9), pp. 1 2-1 eremy Belknap, The His- ‘,of New Hamoshire (Dover, N. H., 1812), III, 58-59. ‘ 2AConnecticut, Archives, Connecticut State Library, , Series II, 301. IX, p. 61. “L 12 ".§§§£no) grand Jury in 1792, the chief justice said, "pinch- ,f:t§$§§.highways of their due width, perhaps, is a more general fault with us, than neglecting the repair of them."25 An -§J‘7 eight-mile stretch of the post road between Providence and .I Rartford, originally only two rods wide, in 1791 reportedly "falls short of that width in sundry places."26 Such roads became traps for drifting snow during the winter, making passage exceedingly difficult.27 , Despite the poorness of the roads, however, overland travel had increased considerably during the colonial period and, according to Charles M. Andrews, had become "very coma "men" even in the sparsely settled South by 1770.28 Carl ‘Bridenbaugh has written that after about 17h3 "an exchange '7‘ of goods and ideas . . . steadily and increasingly tightened '7 the bonds of colonial union. No concept about the last thir- ‘ tybfive years of the colonial period is more demonstrably er- raucous than the one that the colonies were isolated one from :L '-;gcncther in thought and in deed, that travel by land Was in- 25Eastern Herald (Portland), June 4, 1792. 26Rhode Island, Archives, Rhode Island State Cap— 2‘ H. 27Worcester County, Mass., Sessions Records, County igccr's Office, wercester, V, 227; Berkshire County, Mass. 'ral Sessions of the Peace, County Commissioners Office, ‘lficld, I, 2h6-2h7. 7.1.11; 223. "rd r: 13 fk¥04nent, and that even by water there was more intercourse .b from one to the mother country than from colony to colony."29 V! There had been, indeed, intercourse between most of New England's inland towns and the outside world almost from the time of their settlement. During their first winter in Woodbury, Connecticut, some of the settlers had to travel twenty-five miles with hand sleds to purchase corn at strat— ford.30 In 1693, a few years after the founding of woodstock, Connecticut, James Corbin set up as a trader there, travel- ing the Indian trail to Boston with an ox cart to exchange furs, turpentine, and surplus produce for liquor, ammuni- tion, and other goods.31 Cattle were driven overland to Boston from the Connecticut Valley as early as the 1660's and until the time of the Revolution most of that area's surplus grain was marketed at the same place.32 During the latter part of the eighteenth century, how; ever, a number of factors were at work which greatly stimu- 29Car1 Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt. Urban Life in America, 12g2-1116 (New Yor 19 5 , pp. 5 -55. 1 3oWilliam Cothren, Histor of Ancient woodbur ‘geggecticut (woodbury, 1871- 9 , 9h . {,3 “ 31Ellen D. Larned, Histor of Windham Count r"¢£gggeeticut (Wbrcester,187h-§OI, I, 55. «I 32Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness: The 1 gr t Centur of Urban Life - Amer ca 1. 2-2]EE?TNew ,, 3 p. 3; Forrest McDonald, we tae People: -Bconomic Ori; ins of the Constitution (CHI¢:ago, 1958), .A 1. :1 A VI a L S . s I. 14 §§§gd inland commerce. In the first place, more and more ;;g§§tlers were finding their way into the back country. During 'Lthe last decades of the colonial period the fastest-growing New England colonies - Massachusetts and New Hampshire ; had their greatest population increase in inland counties. Con— necticut's inland towns grew more rapidly than those along the coast and navigable rivers between 1756 and 1810, in- creasing their percentage of the total population from about forty—three to about fifty-four per cent. Vermont's popu- lation, which had been less than 5,000 in 1771, grew to more than 85,000 in 1790 and 15i,ooo in 1800.33 Roads often were the only link between these inland communities and their markets. As the back country in New York and Pennsylvania similarly became settled after the « Revolution, "freight traffic by means of wagons assumed '-‘ great proportions."3h A New Hampshire editor recalled in v;§.later years that about the end of the century farmers from {scently settled Barnet and Ryegate, in northeastern Vermont, , 33Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, Cérican Po ulation before the Federal Census of l E. Taylor, "T 6 Turn ike ‘1' 1 p . lie in 0New England" (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Yale . unitersity, 193A), pp. 95- 96; Stella H. Sutherland, Po u- t-en Distribution in Colonial America (New York, 1 3"Joseph A. Durrenberger, jtfi Turn ikes: A Stud of in » Toll Road Movement in the Middle Atlantic States and 7‘ 7'? 4 'a ~osta, a., 1931 , p. 2:. A ' 15 ‘ii an Visiting Concord (a distance of about one hundred infilps) "in sleighing time with their span of horses and tlfilber boxes loaded with the rich produce of their indus- ;; * 38!; large fat hogs, firkins of butter, new milk cheese, I'é ' sometimes herds-grass and clover seed, wheat, flour,oat- -.; meal, &c. &c."35 The American Revolution also provided a stimulus to transportation. The war brought an unprecedented need for the movement of men and materials over considerable dis- tances. Chaatellux, stopping at an inn near the Connecticut - new York line in 1780 found thirteen New Hampshire farmers .7 x who were taking a herd of about 250 oxen to the army.36 The a war also helped to break down localism. One can only specup ; late as to the effect wartime service may have had in shap- ,; ing the outlook of a man such as Levi Pease, a Blandford, *.“Iassaehusetts,blacksmith prior to the Revolution, who dov- ered large areas in search of supplies as a purchasing agent 7.1 glider Commissary General Jeremiah wadsworth. After the war {flflthpioneered the expansion of the stage-coaching business in f , “ggfijgkfingland, as will be shown later in this chapter.37 :IT'H’.” . . .. . 35‘1‘he farmer's Monthly Visitor, II (January 31, am) " Av". . ‘XULAJ 36 V Chastellux, I, 8h. 37Andrew H. ward, History of the Town of Shrewsbury, hue tts (Boston, 18h7), p. #07. ‘ 16 ”,r6 r The great influx of British goods into the Uhited ghtgtes also seems to have affected trade in the region's ‘ihland towns. Shadrach Osborn, as a trader in what is now Southbury, Connecticut, had bought small quantities of goods in New York prior to the war. In July 1783, even before the British left the city, he visited it and purchased more than gmao worth of goods from seventeen firms. His purchases ranged from Jews' harps, "wood painted fans," ivory combs, and black feathers to window glass, iron shovels, and nails. osborn, patriot and a state commissary during the war, bought more than £26 worth of books from Tory printer James Rivington, mostly the works of such English writers as Field- ing, Sterne, Johnson, Swift, Milton, and Shakespeare. His purchases from one New York firm alone totalled about £511 between July 1783 and December 178A. He paid for these goods in cash and in barreled pork, which he sent by land to Derby and New Haven.38 5 osborn's trade declined along with that of a number ;-};tf other New England merchants and storekeepers during the Leg'f;id-1780’s as prices of American export goods declined and 2;:gfigcign restrictions closed a number of markets to American - a i” fihips; Beginning about 1787, however, commerce started to ,__—’. ,*9§3and_once more as merchants found markets in the Far East, :g-_3sosborn Papers, property of William warren, h ield, Conn. 17 the Mediterranean and the British West Indies.39 By 1789 prosperity had returned to southeastern New Hampshire, Samuel Lane of Stratham describing that year and 1790 as "a Remarkable time of . . . peace & plenty."h0 "Since the establishment of the present government," wrote Timothy Pitkin after the War of 1812, "the progress of national, as well as individual wealth has kept pace with the increase of population; and until the commencement of commercial restrictions in December 1807, and the declara- tion of war against Great-Britain, in 1812, no nation, it is believed, had ever increased so rapidly in wealth as the United States."l*1 Largely responsible for this growth in wealth were the European wars, beginning in 1793, which greatly stimulated the carrying trade and also brought an increased demand abroad for American foodstuffs and other exports. Exports of products.such as New England farmers com— monly marketed increased considerably within a few years. Almost 101,000 barrels of beef were sent abroad in l79h, as 39Edward Channing, A History of the United States New York, 1907- 25), III, #08- #22; Forrest McDonald, EPluribus Unum: The Formation of the American Re ublic, limo B0: on, 19 , pp. 20 —20 '.__"_"'_'L' AOCharles Lane Hanson (ed.), A Journal for the .Years 1&22-1803, by Samuel Lane of Stratham, New Hampshire cncor , . ., 1937 , p. 9b. thimothy Pitkin, A Statistical View of the Commerce e; the United States of America (2d ed.; Hartford, 1817), We "' 30 l8 ’ ~fiiantity of pork exported more than tripled between 1791 ‘; CQQ 1795.1"2 The Reverend Samuel Goodrich of Ridgefield, til, fiennecticut, reported in 1800 that the making of butter ta: 4?? market had increased greatly there in recent years, '), the price being more than triple what it had been twenty . 413 years earlier.‘*3 A Peacham, Vermont trader in 1801 warned “those few individuals who had dispensed with punctuality 5%. in their payments" that "it is much better for them to make rZL-: remittances now, when articles of the country command a good -‘k § , price, than after they have fallen at least 50 per cent, '. i C:'Ihich will probably take place, at the termination of the I .‘.72nropean war."““ Horace Bushnell once wrote that it is possible to tell I . r._~whpther there is any motion in a society by observing whether 1 fithere is activity in its roads.“5 Certainly a growth in 1: traffic during the late eighteenth century reflected the Q.‘9nickening in the pulse of New England's internal commerce. -i5§i1aher Amos in 1802 estimated that traffic on the road be- h21bid., p. 12a. “3Thompson, R. Harlow (ed. ) Connecticut Towns: ield in 1800 (Hartford, 195a5, p. upGreen mountain Patriot (Peacham, Vt. ), hfifiorace Bushnell, The Da of Roads: A Discourse, }§ed on the Annual Thanks; v -; l: . :ar or-, .A 19 Q Jifiibvpreceding thirty years.A6 According to a letter to the 3535' _>. ‘.‘311'¢§nhecticut Courant in 1797, "the communication between the 'L‘;VW 1hrge towns and the country is continually increasing -- v . R T. «States.”b7 In 1795 "great use" was beginning to be made of ‘I it and we are extending our connections with the neighbouring the road through Brooklyn, Canterbury, and Lisbon, Connecti- p O l ‘.4" out, to bring produce to Norwich from as far away as wercester, '“3‘I, Massachusetts.h8 Goodrich wrote in 1800 that the number of ”£1, “pleasure sleighs and those for lumbar have multiplied greatly :2 .iin Ridgefield] since the revolution" and that a similar in- ,.Cif ‘erease in the number of horse—drawn wagons had occurred "with- ‘9S;:.&n a few years past."l+9 It was reported in 1803 that on the I;,Q $ost road between Stratford, Connecticut, and New York "the Q'fiffraveling for many years past, has been and still is fast :? .Qhereasing."5° ‘ v .‘5 phi- At the same time stage travel in New England was in- Tg='-,H . w, r""' 3fifimtnz héFisher Ames, Draft of Letter to Prospective Inves- i W tors, 1802, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records, v e‘iigdham (Mass.) Historical Society. L7Connecticut Courant, May 8, 1797. ., “SConnecticut, Archives, Travel, Series II, Vol. .f $th 120 ' .u:.h ‘"‘fi?Thompson, p. 10. L‘: ZoConnecticut, Archites, Travel, Series II, Vol. ._ ,1. _A 20 if? 7:1ng at a rapid rate. When Levi Pease established a ’Qiflb between Boston and Hartford in 1783, a Boston hackney ' L. proprietor who declined to invest in the scheme warned him 41 that although there might someday be enough business to sup- .-port such a line, it would not be "'in your day or mine.”51 At the time there were perhaps a dozen stage lines in New ' England, the two longest of which ran from Boston to Provi- dence and Portsmouth. An attempt to run fortnightly stages between Boston and New York had failed in 1772. Pease and 2 his partner, Reuben Sikes, Jr., at first sometimes carried ‘no passengers at all.52 But in 1793. less than nine years Q‘ after they had secured agreements providing connecting lines to New Haven and New York, a would-be rival petitioned the S Connecticut General Aesembly that "so great is the Disposi- thitfi of the Citizens of the United States to travel in Stages, ‘3 that your Memorialist conceives a Stage on each of said Roads i;!ram . . . Hartford to said New Haven might have a full com- "53 3 filament of passengers." And a Massachusetts editor comp floated in 1795, 51mm, pp. #08409. , szoliver W. Holmes, "Levi Pease, the Father of New 5 and Stage-Coaching, " Journal of Economic and Business 7—»53Cenneciicut, Archives, Travel, Series II, Vol.VII, ‘ 21 it is singular, but true, that eight years ago, encouragement was barely given for two stages, and twelve horses, on the great road between [Boston] and Newhaven, a distance of 170 miles - where- as at this time, there are upwards of an hundred horses, and twenty carriages em- ployed.5 Stage travel was being encouraged by more regular as well as more rapid service. In 1783 it had taken five days to make the trip from Boston to Hartford and there v.‘v ‘ 5 f‘ later thrice-weekly stages were reaching New York from ‘had been only/one stage a week each way. Three years O _-‘ Boston in four days.55 By 1796 daily coaches between the two cities were running on schedules of as little as three gfldays and by 1803 thrice-weekly mail stages were reaching ‘_.,-!§ijork from Boston, by way of Providence, in forty-nine 'f,hours.56 The shorter schedules resulted largely from re- .h‘duction of rest stops and overnight stays, while the number . :3 21’ hours spent in actual travel declined but little. Trav- -¢391ers, however, were enabled to reach their destinations in _ J. Fr . 1;:ghgrter times, avoiding the extra costs of meals and lodging ’ .. ‘4 -N ifimsndant upon a longer trip. Improvements in equipment also were helping to make pskBrookfield Advertiser, March 31, 1795. a}. — '3‘— r! "' : _ ‘glfggEFfigfiolmes, Journal of Economic and Business;History, rigs v» :5 “1.; 2‘07 o {hdcégggssgc%usetts 82% (worcester), April 20, 1796; you aze e, u y 3, 1803. _,q‘ . f" |‘_. IT .4;_ _ 22 stage travel more comfortable. Whereas Brissot de warville in 1788 rode part of the way from Spencer to Springfield in a heavy springless vehicle and performed another leg of the Journey in a light carriage drawn by two horses, six years later Wansey made the same trip in comfortable carriages and "had four horses all the way to Newhaven, and very good ones, going from seven to nine miles an hour."57 New England roads also were being used to transport a great many manufactured goods to stores in inland towns. Such goods, generally higher in value in proportion to their weight than bulky farm produce, were thus better able to stand the cost of transportation and often could be sold at only a small advance over Boston or New York prices.58 As early as the 1730's inland storekepers were selling "an un— believable variety" of "household and farm necessities,"59 but by the latter part of the century inventories were be- coming even more diversified and were coming to include a growing variety of luxury goods. In 1800 a store in the northern Vermont town of Danville carried a line of goods 6 57Brissot de warville, PP. 109, llB-llh; wansey, 19.3. 58Sun (Pittsfield), May 24, 1802; November 28, 1803; Ernest L. Bogart, Peacham: The Stor of a Vermont Hill Town (Montpelier, V5” 19435, p. 270. 59Glenn Weaver, Jonathan Trumbull Connecticut's !&E§2§532_!ggistrate, 1710-1 artfor , l9 A 23 from New York that included, in addition to the usual dress goods, hardware, west India sugar and New England rum, such articles as plated stirrups, loaded whips, horsemen's pis— tols, and "Chest, door, till, and cupboard looks." A store- keeper in nearby Peacham announced that his goods were "too numerous to be particularized in an Advertisement," to which a competitor replied that although he made no such assertion, an enumeration of his own stock would fill two pages of the newspaper.60 In Keene, New Hampshire, it was possible in 1799 to buy such items transported from Boston (a distance of more than ninety miles) as gold rings and necklaces, gold and t silver earrings, and silver tea and table spoons, sleeve ) buttons, knee buckles, broaches, and clasps.61 In 1785 a store in Petersham, Massachusetts, offered "Queens yellow ‘ ware, and Elegant new fashioned blue and white ware, com, pletely asserted, by the crate or less Quantity" and "Very Elegant Fruit Baskets and Stands."62 Moses Whitney of Rindge, New Hampshire, in 1772 was selling his customers what has been described as "a much greater variety of articles than are generally admitted in approved homilies 60Green Mountain Patriot, November 5, 1800; November 14. 1799. ’ 61 New Hampshire Sentinel (Keene), November 2, 1799. 62Massachusetts Spy, July 21, 1785. A 2b of the economy and plain—living of our fathers."63 The selection in a Leominster, Massachusetts, store in 1798 included "Lady's Pendants, Black and Fancy Plumes, Morocco, Cloth and Leather Shoes, writing Paper and Books, Dutch Quills."64 The inhabitants of inland towns, moreover, did not confine their purchases entirely to what was available at stores in their own towns. Moses Whitney's customers came from Jeffrey and Peterborough, New Hampshire, and Winchendon and Ashburnham, Massachusetts.65 Ephraim Starr of Goshen, Connecticut, had a considerable part of his trade with people from Litchfield, Torrington, Cornwall, and Norfolk.66 John Ely of west Springfield, Massachusetts, kept accounts with persons from such widely separated towns as Stockbridge, Northampton, and Brimfield.67 Caleb Stark, who established a store in Dunbarton, New Hampshire, about 1790, had cus- tomers from as far as fifty miles distant.68 Many individuals, instead of dealing primarily with 63Ezra S. Stearns Histor of the Town of Rind e, 3 new Hampshire (Boston, 1875}, pp. 37h-375- 6“Political Focus (Leominster), December 13, 1798. 65Stearns, p. 375. 66A. G. Hibbard, Histor of the Town of Goshen, cOnnecticut (Hartford, 18975, pp. 353-359. 67Margaret E. Martin, "Merchants and Trade of the Connecticut Valley, 1795-1820," Smith Colle e Studies in History, XXIV (Northampton, Mass. 19358-595, IKE-1171;. _ 68Caleb Stark, History of the Town of Dunbarton _,gfincord, N. H., 1860), p. 155. 25 country storekeepers, made annual trips to New England's major market towns. Such Journeys were made most frequently during the winter, when, provided there were normal amounts of snow for sledding, travel was relatively easy. Farmers traveling to market had to make but few outlays of cash, as they usually carried enough food for themselves and their horses and often chose the cheapest accommodations, sleep- ing on the tap-room floors of taverns along their route.69 The principal expense was their own time and winter was a slack season for farm work. Indeed, journeys to market helped to break the monotony of winter solitude and also permitted farmers to sell their produce at a better price than they could receive from local traders, who had to de- duct the cost of transportation and their own profits from what they paid. Winter trips to Boston from the vicinity of Keene were common before 1800 and according to a Concord histo~ rian, writing in 1858, that town for about eighty years prior to the coming of the railroad was "the great thorough— fare for travel from the northwestern and northern parts of New Hampshire and adjoining portions of Vermont, to Ports- mouth, Salem, Newburyport and Boston, which were the princi- Pal market places." During the winter "it was not uncommon k 69Alice Morse Earle, Customs and Fashions in Old New England (New York, 1893), pp. 20 -210. 26 to see fifteen, twenty, thirty and more [sleighs] passing through Main Street in a line, at a time."70 One Saturday in February 1803, more than seven hundred sleighs were re- ported to have entered the river town of Hudson, New York, by way of a turnpike leading from southwestern Massachusetts, "besides those which went to that market by the other road."71 That much of the transporting was done during winter months, when there often was snow for sledding and farmers had time to do their own marketing or to work as teamsters for country storekeepers, helps to explain how inland towns maintained intercourse with the outside world despite the ) condition of the roads. So, too, does the nature of the in- tercourse itself. Grains and other bulky produce could not bear the cost of long-distance transportation and prior to the opening of the Erie Canal, for example, the cost of trans- porting wheat from Buffalo to New York was almost three times its market price at the latter place.72 But wheat could be grown successfully in only a few parts of New England and although Indian corn was grown extensively for local use, 708. G. Griffin, A Histor of the Town of Keene (Keene, N.H., l90h), p. 325; Natfianiel Bouton, The History of Concord (Concord, N.H., 1856), pp. 536-537. 71Massachusetts Spy, March 16, 1803. 72Percy w. Bidwell and John I. Falconer, History of SW riculture in the Northern United States 1620- eOiIZ‘I5EITT‘EfiTlEl. A en can ‘u 27 it was not important as a market crop.73 The items New England farmers typically sent to market - livestock, beef and pork, dairy products, cider - could stand better the cost of transportation over poor roads. Distances to markets, moreover, often were shorter in New England than in other parts of the United States, as will be discussed in Chapter III. Despite the difficul— ties of travel across Pennsylvania, Miss Dwight encountered long lines of wagons driven by professional teamsters, mak- ing the long and expensive trip between the western country and the seaboard.7h During the first decade of the nineteenth century much of the surplus produce of the Ohio Valley was taken to market at New Orleans by flatboat, those who made the journey often returning home on foot several months later?5 If trade was possible under such conditions, it should not be surprising that there was intercourse between the Berk- shires and the Hudson River towns, for example, or even be- tween northern Vermont and Boston. The poorness of the roads, however, often has been 73Percy W. Bidwell, "Rural Economy in New England at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century," Transactions of the Connecticut Academ of Arts and Sciences, XX (April, 1916) 352-32h. I 7“Farrand, pp. 36-38. ‘ 75George Rogers Taylor, "Agrarian Discontent in the Mississippi Valley Preceding the war of 1812," Journal of Political Economy,XXXIX (1931), h71-505. 28 cited by historians as an important form of evidence that inland farming in New England and other parts of the North was forced to remain for many years on a self-sufficient ba- sis. Percy W. Bidwell in particular emphasized the self- sufficient aspects of farming in his studies of agriculture in New England and in the northern United States, concluding that in New England, prior to at least 1810, only those far- mers living near the coast or navigable rivers had access to markets and that at least three—fourths of the population even of the three southern states v Massachusetts, Connecti- cut, and Rhode Island - was "almost entirely isolated from commercial relations with the outside world."76 Certainly no economic revolution took place during the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries. A couple in Barnet, Vermont, is supposed to have boasted on their six- tieth wedding anniversary during the 1830's "that they had never bought a pound of meat or flour or sugar during their entire married life."77 The evidence presented in this chap— ter, however, supports the conclusion of Rodney C. Loehr, a critic of Bidwell's thesis, that 76Bidwell, Transactions of the Connecticut Academ of Arts and Sciences, XX, 318. See also, Bidwell and Talconer, p. 125; Channing, IV, 11. 77Harold F. Wilson, The Hill Country of Northern New England (New York, 19h7), p. 17. 29 the picture of the self-sufficient farmer as one who formed a small self- contained economic unit and who pro- duced commodities and services mainly for family consumption, with little or no interest in an outside market, can— not be maintained. . . . Moreover, it appears quite likely that the general run of farmers constantly sought and produced for a market, which they found in the towns, the local storekeepers or various kinds of ambulating merchants. In turn the storekeepers found a market among the farmers for goods from the outside world. Self-sufficiency, as Loehr pointed out, is"a relative matter and [if we] cease dealing in absolutes, we shall be on much safer ground."79 Much remains to be learned about the extent to which farmers in various inland areas of New , England were involved in producing for a market, but it is evident that the isolation of even some of the more remote parts of northern New England was by no means complete and that during the latter part of the eighteenth century the region's roads, despite their condition, were being used increasingly for purposes of both travel and trade. Because of the growth of transportation, however, New Englanders, like Americans elsewhere, were becoming increas- ingly aware of the importance to trade of good roads and of the need to improve existing highways. Petitioners to the Rhode Island General Assembly in 1803 complained, "roads re- 78Rodney C. Loehr, "Self-Sufficiency on the Farm," Agricultural History, XXVI (April, 1952). #1. 79Ibid. " ii; 30 main as they were first laid out at a time when the channels of trade and communication were considered of little impor- tance."80 A Connecticut man, while pointing out in 1797 that the "progress which this country has made, since the war, in public convenience, and private emolument, strikes an observ- ing traveller almost with astonishment," also observed that the people of his state had "in some respects fallen behind our neighbours. One instance of our deficiency is the want of good public roads."81 Not even during the winter was it certain that roads would be at all good. Samuel Lane of Stratham, New Hampshire, who observed and recorded in his diary the effects of winter weather on transportation during the latter half of the eigh- teenth century, occasionally mentioned "hard winters" which brought enough snow to clog the fenced-in roads for weeks. Those who traveled were compelled to use the frozen rivers 'and the fields, which were more open to the wind and sun. At such times it was difficult for farmers to get to their woodlots, let alone to Boston or Portsmouth to sell their surplus, produce.82 8°Rhode Island, Archives, Charters, 1800-05, p. as. 3lconnecticut Courant, May 1, 1797. 82Hanson, pp. 68, 8h-85. WfiV—vw—w 31 Towards the end of the century, every effort was being made to carry on business as usual despite such weather. Lane wrote that in 1791, for example, "we had a pretty hard Winter; Deep Drifted Snows, & difficult pass— ing." But "there has abundance of Business been done by Sleding, especially by Sleighing: Families Removing into the Country; Visiting friends: bringing down Country prod- uce: Carying up Salt, goods, &c. &c. So much of such like Business Seldom or never known to be done in any Winter be- fore." And during the following winter, one of the worst he could remember, "many people do drive through & over the drifted Snows, & do a great deal of business."83 Little could be done to improve traveling conditions at such times, however, and it was fortunate that really harsh winters were not common. But on the other hand, there also were winters, and they were fairly common in southern New England, during which there was little snow and frequent thawing. Then the shortcomings of the roads became painfully evident. The writer of an open letter to the Connecticut General Assembly inquired in 1793, "why will you suffer the interior towns to drag their produce to market thro' deep mud to the axle—trees of their carts and Wagons?" 83Ibido, pp. 9h‘96o 32 Ought you not to give every part of the state equal advantages? If you can re- duce three days travel to Egg, ought it not to be done? . . . . Every middling farmer who lives 50 miles from market, may with g22d1§°233ys§$ ‘Ziiswfi‘élir’é‘éf' tigehescggries to markEEjfi%—___ Spring thaws and rainy seasons, furthermore, could halt travel of all kinds almost as effectively in New Eng— land as elsewhere. The Reverend William Bentley noted in his diary during a rainy period in April 1792, "no Stage has gone [from Salem] to Boston for several days, owing to the entire inaction such weather occasions."85 The condition of the roads also was at least partly responsible for the scarcity of wheeled pleasure vehicles in many towns. In his memoirs, "Peter Parley" remarked that during his boyhood in the 1790's, "in the small towns, there were no pleasure vehicles in use throughout New Eng- land.” The few in use were primitive, but even if they had been better, "the roads would scarcely have permitted the use of them."86' Timothy Dwight had to abandon a tour of Maine at Berwick in 1796 when he found that deep ruts cut by heavily loaded lumber carts made the roads dangerous for 8l"'1‘he Phenix; or, Windham Herald, November 2, 1793. .—__7 7 85The Diary of William Bentley, 13.13. (Salem, Mass., 1905‘111') 9 y 0 O - 86S. G. Goodrich, Recollections of a Lifetime (lbw York, 1857), I, 132, 136. 33 J travel in a chaise.87 A Vermont minister sold his chaise before moving from Newbury to Peacham in 1799, because there were as yet no roads suitable for such a vehicle in the latter town.88 And when Sidney Willard, son of the president of Harvard, went to Stafford Springs, Con- necticut, to prepare for college under the tutorship of his uncle in 1791, he and his brothers had to walk the last twenty miles from Brookfield, Massachusetts, the rock-strewn road making it impossible to ride in their chaise. In Stafford Springs, as in most inland towns, people went about their errands on foot or on horseback. Only the superintendent of the iron furnace had a chaise, and "he and his wife generally preferred the saddle and v—‘vv— pillion."89 many New Englanders cared not at all about these difficulties. There were, it was complained, many towns the inhabitants of which "have gone fifty or an hundred years through sloughs, as often as they have gone to the house of God, and probably they would do the same fifty -( ‘ years more unless the public relieves them."90 But there ' 87Timothy Dwight, Travels in New En land and New {45" York (NeW'Haven, 1821), I, 426-h27. v is. 88Bogart, p. 82. ; , 8931 idney Willard, Memories of Youth and Manhood "tcannmidge 1855), I, 23lIE33"§§§T“""""""“"' 90Connecticut Courant, May 29, 1797. V _ ~ 7. , - ‘—.'-'_ ‘.'-.v— v — , “."‘1 3h “'e growing number who agreed with petitioners 'lernhire County Court that "the great increase nose 8:. travel" had made it necessary to improve Fi“freedse91 Pro; ;-_ l _. v ‘ I nu * ‘ A . V w I , 1., k " -‘$0 thblh ,2 .f ‘1“ L w. I . r ‘a' I wctu- a}? - - * ' . » ~T ‘p tlc 'fithr h ‘_, salziy \urfs sz~tas u" ~: a .: 1 find been '. ‘.z.:: 51,31,711." 3‘..“'/I':7.:"’,~‘_. (“ff-.31 tam,, -. | a-” O f gurun 1:3- isdfii‘rzfl' " 4158 ' ‘«‘ mire County, General Sessions of the Peace, a single to:.H vhen .he sol::tne: lr t..~ tows “a a.-_ _... , January ‘59. 27pm CHAPTER II TOWN RESPONSIBILITY AND THE MOVEMENT FOR IMPROVEMENTS Proponents of highway improvements during the late eighteenth century generally agreed that the laws under which roads were built and maintained had to be changed. ”A Farmer! writing to a Boston newspaper in 1796, asked, ”Will any man of sense, believe that our roads will be made good under the present regulations? Our old towns have been fully settled for almost a century; and surely that period is long enough to try the efficacy of the laws in question."1 Although the criticism was aimed specifical- ly at the highway laws of Massachusetts, it also could have applied to those of the other New England states. For the statutes were similar in the various states and had been enforced with similar results. Basic to the laws was the responsibility of the towns for the roads within their limits. To be sure, county courts in all the New England states except Rhode Island had been grantedauthority to order the making of highways from town to town within their jurisdictions, as well as roads lying wholly within a single town when the selectmen or the town -IColumbian Centinel, January 30, 1796. 35 36 meeting refused to do so. The colonial governments at an early date also had begun laying out "great highways" such as the "Kennebunk road by the sear which the Crown Commis- sioners of Massachusetts ordered built between Kittery and Falmouth, Maine, in 1653.2 But the towns bore the expense of opening all the roads within their limits and of paying damages to the property owners involved. And the towns also were responsible for maintenance. Highway surveyors, at least two of whom.were elected annually at town meetings, were charged with keeping the roads within their districts in re- pair. They were authorized to call out laborers, either un- der an old law requiring most adult male inhabitants to work a certain number of days each year on the highways, or, as was becoming more generally the practice, to work off a tax on polls and estates. Surveyors failing to perform their duties, persons refusing to work or to send a substitute, and towns convicted of failing to repair a road or bridge all were subject to fines.3 To enact laws had been one matter; to obtain compli- ance had proved to be quite another. The Connecticut General Court ordered the opening of a "Country highway" from.town to town along the uplands on the east side of the Connecticut _ 2Herbert G. Jones, The Kingfs Highway from Portland to Kittery (Freeport, 1953). Do 11. 3See, for example, Massachusetts, Acts and Resolves, 1786, c. 81. 37 River in 1670, but the selectmen of Glastonbury failed to lay out their portion of it until 1706 and five years later property owners still had their fences across it, so that "there is now no highway . . . through said Town, the want whereof is an exceeding wrong, not only to the Inhabitants there, but unto Strangers."h In 1785 the Connecticut legis- lature increased the fine for failing to work on the highways, having found the previous penalty "insufficient to enforce Obedience to said Act."5 This had been tried several times previously during the eighteenth century, however, with little success.6 New Hampshire, which in 1698 had passed an act prohibiting the leaving of lumber and other objects in the roads, found it necessary to enact a similar law in 1786 with the explanation that "many persons within this State[Still]make a practice of unloading and laying down in the Streets or highways, masts spars, mill-logs, boards, plank, timber and other lumber, firewood and rocks for build- ing, to the great incumbrance of said streets and highways so as to render them almost or altogether impassable."7 “Connecticut, Archives, Travel, Series I,Vol.I, p. 3. 5The Public Records of the State of Connecticut, ed. Charles 3‘. Hoadly et a1. (Hartford, 1860—1"- , ‘VI","'"99'_. _Cited hereafter as State of Connecticut, Public Records. 6Connecticut, Archives, Travel, Series I, Vol. I, pp. 12, 101, 113. 7Laws of New Hampshire, ed. Albert s. Batehellor et a1. (10vols.; Manchester, Concord, Bristol, N. H., 1905-22), I, c. 2 (1698); V, c. 14 (1786). Cited here- after as New Hampshire, Laws. 38 The highway laws, based on those of England, where the parishes were the reSponsible agents, had worked best during the early years of settlement, while towns still were relatively isolated and there was little demand for roads to accommodate through travel. The earliest roads usually served primarily local needs, providing access to houses, outlying fields, mills, and the meeting house.8 In many towns, the proprietors, at the time of a division of land, would leave "rangeways" - strips of land reserved for roads - between ranges of lots. Thus in the original layout of Hanover, New Hampshire, every loo-acre lot had frontage on a projected roadway of from four to ten rods in width.9 The original homelots in Wallingford, Connecticut, were laid in strips of five on either Side of a six-rod road, which was intersected by several 'Cross High ways' of equal width.10 In Amherst, Massachusetts, the early lots were laid along rangeways forty rods wide.ll 8 'Like the veins in the human system centering at the heart, the primitive roads of every town had a general tend- ency towards the meeting-house. It was not until the move- ment of surplus production gave additional employment to the roads that much attention was paid to any outward facilities." Ezra S. Stearns, History;of AshburnhamigMassachusetts (Ash- burnham, 1887), p. 372. 9John K. Lord, A.History of the Town of Hanover, N.IH. (Hanover, 1928), p. 3031 10Joseph P. Beach, Historygof Cheshire, Connecticut (Cheshire, 1912), p. 2A. 11Carpenter and Morehouse, The History_ of the Town of Amherst massachusetts (Amherst, I896), p. 49. 39 As a town grew and new needs arose, other roads were laid out by the proprietors oru-after incorporation:- by the selectmen, whose actions were subject to the approval of the town meeting. Difficulties sometimes arose in re- gard to these roads. Absentee proprietors in some cases neglected to provide them.12 Sometimes, too, a recent set- tler in an outlying area would have no way of entering or leaving his property without trespassing on another person's land and would find the older inhabitant Opposed to the es- tablishment of a road that would be of little use to him, would cut up his property, and would put him at the trouble of building fences. The town often would be equally opposed to paying damages and the other costs involved in the Open- ing of such a road. Such difficulties led most of the New England colonies, at a fairly early date,to adopt laws permitting petitioners unable to obtain needed town roads and property owners dis— satisfied with damage awards to bring their cases before the 12Connecticut, Archives, Travel, Series I, Vol. I, pp. 20, 92: Documents and Recordgrelatingto the Province of NeW'Ham.shIre, ed.'Nathaniel Bouton et a1. (Manchester, N.H., 1872-19A3), XI, 161-162, 302: XII, 3, A25-h26. Cited hereafter as New Hampshire, Province Papers. 13Grafton County, Highway Petitions, 1773-1800; Barksgire County,Genera1 Sessions of the Peace, I, [4' O'LI' lo to county courts.lh Legal means, furthermore, were develOped whereby conflicts among petitioners, property owners, and towns could be minimized. If a road was for the private use of an individual, he could be required to pay all costs.15 Courts were authorized to permit the establishment of "pent roads," across which gates were built at property lines to avoid the expense of fencing.16 Rangeways and allowance lands, although not always used for highways, nevertheless were available to be exchanged for land where roads actually were needed. Thus many of the highway reservations in Hana over later were exchanged for roads actually "trod."l7 Most deeds granted in Cornwall, Vermont, stipulated that five 1“The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, ed. J. Hammond Trumbull et’al. (Hartford, 1868-90), IV, 311.416 (1699); XIV, 181—1T 2 (1773). Cited hereafter as Colony of Connecticut, Public Records. The Acts and Re- solves of the Province of Massachusetts Bay (Boston,_I860- , , c. 6 (I693—9h), secs. 3, LBII, c. 1 (1728-29), sec. 2; 0. 1h (1736-37). Cited hereafter as Province of Massachusetts Bay, Acts and Resolves. Rhode Island law gave courts the power of reviewing damage awards only, the towns having the final say as to whether a road was to be built. ( ) 15Colony of Connecticut, Public Records, XIV, 182 1773 . 16Colony of Connecticut, Public Records, III, h02 (1713); Rhode Island Public Laws, Revised (1798), p. 382 ("an Act for laying out Highways," sec. 3). . l7Lord, p. 303. See also, John J. Dearborn, The History ofISalisbury New Hampshire (Manchester, N.-HT, I890), p. 291; Ezra L. Johnson, Newtown [Conn.] (Newtown, 1917). PP. 116-117; Hibbard, pp. 32-33. #1 acres in every 100 were to be considered allowance lands. Under Vermont law, the town, in exercising the power of eminent domain, could take that amount of land for a road without paying damages or could take allowance land from one lot to compensate other property owners who had been 18 Final- required to relinquish more than their allowances. 1y, according to law, a road was to be laid "as little as may be to the injury of the land through which it passes."19 As early as 1639, indeed, a.MassaChusetts act had provided that a road could be opened through land under cultivation, but not "so as it occasion . . . the puling down of any mans house, or laying open any garden, or orchard."20 Poor though the systems of town roads were that developed under these laws, they fulfilled their intended function of providing access to houses, fields, and public places. Speed and comfort were considered to be of no great importance when one had to travel no more than a few miles to meeting or mill and the inconveniences of a winding, hilly, rutted route usual- ly were preferred to paying the cost of removing boulders and other natural obstacles, building causeways where needed, and 18Lyman Matthews, History of the Town_gf Cornwall, Vermont (Middlebury, 18627: p. 300; Vermont, Laws,*ReviSed , c. 26, sec. 3. 19Rhode Island, Acts and Laws, Revised (1767), p. 1h0 ("an Act for layifig outIHighways"). 20The Laws and Liberties onMassachusetts, p. 25. #2 doing other things necessary to build and maintain a good road.21 Since town roads were primarily for the use of local people, moreover, those who bore the responsibility for building and maintenance suffered whatever consequences resulted from their own neglect. By the late eighteenth century, however, people and goods were moving with greater frequency beyond town bound- aries and the location and condition of roads were becoming of more general interest. Today such interests find expres- sion in the roles that counties, states, and the federal gov- ernment, as well as towns, play in financing roads of varying degrees of importance. But at the time under consideration, the towns, with their limited resources and predominantlylo— cal interests, remained reSponSible for all the roads, in- cluding main highways, within their limits. The indifference and even opposition of many towns towards providing highways for the benefit of outsiders were notorious. According to the historian of Ashburnham, Mass- achusetts, "the only roads which offered any suggestions for the accommodation of the surrounding towns were built under the commands of the court and in opposition to the will of a majority of the inhabitants."22 When the selectmen of Groton, 21For a discussion of construction and maintenance, see Chapter VI. 22Stearns, History of Ashburnham, p. 372. #3 New Hampshire, laid out a highway in the direction of a "great public road" in Dorchester, the latter town refused to complete the route. Some years earlier the inhabitants of Dorchester had had their turn to complain that they "have often Broke their Slays, Sleds, and Carriages in Conveying the Necessaries of Life to our Families" for lack of a decent road through Alexandria in the direction of P1ymouth.23' Persons living in a remote part of New Chester, New Hampshire, claimed in 1791 that for nine years they had been unable to go to mill without trespassing on private property because the selectmen of Bridgewater had refused to lay out a road across a corner of that town.24 Although colonial statutes originally required towns to cooperate in establishing intertown roads, the impossi- bility of securing cooperation became apparent at an early date. Massachusetts in 1693 vested final authority for lay- ing out such roads in the county courts and by the end of the eighteenth century all the New England states except Rhode Island had similar laws.25 23Grafton County, Highway Petitions, 1773-1800; New Hampshire, Province Papers, XII, 76. 2“Grafton County, Highway Petitions, 1773—1800. 25Province of Massachusetts Bay, Acts and Resolves, I, c. 6 (1693-9h), Sec. 3; III, c. 18 (1756-57); New Hamp- shire, Laws, I, c. 2 (1698); Colony of Connecticut, Public Records, IV, 314-316 (1699); Vermont, Laws Revised (1798), 0. sec. 2. Cf., Rhode Island, Public Laws, Revised _:___1 2 (1798), "an act for laying out Highways." 4h There still was no assurance, however, that inter- town roads would be good. In the first place, such highways were laid out by court-appointed committees, the only re- quirement for membership on which was that one be a free- holder whose interests were in no way affected by the pro- posed route. The results of their amateurish efforts often ‘were futile. A highway from Hartford to Litchfield, although accepted by the Hartford County Court in 1797, lay "on the worst ground for a road." In one place it went through "an impassable swamp"; elsewhere it "descends the worst hill in the vicinity . . . on to a flatt frequently overflown with water from the river adjoining it."26 There was, moreover, a laxity and lack of uniformity in the enforcement of highway laws, the result being that the condition of important roads varied greatly from town to town. Although Congress during the 1780's, for example, began designating certain existing routes as federal post roads, no funds were appropriated for construction or re- pairs nor were maintenance standards established. The fed- eral role was confined simply to determining the routes mail 27 contractors were to use. Individuals who refused to turn 26Connecticut, Archives, Travel, Series II, Vol. X, p. 38. 27Carter Goodrich, Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, 1800-1890 (New York, 1960), pp. 19-20. #5 their teams aside when meeting a mail stage on narrow stretches of a post road - a practice apparently common among Rhode Islanders28 - were subject to fines of up to $100 under a federal law against obstructing the passage of the mails, but contractors who were prevented from.meet- ing their schedules because of the condition of the roads themselves were obliged to rely on either the willingness of the various towns to make improvements or on the ability ' of the states to enforce their own laws relative to main- tenance. Connecticut in 1785 passed an act requiring towns "immediately: to put in good repair the roads and bridges used by mail stages or else to pay the cost of having the job done under the direction of the county courts. The same state also granted a number of towns the privilege of rais- ing by means of lotteries the funds needed for repairing theseroads. But in 1792 a legislative committee reported in regard to the post road from Hartford to Providence that "the Inhabitants of the Several Towns through which the Stage passes have not alike exerted themselves in the business of repairing." And in 179A the towns of Coventry and Bolton, although they had been granted a lottery, refused to make 28Providence Gazette, February 10, 1798. 46 alterations the Assembly had ordered in the same road.29 In the case just mentioned, the Assembly did order the sheriff of Tolland County to have the repairs made at the towns' expense. But a post road or other important highway often could remain in poor condition for some time before any legal action was taken. According to "A Farmer," 'the present system leaves it at the option of the towns to do nothing, and then they stand the chance of being presented by a Grand Jury. And how hard is that chance? It is notor- iously a hundred to one that no presentment happens, and if one is made, a promise of amendment will hang up and finally smother the prosecution."30 It was charged that in Connecti- cut "we have been Criminally negligent with regard to the roads," but the records of the Windham County Court reveal that only once between 1780 and 1800 was a town fined because 31 In of a poorly maintained road. Berkshire County, Massachu- setts, where three presentments were made during the 1790's, each case was dropped when the town declined to contest the indictment and agreed to pay court costs.32 29State of Connecticut, Public Records, VI, 98-99, 229-230, 3&2; VII, 536-537; Connecticut, ArEhives, Travel, Series II, Vol. VII, pp. 29-30. 30Columbian Centinel, February 3, 1796. 31Connecticut Courant, May 22, 1797; Windham County, Conn. , Court Records . 32Berkshire County, General Sessions of the Peace. #7 During the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century, basically the same highway laws, modified somewhat and better enforced, were used with at least some success to improve public roads. Even then, however, the system probably was reverted to for lack of a better alternative; at the end of the eighteenth century the almost universally poor condition of the roads would have made it practically impossible to effect Significant improvements within the framework of the existing laws. The expense of widespread improvements would have been great at any time. During the post-Revolutionary period taxes already were heavy and additional levies would have met with strong opposition. Some towns, moreover, already were strain- ing their resources to keep their roads in repair. The post road along the coast of eastern Connecticut, through Groton and Stonington, was on such rough terrain that "notwithStand— ing a great deal of labour, commendably bestowed on it, fit] is very disagreeable." The latter town was able with diffi- culty to keep its main street reasonably free of rocks, "but the rest are so encumbered, that it is with difficulty, and not without danger, a person walks along them.at night."33 In new communities, where the opening of roads was but one of many pressing problems connected with settlement, improve- 33Dwight, II, 523; Duke de la Rouchefoucault Liancourt, Travels throu h the United States of North America in the Years 1295, I7§6L and 1797 (London, 1799), II, 136. #8 ment was a particularly slow and difficult process. The expenses involved in providing good roads often were be- yond the means of such towns, as a Berkshire County Court committee recognized in 1800 when it upheld the contention of Bethlehem (now part of Otis) that to open a recently laid county road "will be attended with such expense across those rocks and mountains; that they are unable to perform the same, in their new beginning & low Estate as to property.3h Several expedients already had been tried during the late eighteenth century to make the building and repairing of roads somewhat less burdensome to the towns. Lotteries were one such means. In 1759, when the inhabitants of Ports- mouth, New'Hampshire, sought to pave some of the town's bus- ier streets, they pointed out in a petition to the legislature that "works of this & the like nature are annually carried in- to execution in other Places by Public Lotteries."35 To fa- cilitate the movement of troops and supplies over its portion of the highway between Hartford and Albany, Massachusetts in 1781 granted a lottery to raise 100,000 dollars in inflated 36 continental currency for repairs. Connecticut between 1790 and 1793 granted similar privileges to towns under orders to 3“Berkshire County, General Sessions of the Peace, I, 32, 336-337. 35NewHampshire, Province Papers, IX, 707-708. 36Connecticut Courant, January 23, 1781. A9 repair the Hartford-Providence post road, the Lower Post Road, and the highway through Mohegan Indian lands be- tween Norwich and New London. The same state also granted a number of lotteries for the building and repairing of bridges during the last two decades of the century.37 Efforts also had been made to provide new sources of tax revenue. New Hampshire, for example, during the post- Revolutionary period frequently granted towns the privilege of levying special taxes on all lands, including those of absentee owners, for making or repairing roads.38 By the end of the century all of the New England states also had revised their highway labor laws. Colonial statutes, based on English laws, had permitted the impressment of laborers 39 Labor on the roads was the for many types of public works. most common form of exactment and in the New England colonies most adult males had been required either to Work a certain number of days each year or to send a substitute. Under a revised law of 1797, Vermont still required at least four days' labor of every male between the ages of twenty-one and Sixty with the exception of ministers, school masters, and college students, but also required that further labor, 37State of Connecticut, Public Records, VII, 229—230, 531; VIII, 68. 3SNewHampshire, Province Papers, XI, 111-114, 251- 252; XII, 35h, 365. 39Richard B. Morris, Government and Labor in Early America (New York, 19A6), pp. 1-10. 50 if required, be exacted in the form of a tax on property.“0 Under laws still in effect at the end of the century, Rhode Island towns could require at least one day's work each year of "every householder and labourer," while Connecticut towns still could exact at least two days' labor. But both states also had granted towns the option of levying a tax on polls bl Massachusetts had taken this step during the and estates. 1720's and John Adams, who "thought a Tax a more equitable Method and more likely to be effectual," helped to persuade the Braintree town meeting to adopt it in 176h.h2 A.Mass- achusetts law approved in 1787 required all towns to assess a highway tax, payable either in labor or in money, as had a New Hampshire statute enacted in 1771+}+3 These measures, however, were not enough to insure the effecting of needed improvements. Although Rhode Island in particular continued to resort to their use until at least LOVermont, Laws,yRevised (1798), c. 26, sec. 5. “Inhode Island, Public Laws, Revised (1798), pp. 384- 385, 389 ("an Act for the Mending of Highways," secs. 1, 2, 11); Connecticut, Public Statute Laws,gCompiled (1808), Title LXXXVI, c. 1, sec. 10. thyman H. Butterfield (ed.), Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (Cambridge, 1961), III, 279. h3Massachusetts, Acts and Resolves, 1786, C. 81; New Hampshire, Laws, III, 0.753(177h). 51 Ah it was found that lotteries sometimes raised the 1820's, insufficient amounts of money to permit the repairing of a road and that, at any rate, once the funds had been spent, deterioration began again.“5 Highway taxes were regarded as more equitable than the old system of requiring every- one to perform the same amount of 1abor,‘+6 but highway maintenance was a thorny issue in many towns. Holland and South Brimfield (now Wales), Massachusetts, became involved in a spirited dispute in 1783 when a representa- tive from the former town succeeded in getting its boundary fixed just to the east of the road to Brimfield, so that South Brimfield had to bear the entire cost of keeping it in repair.h7 According to a petition of the inhabitants of Sandwich to the New Hampshire legislature, "altho the high- way Rate . . . for Several years has been more than double to all other taxes yet [it is] Very insufficient for the Purposes of Repairing our Roads.n48 thhode Island, Archives, Petitions to the General Assembly, L, 108. h5Connecticut, Archives, Travel, Series II, Vol.VII, p. 12; State of Connecticut, Public Records, VII, 39h-396; Connecticut Courant, June 26, 1797. 46Rhode Island, Archives, Petitions to the General Assembly, XXVII, 54; Butterfield, I, 203; Connecticut Courant, October 19, 1767. h7Martin Lovering, History ofythe Town of Holland, Massachusetts (Rutland, 1915), pp. 112-113. “BN w Hampshire, Province Papers, XIII, A18. 52 Much of what was spent in money and labor for main- tenance, moreover, was wasted. According to "A Farmer," the working out of taxes was a time of "frolic in the high- ways," more notable for the amount of rum consumed than for “9 Added to this was a lack the amount of work accomplished. of skilled supervision. It was common for a town to elect ten or twenty surveyors of highways, each with his own dis- trict to supervise as he saw fit. Skill in road building was by no means a prerequisite for the job. When John Adams, upon reaching the age of twenty-one, was nominated to serve as surveyor, he was told, "they make it a rule to compell every Man to serve either as Constable or Surveyor, or to pay a fine.."50 Not surprisingly, then, highway taxes, al- though "a considerable burthen in the community, . . . are in comparison to what ought to be done, almost thrown away."51 Much of what is effected is done at the wrong places, where the road ought to be straitened, or turned, or in bye roads of the great road. It is often done at the wrong time, just before the winter frosts come to undo it all. Much is left half done, and a bad road is made worse by heaps of materials. Another great fault is, too much §§ attempted, and too little accomplished. “gcolumbian Centinel, January 27, 1796. 5°Butterrield, III, 278-279. 51 5 Columbian Centinel, January 27, 1796. 2Ibid., February 3, 1796. 53 Advocates of improvements thus could find ample reason to deride "present laws" as unworkable and even to suggest that "before the roads will be made good by their operation, three centuries, perhaps ten, will pass away, and more money will be spent in vain than would dig the canals of Chigg,"53 But such persons also could offer alternatives. The answer to the problem, according to "A Farmer," lay either in much stricter enforcement of existing laws or in the chartering of turnpikes, "as they have done in the most wealthy and improved countries of Europe. In the former plan, great caution will be requi- site to prevent abuses, but as to turnpikes, the experience of others is a safe guide."5h "The use of Turnpike roads," wrote a Massachusetts editor, "so common and profitable in older countries, seems to claim attention here." "By Turn- pikes," another contemporary wrote "they are made to support the roads, who use them."55 That the cost of maintaining roads should be borne by the people who actually traveled over them was a principle frequently repeated during the late eighteenth century. One reason, indeed, for favoring a highway tax over statute labor 53Ibid. 5thid., January 30, 1796. 55Political Focus (Leominster), February 28, 1799; Connecticut Courant, June 26, 1797. 54 had been that the tendency would be to place the burden more heavily on those who used the roads. A Connecticut man styling himself "Justice," in 1767 advocated a tax and questioned the exemptions from labor permitted under that colony's laws, wondering Why magistrates and justices of the peace should be exempt from doing their part this way, unless it be because they don't use the road. . . or because the a-m-y is made up of that respectable body. Nor can I see why allowed physicians who use and wear the road as much as any set of men perhaps whatever (teamsters excepted) should be exempt. John Adams, in recommending that Braintree repair its roads in part by a tax on property, thereby hoped "that rich Men may contribute in Proportion to their wealth, to repairing, as they contribute most by their Equipages, &c. to the wear- ing and spoiling the high ways."57 A highway tax, however, was a most imperfect means of realizing the principle of user support. As Adams himself pointed out, of two equally wealthy men, one might send his produce to market by water, while the other, carting heavy loads of lumber to a landing place, "breaks and cutts and crushes the Ways to Pieces."58 Since highway rates were a local tax, moreover, they failed to touch outsiders who 56Connecticut Courant, October 19, 1767. 57Butterrie1d, I, 203. 58Ib1d. 55 used a road and contributed to its wear. As travel be- came more and more common, complaints frequently were heard that towns were being required to make heavy expeditures that were of much greater benefit to outsiders than to their own inhabitants.59 For some years Great Britain, faced with similar problems of poor roads inadequately maintained by the pa- rishes on one hand and increased travel on the other, had been chartering turnpike trusts, which placed the cost of maintenance on teamsters and travelers. Although the first turnpike act was passed in 1660, the turnpike era in Great Britain really began during the eighteenth century. Parlia- ment passed h53 such acts between 1760 and 177A and 1,062 between 1785 and 1809. By 1838 a total of 1,116 turnpike trusts, controlling about 22,000 miles of road in England and Wales, had been authorized under more than 3,800 turn- pike acts. The trusts consisted of a number of local gen- tlemen who were permitted to borrow money for the repair of their roads, to employ surveyors, and to erect turnpikes, or tollgates. Plagued by incompetent management and finan- cial difficulties, the trusts frequently were unpopular be- cause of heavy exactions from travelers and the poor condi- tion of many of their roads. But according to one historian, 59connecticut, Archives, Travel, Series II, Vol. IV, Do 99; Connecticut Courant, June 26, 1797, 56 "the turnpike system, defective in itself, badly adminis- tered, and burdensome to the toll-payers, did bring about an improvement in roads which previously had too often re- ceived little or no attention; and this improvement . . . had a material influence on trade, travel, and social con- dition."60 Imperfect as it was, the British turnpike system pre- sented Americans with an alternative - perhaps the only one practicable at the time - to continued responsibility of the towns for main roads. Neither the federal government nor any of the New England states was to become deeply involved in financing highway projects for many years to come. Thomas Jefferson, opposing an effort in 1796 to have the federal government survey proposed routes for post roads, commented, "'we have thought, hitherto, that the roads of a State could not be so well administered even by the State legislature as by the magistracy of the county, on the spot.'" 61 Although Jefferson and his successors in the Presidency later favored, sometimes with various reservations, federal participation in internal improvements projects, constitutional and politi- cal problems long stood in the way of widespread involvement. 60Pratt, p. 84. See also, J. w. Gregory, The Story of the Road (London, 1931), p. 184. 61Leonard D. White, The Federalists: A Study in Ad- ministrative History (New YErk, 1956), p._K88. 57 The federal government's only major road-building project during the early nineteenth century was the National Road, linking the former territories of the Old Northwest with the Atlantic seaboard. Although larger sums later were sub- scribed to the stock of improvement companies or granted in the form.of public lands, President James Monroe reported to Congress in 1818 that the executive department since 1806 had supervised directly the expenditure of only about $35,000 for the building of military and post roads through the terri- tories. There were precedents for state financial participa- tion in road building. During the reign of Queen Anne the colonial government of New York appropriated £500 for a road from Nyack to the Sterling iron works and in 1789 New York's legislature set aside 50,000 acres of public land to be granted as compensation for opening roads.63 Pennsylvania granted £2,000 for a highway from Cumberland County to Pittsburgh in 1785 and between 1791 and 1820 made many 62Message from the President of the United States, TransmittingIPursuant to a Resolution of the House of Representatives Information of Ehe Roads Made, or in Progress, under the Executive of the United States (washington, 1818); GoodriCE, pp. 39-48. 63Ulysses P. Hedrick, A History of Agriculture in the State of New York (Albany” 1933), P. 166; Oliver W. Holmes, wThe Turnpike Era," Conquering the Wilderness, Vol. V of History of the State of New York, ed. Alexander C. Flick(New York, 1931.), p. 261. 58 similar appropriations.6h In order to expedite sales of its public lands in Maine and also to abate separatist feeling there, Massachusetts in 1787 ordered the laying out and opening of roads between the New Hampshire line and Passamaquoddy Bay and between the Penobscot and Kenne- bec rivers at public expense, the cost to be paid by the granting of unappropriated lands.65 Like the federal government and the towns, however, a number of states experienced financial difficulties during the post-Revolutionary period. Although the importance of "great Market Roads" both to the economy and to political unity was recognized by the Connecticut General Assembly, and although that body during the 1790's appointed a number of committees to recommend alterations of such roads, it soon was recognized that for the state to assume the cost 66 of repairs would "embarrass our finance." Massachusetts, although similarly interested in roads and other factors af- fecting the prosperity and welfare of its citizens, also was unable to finance needed improvements.67 6 “Fletcher, pp. 251-252. 65William D. Williamson, The History of the State of Maine (Halowell, Me., 1832), II, 532. 66Connecticut, Archives, Travel, Series II, Vol. V, p. 48; State of Connecticut, Public Record VIII, n., 362; Connecticut Courant, June 26, 1797. 67Oscar and Mary Handlin, Commonwealth, A Study of the Role of Government in the American Economy: Massachusetts, 1774-1861 (New York, 1947), pp. 93 ff. 59 In Massachusetts, however, as in other parts of the United States, "people who shared common interests normally formed groups to work for a common end" and the Commonwealth at an early date had discovered the possibili- ties inherent in granting legal status to certain such groups, 68 delegating to them some of its own authority. During the post-Revolutionary years, Massachusetts, offering monopo- lies, prospective profits, and other incentives, "launched a great variety of new bodies to do what had to be done."69 Among the enterprises thus Chartered was the Charles River Bridge in 1785, providing a span over one of three major rivers impeding the movement of traffic between Boston and the New Hampshire line. This was, according to the Mggg: achusetts Spy, a project that has ever been thought of as . . . worthy the attention of the publick. Our ances- tors wished to accomplish this important affair, but men of property, and spirit to undertake it on their own account, could not then be found . . . but we have now the pleasure of informing the publick, that several gentlemen stand ready to carry on this great work, at their own expence, provided they can have that sanction of the Legislatnae which is reasonable and necessary. There was, indeed, money available for investment in 68Ibid., pp. 98-99. 691bid., p. 103 70Massachusetts Spy, February 10, 1785. 60 the United States and the success of early toll bridges such as that over the Charles helped to induce men of property to support other internal improvements projects. Between 1792 and 1800 Massachusetts alone chartered twenty- three bridge corporations71 and during the same period all of the New England states began chartering turnpikes. The turnpike movement in the United States began in 1785, when Virginia authorized the erection of tollgates on roads leading from Alexandria towards the northwestern part of the state. Two years later Maryland enacted legislation leading to the establishment of several highways as toll roads.72 In New England there had been talk as early as 1788 of turnpiking the post road leading from Boston to Hartford through Worcester and Springfield.73 The Connecti- cut lower house, while agreeing in 1791, to a lottery for the repair of the Mohegan Road, turned down a request for turnpike privileges; the following year petitioners claimed that improvements had been made on the road, which was the principal route between New London and northeastern Connecti- cut, but "for want of [continued] attention the said Road. . . 71Handlin and Handlin, p. 141. 72Frederic J. WCod, The Turnpikes of New England and Evolution of the Same through England, Virginia, and Mary- land—(Boston, 1919), pp.47-9. 73Brissot de Warville, p. 110. 61 is going fast to decay & will in a few years be as bad as ever." This road is so situated that few of the white Inhabitants of the Town of Montville make any use of it & would deem it a hardship to be obliged to work much upon it, and is of course neglected by them. Your petitioners conceive that there could be no just or more effectual way of keeping the Road in Repair than by collecting a small Tax for the Purpose from the People who travel it, & that the ad- vantage of having a good road is so great that no reasonable man could com- plain at the expence. Experience has in other Countries evinced the Expedi- ency of a measure of this kind & Turn- pike Roads are in Europe perhaps uni- versally acknowlfidged to be the cheap- est & the best. The Assembly this time granted the requeSt for a tollgate and a few months later authorized a gate on the Lower Post Road in Greenwich, where the avails of a lottery also had proved inadequate to effect permanent repairs on a route "uncommonly rough, unavoidably stretching across steep hills, rocky precipices,, deep vallies & Sloughs."75 These first two New England turnpike acts were based on the English model of a turnpike trust with a bonded debt to pay. The Greenwich act provided for the appointment of 748tate of Connecticut, Public Records, VII, n. 230; Connecticut, Archives, Travel, Series II, Vol. XIII, p. 58. 75State of Connecticut, Public Records, VII, 394-396, 536; Connecticut, Archives, Travel, Series II, Vol. VII, p. 13. 62 several commissioners who were to supervise repairs, erect a tollgate after the Fairfield County court had determined that the road was "in good repair for Wheel Carriages," supervise the collection of toll at rates specified by the legislature, and apply the proceeds to the maintenance of the road, The commissioners were to render an annual account to the county court and could be held liable in case of misuse of funds. The act was to remain in effect during the pleasure of the General Assembly.76 These acts, plus one other enacted by Connecticut in 1794, were to be the only ones passed in the New England states along the lines of a turnpike trust. Shortly before the pass- age of the Mohegan Road act, Pennsylvania had taken a different approach in incorporating the President and Managers of the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike Road. The improvement of this important route, linking Philadelphia with the western country, had been sought unsuccessfully Since 1767. In this act Pennsylvania combined the English principle of charging toll to those who used the roads with the corporate form as a means of raising capital. The cost of construction was to be financed by the sale of stock. According to a charter provision, rates were to be fixed by the state, which re- 6 7 State of Connecticut, Public Records, VII, 536-537. 63 served the right to revise them upward or downward in case profits were less than six per cent or more than fifteen per cent per year. When 600 shares of the com- pany's stock, priced at $300 each, were placed on sale in Philadelphia in June 1792, more than 2,000 persons sought to subscribe; 600 of them, Chosen by lot, were permitted to purchase one share each. Response in Lan- caster also was great, and by noon of the second day all of the company's 1,000 shares had been subscribed.77 Although it is not known whether the Lancaster Turnpike, with its early success in raising capital, served as a model for Similar enterprises elsewhere, it was the first of a great many turnpike corporations char- tered in the United States within a relatively short time. Rhode Island in February 1794 chartered New England's first and the nation's second such corporation, which watho re- pair part of the road from Providence to Killingly, Connecti- cut, and also to spend part of its capital in improving feeder roads in Connecticut and Massachusetts. The charter, like those of many later turnpike corporations, was to re- main in effect until profits had repaid the investment, plus dividends averaging twelve per cent per year. The following October, Rhode Island chartered another corporation to repair 77Durrenberger, pp. 51-52; Fletcher pp. 254-255. 64 and maintain that state’s portion of the post road between Providence and Norwich.78 The other New England states soon followed suit. The Oxford Turnpike was incorporated in 1795 to repair the market road leading from Southbury, Connecticut,to Derby and NewHaven.79 Massachusetts chartered its first turn- pike corporation in June 1796, three days before "the New- hampshire Turnpike Road" was incorporated in order that "the communication between the Sea-coast and the interior parts of the State might be made much more easy, convenient and less expensive by a direct road from Concord to Piscataqua Bridge, than it now is, between the Country and any commer- 80 Five months later Vermont became the last cial Sea-port." New England state to enter the turnpike era.81 Within a period of less than three years all the New England states thus had adopted a policy of entrusting the care of many main highways to quasi-public corporations, so called because of their use "as an agency of the state to 78Rhode Island, Archives, Charters, 1790-1800, p. 24; Rhode Island, Acts and Resolves, October 1794, pp. 13-15. 79State of Connecticut, Public Records, VIII, 276-277. 80NewHampshire, Laws, VI, 0. 13 (1796); Wbod, p. 215. 81wood, pp. 249-250. 65 82 Although owned by private accomplish public purposes." stockholders seeking to earn profits, a turnpike corpora- tion was in reality a creature of the state, which delegated to it the power of eminent domain, but also inserted in its charter a number of provisions to make sure that the corpora- tion performed a public service. For example, according to most New England turnpike Charters, a stated amount of money had to be spent for construction before toll could be col- lected. Certain persons were exempted from paying toll and there usually was a provision for the reversion of the turn- pike property to the public once a certain profit level had been reached. Legal toll rates also were established by Charter provisions and it usually was stipulated that a corporation could be denied the right to collect toll if it failed to keep its road in repair.83 By the end of 1800, seventy-two turnpike corporations had been chartered in the United States, two-thirds of which were in New England. Connecticut, which had granted twenty- three acts of incorporation, was far in the lead. Vermont and Massachusetts had Chartered nine turnpikes each, New Hampshire four, and Rhode Island three.Bh 82Stuart W. Bruchey, The Roots of American Economic Growth, 1607-1861: An Essay ifi_Social Causation (New YOrE: 1965T, p. 128. 83The quasi-public aspects of turnpike corporations will be discussed more fully in Chapter V. 8l’nIoseph Davis, Essays in the Earlier Histopy of American Corporations (Cambridge, 1917), p. 216. 66 The turnpike system had its opponents. Rhode Island petitioners protested in 1794 that turnpikes would be "injurious to the Rights of free men Especially in a Republican Country, where we have but just got through the Sheding of Blood for the Liberties we Do Injoy by the Blessing of God."85 In Connecticut there were "many preju- 86 dices against them." But for better or worse, the turn- pike era in New England had begun. 85Rhode Island, Archives, Petitions Not Granted. 86Connecticut Courant, June 27, 1797. CHAPTER III THE TOLL-ROAD MOVEMENT: 1792-1808 "Turnpike roads seem to be the great rage of the day," a traveler in Berkshire County observed in 1801. Two years later a diarist living in eastern Massachusetts wrote, "our County [Essex] will be intersected with the best [turnpike ]roads, & the whole will probably be lu- crative to adventurers." According to Edward A. Kendall, an English traveler who passed through Connecticut in 1807, there was "in almost every . . . direction, a turnpike- road; for,these roads being here made objects of private gain, and not as in England, of merely public care, they are established with avidity, on the smallest prospect of advantage."1 By 1807, however, the turnpike movement in New Eng- land was passing its peak. A network of toll roads link- ing the major towns and connecting markets with their hin- terlands had taken shape. A great many roads would be 1Increase N. Tarbox (ed.), Diary of Thomas Robbins, D.D. (Boston, 1886), I, 139; Diary of William Bentley, III, E9; Edward A. Kendall, Travels throu h the Northern Parts of the United States (New York, 1 O9 , I, 9 -9 . 67 68 built in New England during succeeding decades, but few of them would be toll roads. Investor interest had de- clined and highway building of necessity would become once again largely a public concern, as will be seen in Chapter V. After 1808 the number of charters sought and granted declined rapidly. Of an estimated 3,764 miles of road built by some 242 turnpike companies prior to 1840, about 2,919 miles - more than three-fourths of the total - had been authorized in charters to 162 companies by 1808. Almost half of the companies that succeeded in building roads received their charters between 1801 and 1808, after which date, with the exception of a small num- ber of plank roads and dirt turnpikes constructed chiefly in resort areas of northern New England during the latter half of the century, only about 310 miles of toll roads were built in the states outside of Connecticut.2 One historian has placed the end of the turnpike era in New England at about 1850, when toll roads no longer were being built and a majority of companies had gone out of business. Another dates it a decade earlier, when pub- 2P. E. Taylor, "Turnpike Era," p. 347; Appendix I. 69 lie highways definitely had superseded turnpikes in importance.3 As a means of financing road-improvement projects, however, turnpike companies were of very lim- ited importance after the first decade of the century. They were, indeed, never of importance in Maine, where only five toll roads were built, all of them prior to that state's separation from.Massachusettszn11820.h Ex- cept for a brief revival of turnpike building in resort areas after 1853, New Hampshire chartered only one com- pany that actually built a road after 1812. Of twenty- nine companies that built roads in Vermont, twenty were incorporated between 1799 and 1805. Fifty of sixty-four Massachusetts companies Similarly had been Chartered by 1806 and only one turnpike was built in that state after 1826. Twelve of Rhode Island's twenty-three toll roads were built after 1810, but construction in that state was sporadic and only one was started after 1827. Only in Connecticut, with more than forty per cent of the region's successful turnpike companies (successful in the sense that they completed the roads they were chartered to build) and 3W'ood, p. 35; P. E. Taylor, "Turnpike Era," iii-iv. “wood, p. 211. 7O - about forty-six per cent of its turnpike mileage, were toll roads constructed with any degree of regularity after 1809. Even in Connecticut, corporations that built 1,154 of an estimated 1,619 turnpike miles had received their charters by that date.5 But Connecti- cut, as will be seen later in this chapter, provides exceptions to many generalizations about the turnpike era in New England. According to Philip E. Taylor, from the beginning of the turnpike movement until about 1807 the number of incorporations tended to be highest during years of busi- ness prosperity. By this he apparently meant years during which prices were high, the value of exports rising, and capital plentiful. He found no such correlation between 1808 and the mid-1820's, when there was a Slight, but temporary, upsurge in the number of incorporations, and concluded that New England had special problems, result- ing from the Embargo and the War of 1812, which discouraged further turnpike development during this period.6 Certainly a relationship existed between foreign 5Appendix I; P. E. Taylor, "Turnpike Era," p. 347. 6P. E. Taylor, "Turnpike Era," pp. 205-206, 213-215. 71 commerce and the usefulness of New England turnpikes. At a time when manufactures still were of minor impor- tance most toll roads, in Fisher Ames's words, were built "to facilitate country produce on its way to mar- ket," the volume of traffic depending largely on the quan- 7 Since domestic markets tity of produce being marketed. still were relatively unimportant, the quantity of produce sent to market depended largely on foreign demand. Foreign commerce, of course, declined from.1808 to 1815. The relationship between turnpikes and foreign com- merce, however, was only part of a complex set of factors which brought about an early decline of turnpike building in New England. In New York and Pennsylvania, for example, the transportation of country produce to market also was an important function of turnpikes. Yet construction in those states continued on a fairly large scale until well into the 1820's. The number of companies in New York more than doubled between 1811 and 1821, while the mileage they were authorized to build increased from about 4,500 to 6,000 and the mileage actually completed grew from 1,500 to 4,000. Between 1821 and 1836 the number of turnpike companies fur- ther increased from_278 to more than 500. Turnpike mileage 7Ames, Draft of Letter to Prospective Investors, 1802, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. 72 in Pennsylvania increased continually after 1808 and grew from 1,807 in 1821 to 2,400 in 1832.8 One important cause of decline in New England was the failure of most turnpikes to return a high rate of profits. In Pennsylvania, it was reported in 1828, none of the state's 102 operating companies "have yielded divi- dends sufficient to remunerate their proprietors."9 But toll road companies there were aided greatly by subscrip- tions to their stock on the part of the state. Of about six million dollars invested in Pennsylvania turnpikes by 1822, almost one-third was provided by the state.10 Sim- ilarly, state aid in Virginia permitted the development of a vast system of toll roads during a period of about four decades after 1816, although in that state, too, most com- panies had poor earnings.11 None of the New England states, however, is known to have given financial aid to turnpike companies. In a few instances towns made small contributions 8Durrenberger, pp. 55-56, 61-62. 9Hazard's Register of Pennsylvania, I (1828), 407. 10G. R. Taylor, Transportation Revolution, p. 25. 11Robert F. Hunter, "The Turnpike Movement in Virginia, 1816-1860"(unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia Univer- sity, 1957), pp. 6-15- 73 12 but New England companies, like those to local projects, in New Yerk, were almost wholly dependent on private in- vestors for their support. And as one student of early American corporations has written, few investors "were willing to devote a part of their savings to risky in- vestments or to those from which a return must be slow as well as uncertain."13 Taylor himself concluded the reason turnpike build- ing failed to make a significant comeback during the 1820's was that it was apparent by then that turnpikes were not a 14 But it had become evident at a profitable investment. much earlier date that investment in toll roads, for reasons to be discussed in Chapter IV, was characterized by both a high degree of risk and slow returns. Even before 1808 dis- illusionment among shareholders had become common. Thomas Dwight, the Springfield merchant who was pres- ident of the First Massachusetts Turnpike, wrote with some bitterness as early as 1800 of a departed period when "monied men . . . looked on a deposit of money in this way to be judicious and promising a handsome per cent profit." In 12C. O. Lord, Life and Times in Hopkinton, New-Hamp— shire (n.p., n.d.), p. 112; RhodeIsland, Archives, Char- iers, 1825-26, p. 29. 13Guy S. Callendar, "The Early Transportation and Banking Enterprises of the States in Relation to the Growth of Corporations," Quarterly Journal of Economics, XVII (1902), 151. 1 1‘P. E. Taylor, "Turnpike Era," p. 215. 74 1796, when Dwight's company was being organized, subscrib- ers had consisted of men of this description,as well as speculators, who had taken advantage of a low initial pay- ment of one dollar per share to purchase stock in the hope of being able to sell quickly at a profit. The specula- tors, however, were "disappointed in their expectations" and "forfeited the tax of one dollar rather than go on with their shares and pay the after taxes when called for." And those who remained failed to realize the expected prof- its. Even during the early years of its use, the road re- quired extensive repairs which cost about as much as the company earned from.tolls. By 1800, when Dwight wrote to a group of turnpike promoters headed by his brother-in- law, Fisher Ames, "wishing your corporation success and that your profits may be much greater than pg realize," the First Massachusetts had paid dividends of only eighty cents on shares costing more than thirty-six dollars.15 Ames, seeking to attract investors to his own com- pany in 1802, had to admit, "Turnpikes with the fairest prospect of success have seldom proved profitable." But although the prosperity of most toll roads depended on 15Thomas Dwight to Phillip Ammidon, March 10, 1800, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records; First Massachusetts Turnpike Corporation, Record Book, Springfield Public Library. 75 the amount of country produce being brought to market from the back country, Ames argued that the Norfolk and Bristol, linking Boston and Providence and providing a shorter and safer alternative to navigation around Cape Cod, would share in the growing coastwise trade of the country. "The growth of our cities especially New York and of trade and navigation especially in the Province of Maine ensure a great and constant increase for ages yet to come." Ames estimated that traffic already was sufficient to "afford a good dividend on $60,000 and $40,000 it is hoped will execute the work."16 At a time when few improved roads had been built in the United States and most turnpike proprietors were inexperienced amateurs, it was common for the cost of toll roads to exceed initial expectations. But few turnpike of- ficials underestimated the eventual cost of their roads as badly as Ames did. He had hoped to cover costs by selling 1,000 shares at forty dollars.17 The actual cost proved to be $228,798, of which more than $192,000 was raised by successive assessments, made over a period of about six years and totaling $200, on each of 974 shares. The re- 16Ames, Draft of Letter to Prospective Investors, 1802, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. 17Ibid. 76 mainder had to be borrowed against future receipts.18 Although in 1806 he still professed confidence in the company's future, Ames also expressed fear to his fel- low proprietors, many of whom were irate because of con- tinued assessments at a time when dividends seemed long overdue, that "the jealousy, impatience and despair of the stockholders would throw the whole property to the winds." He promised, however, that future improvements, which he believed necessary to make the turnpike so good that there would be no possibility of traffic continuing to use the old road, would be financed from the company's toll receipts.19 But as late as 1808 one shareholder wrote angrily after being informed he must pay still another as- sessment against his stock or have it sold for arrears that "after solemn assurances of no more demands, frequent repe- titions to enhance the already inconceivable sum, surpassing any extravagant calculation," still were being made and "may naturally be contemplated for many years to come."20 In 1809, the year after Ames's death, the Norfolk and Bristol paid 18Statement of Expenditures, 1807, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. 19President's Message, 1806, Norfolk and Bristol Turn- pike Company Records. 20John Dabney to James Richardson, November 12, 1808, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. 77 its first dividend; in 1830 the directors reported that earnings "have averaged only a fraction over one per cent per annum."21 Disillusionment also came to investors in the Sixth Massachusetts Turnpike. The directors, seeking funds in 1799 to build their road from Amherst to Shrewsbury in the direction of Boston, reported that their sister road, the Third Massachusetts, which ran between Northampton and Pittsfield, already was realizing profits of from seven to nine per cent and confidently' predicted that "from the difference in the face of the country, the proposed Turnpike will be made with much less expence than the other and the income of course[will be]proportionab1y greater."22 It appears doubtful that the early earnings of the Third Massachusetts Turnpike actually were that large, however, for a record book of that company beginning in 1803 re- veals that dividends by that year were down to 2.2 per cent, a level the company rarely exceeded and frequently failed to equal during the remaining twenty-seven years of letatement of Dividends, 1809; Draft of Petition to the Legislature, 1830, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. .._ 22By Laws of the Sixth Massachusetts Turnpike Corporation (worcester, 1799). 78 its existence.23 And the Sixth Massachusetts, unable to raise all the capital it needed from sales of stock, had to borrow extensively to complete its road. The clerk of that company later wrote, "for a little time [it] took considerable toll; but it was appropriated to the payment of outstanding debts."zh It would have been Clear to anyone familiar with information contained in Albert Gallatin's "Report on Roads and Canals" (1808)25 that few turnpikes had earned anything like the profits to which they were legally entitled. Ac- cording to Gallatin, the Salem and Neponset turnpikes were thought to be yielding six and eight per cent a year respec- tively, but "the income of all the others in the State of Massachusetts is said not to exceed on an average three per cent."26 New Hampshire, which in its early turnpike charters had provided for the takeover by the state of a road after forty years by paying the company a sum sufficient to re- turn its investment, plus twelve per cent a year, revised 23ThirdMassachusetts Turnpike, Account Book, 1803-1830, Chesterfield (Mass.) Historical Society. The Third Massachusetts became the WCrthington Turnpike Cor- poration in 1814. 2“Jones Reed, A History of Rutland, [Mass. ] (WCrcester, 1836), p. 45. 25American State Papers,Miscellaneous, I, 724-921. 26Ibid., p. 867. 79 that policy in 1803, apparently recognizing that toll roads were unlikely to approach that level of profit- ability. Most charters granted after that date contained the provision that if the state chose to take over a road after forty years, the company would be permitted compen- sation sufficient only to bring its overall earnings up to an average of nine per cent a year.27 Whereas most of the early Vermont charters provided for a reversion of turnpike roads to the state after earnings had become sufficient to reimburse the company for its investment, plus twelve per cent a year, that state in 1804 began limiting the duration ofiranchises to thirty-five years with no reference to earnings; four years later it ini- tiated the practice of granting charters that would expire after earnings since the time the company began collecting toll had reached an average of eight per cent a year.28 In New York, to be sure, direct returns from.invest- ments in turnpike companies also were discouraging. Accord- ing to one historian, "probably after the first decade, few 27See, for example, New Hampshire, Laws, VII, 0. 41 (1802); c. 27 (1803)- 28For examples of the various phases of Vermont pol- icy in regard to turnpike profits, see Vermont, Acts and Laws October 1800, p. 60 ("an Act establishing a corpora- iiBEihi’tEE'fidfid—ET Connecticut River turnpike company," sec. 14); Acts and Lawsy_January 1804, c. 50, sec. 12; Acts and Laws,5cyober 1808, c. 33, sec. 11. 8O investors in [New York] turnpikes were sanguine enough to expect money dividends."29 Indirect benefits, however, contributed to the continued popularity of toll roads there. The state was situated astride an important route to the western country and also had large amounts of unde- veloped lands that were being settled during the early nineteenth century. Upstate farming counties gained an estimated 800,000 persons between 1790 and 1820.30 The role of turnpikes in speeding the development of these up- state areas was described by an English traveler, John Lambert. "AS soon as a good road is opened through the woods, communicating between the greater towns, the country which was before a trackless forest, becomes settled, and in a few years, the borders of the road are lined with hab- itations"; the road was soon being used to carry surplus prod- uce to market.31 Sensing the advantages to be gained thereby, the merchants of several Hudson River towns, competing for the trade of the developing area to the westward, together 29Holmes, Conquering the Wilderness, p. 269. 30Paul Gates, The Farmer's Age (New York, 1960), P. 31 , 31Travels through Lower Canadayyand the United States of NOrth America,gin the Years 1806, 1807yyand 1858 (London, I810T, II, 126. In. “ {A .2. -1L ”I '5 P1- ‘1' .e-<\ A v 81 with land speculators anxious to enhance the value of their holdings, provided the capital for a number of turnpike projects.32 The effect of toll roads on the development of in- land areas of southern New England, where most of the re- gion's turnpike mileage was built, was much more limited and Was not such as to encourage continued investment. In the first place, few parts of Connecticut, Rhode Island, or Massachusetts remained unsettled by the early 1800's and turnpikes can have promoted settlement only to a slight ex- tent. In Massachusetts, for example, only seventeen towns were incorporated between 1800 and 1825 in the inland count- ies of Berkshire, Franklin, Hampden, Hampshire, Middlesex, and Worcester.33 Southern New England thus was not an area in which there was great speculative interest in undeveloped lands and one element contributing to continued turnpike de- velopment in New York was lacking there. Turnpikes, it is true, by providing an improved means of transportation, did help somewhat to enhance property values in southern New England. This can be seen in many advertisements listing among the attractions of property 32Durrenberger, Pp. 58-59. 33The'MassaChusetts Register, and United States Calendar, for 1845 (Boston, 1 45). PP. 17-19. a. M d 'I I. cl. .0- .I-u I OI) ”Kb ‘9 82 for sale the fact that it was located near a toll road. But improvements brought by turnpikes were not sufficient to offset the growing demand among the inhabitants of the area for cheap land of greater fertility in other parts of the country, even though such land might well be at a great distance from.market. Between 1790 and 1820 about 800,000 persons left southern New England in search of better lands in New York and elsewhere.34 Windham County, Connecticut, actually lost population between 1790 and 1810, while Berkshire County grew only from 30,291 in 1790 to 35,720 in 1820,35 despite the fact that both were areas of con- siderable turnpike-building activity prior to 1808. New York turnpikes aided the growth of population; those of southern New England provided an easier means of travel for those who, because of the poorness of much of the soil, wished to leave the area. Since turnpikes could neither promote settlement nor prevent widespread migration from southern New England, the opportunities of potential investors to use them as a means of increasing trade were limited. In order for the trade between a given market town and the back country to 3"*Bidwell, Transactions of the Connecticut Academy _:- of Arts and Sciences, XX, 387. 35v. s.,Census Reports, 1790-1820. 83 grow significantly, it would have been necessary to in- crease the degree to which existing producers were in- volved in market production, draw away trade that pre- viously had belonged to another town, or both. As to the first possibility, it seems likely that turnpikes did help to increase participation in market production, but it is impossible to know to what degree this was so. Bidwell, to be sure, pointed out that even after the building of turnpikes "it was still prohibitori- 1y [sic] expensive to move bulky commodities for any dis- tance beyond the boundaries of the inland town" and con- cluded that toll roads failed either to improve land trans- portation significantly or to bring about "any considerable reduction in the cost of land carriage."36 Contemporaries, however, often were impressed by the improvements turnpikes had brought. Dwight, for example, wrote that before the Mohegan Road between New London and Norwich was turnpiked, few persons . . . attempted to go from one of these places to the other, and return, on the same day. . . . The new road is smooth, and good: and the jour- ney is now easily performed in little more than two hours. These towns, there- fore, may be regarded as having been brought nearer to sag? other more than half a days journey. 36Bidwell,,Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, XX, 317. 37Dwight, II, 44. 84 A committee of the Massachusetts House of Representatives reported in 1827 that the transporation of goods had be- come in recent years "a separate employment . . . almost exclusively" and that "owing to the improved state of the roads, it is not uncommon to see two, three, and even four tons weight, loaded upon a waggon."38 Better roads, the lessening of time consumed by jour- neys, heavier loads, and the rise of a separate teaming bus- iness all suggest that although turnpikes failed to reduce transporation costs sufficiently to permit New Englanders to Specialize in the growing of bulky produce such as grains for market, they probably helped to make it more profitable to market cheese, butter, beef and similar products. It must be remembered, however, that more than the improvement of transporation would have been necessary to make New England a highly productive agricultural region. Although New Englanders during the 1820's looked to rail- roads to widen the markets for their farm produce by lessen- ing the costs of transporation, the actual result of rail- road building was to bring farmers into competition with those of the West, which resulted in the decline of farming in the poorer parts of the region. During the turnpike era the poorness of much of the soil, primitive farming methods, and a lack of domestic markets undoubtedly all served to 38H.R.-No. 57 (Boston, 1827). 85 limit the extent of market production. The problem of drawing trade to new markets by means of turnpikes also was a considerable one. In New York, where the growth of trade was in large part a re- sponse to population growth and the opening of new lands to production, the population of a large part of the state found an outlet for its surplus production principally at New York City. The Hudson River and several major high- way systems extending both east and west from Newburg, Kingston, Hudson, and Albany were the routes over which this trade was carried. Many of the state's turnpikes were part of these major systems, either as trunk lines or feeder roads.39 One New Yorker, comparing his state's turnpike network with that of England, observed, if all the native surplus produce of England was obliged to pass on six or eight great roads to the London mar- ket, (as the produce of our country must to this city) instead of being drawn as it is on a thousand roads to a thousand markets which line its shores, three quarters of the capital would be saved and the Bevenue pro- portionably increased.2+ 39Durrenberger, pp. 62-65. 70"A Citizen," Observations on the Real, Relative and Market Value of the Turnpike Stock of the State of New York (New YOrk, 1806), p. 14. 86 Although even with this advantage New York turnpikes ap- parently failed to produce good profits, they did serve to channel a growing volume of trade through a few towns and thus to sustain interest in toll roads in those towns. Trading patterns in southern New England, however, resembled those in England. There were "a great many streams of trade trickling from the back country to the seaports.""l No single waterway dominated trade as did the Hudson that of New York and no town had as vast a hinterland as did Albany, for example. Prior to the opening of the Erie Canal, herds of cattle and sheep sometimes were driven to Albany from.as far away as Ohio and loaded wagons regularly reached the same town from Geneva, New York, a distance of perhaps 180 miles.“2 But it was not much more than 180 miles between the extremi- ties of the three southern New England states and few inland towns were as much as one-third that distance either from.a navigable river such as the Connecticut, the Hudson, or the Merrimack, or a number of small ports from which produce was either exported directly to the west Indies or sent by water to Boston or New York.“3 hlBidwell and Falconer, pp. 140-141. thedrick, pp. 175, 179. 43Bidwell and Falconer, pp. 140-141. 87 Boston, with the largest hinterland, received wagon loads of produce from as far away as northern New Hampshire and Vermont, but had little direct trade with a large part of its own state, which found nearer markets at Springfield or Northampton, Albany or Hudson, Norwich or Providence.hh There'was, thus a relative proximity to markets in southern New England. But the produce of this small, comparatively infertile area, the population of which was growing at a slow rate, sought outlets in all directions and at many places. The amount of trade that could be carried over a particular route therefore was quite limited. By the time of the turnpike movement, southern New England was fully settled and patterns of trade already had been established. Certain market towns were dominant within their own neighborhoods and little effort was made - at least in Massachusetts and Rhode Island - to Challenge that dominance by means of turnpikes. Instead of turnpikes be- ing built to compete for new trade, as was often the case in the Middle Atlantic region, most of those constructed in Massachusetts and Rhode Island served to strengthen previously established patterns of commerce. Thus in eastern Massachusetts most toll roads radiated out of Bos- thy Laws of the Sixth Massachusetts Turnpike Corporation; BerkshireAC6unty, General Sessions o?_the Peace, II, 262-266. 88 ton. The promoters of many of these projects resided in outlying towns, but they sought to build towards the Massachusetts capital both because of its importance as a market and because Boston, with a large and wealthy pop- ulation, was the logical place to seek financial aid for their companies.“5 Few competing routes were built into other Massachusetts Bay ports. Even Salem, a major port during the heyday of the carrying trade prior to the War of 1812, developed only limited communications with the back country.‘+6 Similarly, the pattern of turnpike build- ing in Rhode Island reflected and strengthened the position of Providence as that state's commercial and industrial centerf‘7 As the maps of Massachusetts and Rhode Island turn- pikes on pages 269 and 271 make clear, by 1808 turnpikes formed the great arteries of a system of through highways. From Providence toll roads extended towards Connecticut, central Massachusetts, and Boston. From Boston they radi- ated towards New Hampshire, towards the Connecticut River h5By Laws of the SixppyMassachusetts Turnpikg' Corporation; Ames, Draft of Letter to Prospective Inves- tors, 1802, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. A6Diary of William Bentlgy, III, 99; James D. Phillips,—Salem and the Indies (Boston, 1947), pp. 6, 423-424. h7Peter J. Coleman, The Transformation of Rhode Island, 1790-1860 (Providence, 1963), p. 161. 89 and Albany, and towards Providence and Hartford. In south- western Massachusetts they led towards Albany and southward into Connecticut. They carried country produce in the di- rection of all the principal markets of southern New England. To what extent major routes of travel remained public highways is impossible to say."’8 Certainly gaps existed in the major turnpike routes, which were filled by public roads. The only stretch of the Upper Post Road between wercester and Springfield controlled by a corporation, for example, was from Warren to Wilbraham. One can assume, however, that if the turnpike network had continued to eXpand it would have come to include mostly roads the purpose of which was either to compete with existing turnpikes or to serve as feeders to them. Such, indeed, seem to have been the pur- poses of a growing number of Massachusetts turnpike com- panies chartered after 1800. And the generally poor earn- ings of existing toll roads, the slowness of pepulation growth, the poorness of much of the state's land, and the strength of previously established patterns of trade all served to make investors skeptical of such projects. Thus in 1807 the state chartered nine turnpike corporations, most of which were of the above descriptions; none of them 48Edward C. Kirkland, Men Cities and Transportation: A Study in New England History, i825-l900 (Cambridge, Mass., 1948),I, 38. 9O succeeded in raising enough capital to build its road.t‘9 For such companies to have succeeded in building roads of secondary importance or roads duplicating exist- ing routes would have been wasteful of capital, particular- ly in view of the many segments of the economy requiring investment during the early nineteenth century. It never- theless seems likely that projects such as these would have received support if they had held out any incentive to in- vestors. At any rate, that is the conclusion one reaches upon comparing the turnpike movement in Connecticut with what happened in other parts of New England. Connecticut, as has been mentioned, provides an ex- ception to many generalizations about the turnpike era in New England. Almost half of the state's successful turn- pike companies were chartered after 1808 and almost one- third of its toll-road mileage was built under charters granted after that date. Forty-two per cent of the com- panies chartered in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hamp- shire, and Vermont between 1803 and 1808 were unsuccessful and during the decade beginning in 1811 only five of twenty- eight new corporations in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont built roads. More than half of the sixty-one New 49 Wood, pp. 173-176. 91 Hampshire companies organized between 1796 and 1839 failed, as did a.majority of Vermont undertakings.50 And about one- third of the turnpike companies in the Middle Atlantic re- gion also were unsuccessful.51 But almost eightyseven per cent of the 113 companies chartered in Connecticut between 1795 and 1840 built their roads and only three failures oc- curred prior to 1808. Although Massachusetts incorporated one more turnpike company than Connecticut, only about fifty- six per cent of them were successful and as a result Connecti- cut had a wide lead in turnpike mileage, 1,619 to 920.52 Like the other states of southern New England, Con- necticut was fully settled before the turnpike era. Its rate of population growth between 1790 and 1820 was the slowest in the United States.53 But investors were moti- vated to bring into existence a much more highly developed complex of toll roads than was to be found in any of the other New England states. Frederic J. Wood wrote of the turnpike era in New England that "every town of any impor- 50Appendix I. 51Durrenberger, pp. 107-108. 52Appendix I; P. E. Taylor, "Turnpike Era," p. 347. 53The Statistical History of the United States from Colonial Times to the Present (Stamford, Conn., 1965), p. 13. 92 tance, and many of none, had its turnpike connections, often radiating in all directions."5h This was most true of Con- necticut, however, as can be seen in the map of page 268. There were several reasons for this. In the first place, most Connecticut turnpikes were built with relatively small amounts of capital. In New York, where a number of long roads were built, twenty-one of the sixty-seven turn- pike companies chartered by 1807 were authorized capital of more than $100,000. In Pennsylvania,which tended to set higher construction standards than did either New York or the New England states, nineteen of seventy-eight companies for which information was available in 1822 were capitalized at more than $100,000.55 At least four New England turn- pikes, all of which were in eastern Massachusetts - the New- buryport and Boston ($Al7,000), the Norfolk and Bristol ($229,000), the Salem ($182,000), and the Worcester ($150,000) - are known to have cost more than $100,000. In Connecticut only the Hartford and New Haven ($79,000) was in the same class with these roads and of thirty-five come panies mentioned in Gallatin's report, only four were capi- talized at more than $20,000. By way of contrast, although ShWood, p. 35. 55Durrenberger, pp. 98-99. 93 the average length of thirty-three Massachusetts turnpikes for which cost information is available was about the same as that of the thirty-five Connecticut roads (approximately nineteen miles), eighteen of the Massachusetts toll roads 6 cost more than $20,000 to build.5 The difference lay primarily in the standards of con— struction employed by Connecticut turnpike builders and in the costs they were required to pay. Gallatin was informed by Alexander Wolcott, collector of customs at Middletown, that most of the state's toll roads were built on previously existing routes, minor alterations being made to shorten dis- tances. Connecticut towns frequently were required to pay such property damages as there were and also to maintain ex- isting bridges. Little gravel was used, thus helping to keep construction costs low.57 The reason for the high cost of the Hartford and New Haven was that every consideration was sacrificed to a straight line. The old road was deserted almost altogether, and a very hilly route preferred to a more smooth, though less straight one. The consequence was, that the company had the ground to pur- chase, (which, in almost every other in- stance, was a chargesgn the towns,) and the hills to reduce. 56Appendix II. 86 57Gallatin, American State Papers, Miscellaneous, I, 9. 58Ibid., p. 872. 9h Existing roads often were made use of in build- ing turnpikes in the other New England states, but not to as great an extent as in Connecticut. And turnpike companies elsewhere usually were required to pay property damages. Thus the average cost-per-mile was considerably higher in these states than it was in Connecticut, where, exclusive of the Hartford and New Haven Turnpike, the com- panies listed in Appendix II built their roads at an av- erage cost of about $550 per mile. Only two of thirty— three Massachusetts toll roads are known to have cost less than $550 per mile. The average cost—per-mile of 647 miles of toll road in the latter state was $2,697 and the median cost was $1,3h0, as against a median cost of $528 in Connecticut. Eleven New Hampshire companies, with a total of about 309 miles, are known to have built their roads at an average cost of $1,295 per mile. Only scat- tered figures are available for the other*NeW'England states}9 Low construction costs, undoubtedly a factor in the success of Connecticut turnpike companies in raising capi- tal, probably also contributed to the relatively high earn- ings a number of the state's companies enjoyed during their early years. Connecticut, indeed, was the only New England 59Appendix II. 95 state in which information available in 1808 as to turn- pike earnings could have served to encourage further in- vestment. welcott, who apparently had seen financial statements submitted to the state under a law passed in 1806, furnished Gallatin with data about the earnings of thirty Connecticut turnpikes. His figures showed that the Talcott Mountain Turnpike, the directors of Which called their road the busiest one in the state, had earned average profits of 16.2 per cent a year be- tween 180h and 1806.60 Six other companies had average short-term earnings of 12.9, 10.5, 9.0, 8.7, 7.5, and 7.1 per cent a year respectively. The profits of the thirty companies averaged h.6 per cent a year.61 More complete information now is available for a few companies which also would have been encouraging to investors. The Talcott Mountain Turnpike, for example, began collecting toll in 1799 and although its earnings at first were not as good as those reported by Wolcott, profits generally rose during the first seven years of operation and averaged eleven per cent a year, still an impressive figure.62 Although the Windham.Turnpike earned 6OConnecticut, Archives, Travel, Series II, Vol. XVI, p. 89; Appendix III. 61Appendix III. Long-term earnings are discussed in Chapter IV. 62 Connecticut, Treasurer, Turnpike Road Accounts, Connecticut State Library. 96 only about 1.5 per cent between 1801 and 180A and the di- rectors asserted in a petition to the legislature in 1803 that they would be unable to continue in business unless they were granted permission to erect an additional tollgate, profits rose to an average of 4.1 per cent a year between 180A and 1806.63 Even in Connecticut, however, a number of companies had experienced financial difficulties before 1808. Wol- cott's data showed two companies losing money while five others had profits of less than one per cent a year and another six earned less than three per cent a year. Thus it probably is no coincidence that in 1807, a year after enactment of the law requiring the submission of annual statements of earnings to the state, Connecticut's legis- lature began inserting in turnpike charters a clause‘pro- viding for the expiration of a franchise when overall earn- ings since the time toll began to be collected had reached an average of eight, rather than twelve, per cent a year.64 Most importantly, perhaps, indirect benefits contrib— uted to the expansion of Connecticut's toll road system. One of these was the opportunity to draw trade into new channels. 63Connecticut, Archives, Travel, Series II, Vol. XVII, p. 80; Appendix III. 6“Connecticut, Public Statute Laws, Compiled (1808), Title CLXVI, c. 1, sec. 5. See also, Connecticut, Resolves and Private Laws (1837), p. 1379. 97 There was no town in the state which, because of size, wealth, or location, exerted a commanding influence over patterns of inland trade. New Haven, the largest, had a population of 6,967 in 1810, as against Boston's 33,250 and Protidence's 10,071. Hartford was only slightly smaller than New Haven, while Middletown had 5,392. Several other coastal and river towns had populations 65 of 3,000 or more. Approximately equal in size and im— portance, a number of towns, by means of turnpikes, com- peted for the trade of farming areas from which they were in some instances approximately equidistant. New Haven, after the opening of the Derby Turnpike, was able to at- tract traffic from the Housatonic Valley and Litchfield County which previously had st0pped at Derby Landing.66 By 1811 New Haven was the terminus of six turnpikes, several of which extended towards the northwestern part of the state. It did not, however, have a monopoly of the trade of that quarter. Bridgeport acquired a rival route into the Housatonic Valley with the chartering of 65Bidwell, Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, XX, 318-322. 66Samuel Orcutt and Ambrose Beardsley, The Histor of the Old Town of DerbyL Connecticut (Springfield, 1880), PP- 305-306- 98 the Bridgeport and Newtown Turnpike in 1801 and Norwalk and Westport also entered the competition.67 Toll roads leading towards Hartford, Middletown, and the Hudson River reflected the fact that other towns shared in the trade of northwestern Connecticut, as well. East of the Connecticut River, Norwich had routes leading into Windham County and central Massachusetts to compete with rival roads terminating at Providence. From east of the Connecticut, as well as from the west, toll roads converged on both Hartford and Middletown. 0f Hart- ford it was remarked, "there are few towns . . . better accommodated, with respect to roads." Hartford, however, was only one of a number of highway centers in a state "in- tersected in every direction by turnpikes."68 Competition for trade played a part in the continued development of Connecticut turnpikes after 1808, particular- ly in the southwestern part of the state, where ports from Norwalk to Bridgeport acquired toll roads duplicating exist- ing routes. Another important element, however, was the expansion of turnpikes into an area of the state in which 67George 0. Waldo, Jr. (ed.), History of Bridgeport and Vicinity (New York, 1917), I, 217-218. 68John C. Pease and John M. Niles, A Gazetteer of the States of Connecticut and Rhode Island (Hartford, 1819), p. A1. 99 they previously had gained only a slight foothold. Almost ft>xfty'per cent of the turnpikes built in Connecticut after 1808 were within an area bounded by Middletown on the north- west, New Haven on the southwest, Long Island Sound on the sorrth, and the Rhode Island line on the east. Middlesex (hyuulty,.which comprised a large portion of the area, in 1807 had. only'two turnpike roads with a total of about AS miles; by'J11319 thirteen companies had built roads partly or wholly witliin.the county and two others had projects under con- struction.69 A relatively poor farming area, Middlesex was 'the last county in the state to acquire a network of toll. roads. Its highways, wrote David Field in 1819, with few exceptions, were bad, till within a few years. They were laid out to accommodate neighbours in go- ing from one house to another, rather than for extended travel, were over rough and uneven grounds, and the com- munications with most parts of the country by water, were so easy, that feeble efforts were made to improve them. But within a few years all the principal roads, excepting that which runs from east to west along the Sound, (which was a comfortaBle road before,) have been turnpiked. 69David D. Field, A Statistical Account of the COturt y'of Middlesex, in Connecticut (Middletown Conn. 1 19), pp. 129-130. ' ' 7OIbid., p. 18. 100 For a number of reasons, therefore, turnpike com- paua ies were used to effect highway improvements to a much greater extent in Connecticut than in other parts of New England and continued to be so used after enthusiasm for toll roads had declined in other parts of the region. In northern New England, on the other hand, the turnpike move— merrt; had passed its peak even before 1808, although con- ditsixans there were somewhat analagous to those in the newer Partss of New York. Population growth was rapid during the ear3.y-nineteenth century and many towns were settled, which, except for parts of Maine, were at some distance from water- ways and markets. The Connecticut River, to be sure, served western New Hampshire and eastern Vermont as an avenue of trade witti Hartford and New York, particularly after improve- ments had been made during the early years of the century. DWigllt in 1812 found flatboats carrying produce downriver fronl as far north as wells River and predicted, "the period is that distant when the Connecticut will convey most, if that all, of the marketable produce, and manufactures, of this extensive region to the ocean."71 That time had not yet come during the period of \ 71Dwight, IV, 155. 101 turnpike building, however, and the promotion of toll roads connecting the Connecticut Valley with the sea- board was in part an attempt to prevent any such draw- ing off of trade of New York.72 The Connecticut River, moreover, never was entirely satisfactory as an artery of commerce. Only for a few weeks during the spring and faJml.‘was the water high enough for fully loaded flat- boats to navigate as far north as Wells River. A round trixp took about thirty days and only two or three such tri]ps could be made in a year.73 Although the cost of trarlsportation by water was only about half that of ovelrland freighting, for many years there was a con- siderable amount of wagon traffic between the back coun— try' of'New Hampshire and Vermont and such ports as Boston, Salenn, Newburyport, Portsmouth, and Portland.7h Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1837, I listen by night, I gaze by day at the endless procession of wagons loaded with the wealth of all regions of England and China, of Turkey, of the Indies, which from Boston creep by my gate to all the towns of New Hampshire and Vermont. With L New Hampshire, Records and Archives, Concord, begislative Papers, Petition for a Highway from the Sea- Card to the Connecticut Valley, 1800. H 73William F. Whitcher, History of the Town of whill, New Hampshire (n.p., 1919), pp. 258-259. N 7thid., p. 259; Frederic P. Wells, History of Fewbur Vermont (St. Johnsbury, Vt., 1902), p. 303; W‘L—Ts Mon 1y' Visitor I. (1839), 116. 102 creaking wheels at midsummer, and crunching the snows, on huge sledges in January, this train goes forward at all hours, bearing this cargo of inexhaustible comfort and7luxury to every cabin in the hills. Most New Hampshire turnpikes were built to accom- modate this trade between back country and coastal towns, particularly Boston. That city's merchants and specula- tors were interested in Such roads and New Hampshire pro- moters vied with each other in seeking support in Boston for their schemes. An example of such occurrences is to be found in the story of the Grafton and Hillsborough turnpike com- panies, both of which were chartered in 180A. The pro— moter of the Hillsborough Turnpike was Caleb Stark, the Dunbarton storekeeper mentioned in Chapter I. Stark wrote to a friend in 1803, "I have drawn up a project for the consideration of the leading speculators and men of property in Boston . . .; if diligently pursued, I have no doubt it would take, and that a very great pro- portion of the men of property in Boston would join in a petition if properly attended to - If they can be fairly engaged I think their purses will open freely to prose- 75Edward waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes (eds.), Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston, 1910), IV, 203-204. 103 76 . cute the work." Stark's plan was to build a chain of toll roads connecting Boston with Montreal and he allied himself with the promoters of the Grafton Turn- pike in efforts to make their two proposed roads the 77 New Hampshire links in that chain. He also received a tender of alliance from William Johnson of Newbury, Ver- mont, who was involved in promoting the ill—starred Boston and Montreal Turnpike Company, chartered in 1805 to build a road from Newbury through Hazen Notch to the Canadian border.78 There is evidence, as well, that Stark had an agreement with a group in Massachusetts to provide a road from Boston to the New Hampshire line.79 Stark and his associates quickly ran into difficul- ties. It had been intended that the Fourth New Hampshire Turnpike, which ranfrom Lebanon to Boscawen in the direc- tion of Concord and Boston, also should form part of a great chain of turnpikes - this one reaching from Boston 80 to Lake Champlain. Should Stark have been able to put 76Caleb Stark to John Ballard, January 31, 1803, Hillsborough Turnpike Papers, New Hampshire Historical Society. 77Samuel Morey to Joseph Towne, January 18, 1805, Grafton Turnpike Papers, New Hampshire Historical Society. 78William Johnson to Stark, April 20, 1804, Hills- borough Turnpike Papers. 79Stark to Ballard, l80h, Hillsborough Turnpike Papers 0 80John M. Shirley, "The Fourth New Hampshire Turn— pike," Granite Monthly, IV (1881), 353. 10h his plan into effect, the two routes would have closely paralleled each other between Boston and Andover, New Hampshire, and would have divided the traffic between them. Thus the Fourth New Hampshire, which completed its road in l80h, set about to block Stark's scheme and a battle was joined in the legislature along parti- san lines. "The Senate have tryed us again," wrote Stark in 1803. The junto have sworn to suppress us and this opposition has intirely arisen from the federal party. The republicans in the Senate have voted for our plan, the federalists have sgipped it, we must pre- pare another fire. A few weeks later Stark succeeded in getting a legis- lative committee appointed to inspect the proposed route and he wrote an urgentrequest to one of his associates, John Ballard, to be among those meeting with the committee. "You are . . . wanted to methodize their report, to give perspi- cuity and make it clearly understood," he wrote. If no attendance is given to our commit- tee I fear they will take it in dudgeon and go home without a report, this would certainly be placing us on very silly ground after the strenuous gfiertions that we have made thus far. "If you are dead," he concluded,'wou may be justified in 81Stark to Joseph Towne, November 9, 1803, Hills- borough Turnpike Papers. 82Stark to Ballard, December 21, 1803, Hills- borough Turnpike Papers. 105 tarrying at home, but I really think on no other terms."83 In order to smooth the way for incorporation, Stark also sought and received promises from property owners along the proposed route to donate land for the road.84 The Grafton Turnpike was incorporated June 21, 180h, to build a road southeastward from 0rford, on the Connecti- cut River, to an intersection with the Fourth New Hampshire in Andover.85 From.that point, it was hoped, the Hills- borough Turnpike would continue the Grafton's route to the Massachusetts line. The previous day, however, a charter had been granted to the Londonderry Turnpike Corporation to build from Concord to the Massachusetts line in Salem, New 86 This was a continuation of the Fourth New Hampshire. Hampshire's route towards Boston. Since Stark's petition was not acted upon during the same session of the legisla- ture, the rival company had a head start of several months during which it was able to organize and seek subscribers. The Hillsborough Turnpike finally received its char- 7 ter in 1801+.8 A director of the Grafton Turnpike, however, 83Ibid. 8“Statement of Hopkinton Property Owners, November 20, 1804, Hillsborough Turnpike Papers. 85New Hampshire, Laws, VII, 0. 17 (180h). 361bid., c. 12 (180A). 87Ibid., c. 39 (l80h). 106 warned that this victory in the New Hampshire legisla- ture probably would lead their rivals to try to block the chartering of a Massachusetts corporation to com— plete the Grafton—Hillsborough route. He also advised that since the route of the Fourth New Hampshire and Lon— donderry turnpikes could be proved to be shorter than their own, the Hillsborough associates should begin construction of their road immediately, before potential investors could change their minds.88 The Hillsborough Turnpike apparently failed to get the financial backing it needed and never built its road. The Londonderry Turnpike, built with considerable assist- ance from shareholders in Boston and northeastern Massachu- setts, formed part of an all-turnpike route between Boston and Concord; with the Fourth New Hampshire Turnpike, it was part of a nearly unbroken chain of toll roads between Boston and Burlington, Vermont. The Grafton Turnpike, completed in 1806, served for more than twenty years as a feeder to the Fourth New Hampshire, ironically helping to make the road it was to have rivaled one of the more profitable turnpikes 8 in New England. 9 88Samuel Morey to Joseph Towne, January 18, 1805, Grafton Turnpike Papers. 89Shirley, Granite Monthly, IV, hh8, A53. wk”: ‘ A. V‘A had A 03‘ «V. 332 “A“ 0“ .‘. a-e 107 warned that this victory in the New Hampshire legislature probably would lead their rivals to try to block the char- tering of a Massachusetts corporation to complete the Graf- ton-Hillsborough route. He also advised that since the route of the Fourth New Hampshire and Londonderry turnpikes could be proved to be shorter than their own, the Hills- borough associates should begin construction of their road immediately, before potential investors could change their minds.88 The Hillsborough Turnpike apparently failed to get the financial backing it needed and never built its road. The Londonderry Turnpike, built with considerable assist- ance from shareholders in Boston and northeastern Massachu— setts, formed part of an all-turnpike route between Boston and Concord; with the Fourth NeW'Hampshire Turnpike, it was part of a nearly unbroken chain of toll roads between Bos- ton and Burlington, Vermont. The Grafton Turnpike, com— pleted in 1806, served for more than twenty years as a feeder to the Fourth New Hampshire, ironically helping to make the road it was to have rivaled one of the more profit- able turnpikes in New England.89 88Samuel Morey to Joseph Towne, January 18, 1805, Grafton Turnpike Papers. 89Shirley, Granite Monthly, IV, ##8, #53. 108 The Hillsborough Turnpike, however, was one of the few NeW'Hampshire companies chartered to build a road in the direction of Boston that failed to do so. Indeed, a map of the state's turnpikes shows that most toll roads were part of several parallel systems of high- ways crossing New Hampshire between the Connecticut River and the Massachusetts line. By way of contrast, many of the companies that failed to carry out their projects (the proposed routes of which are approximated by broken lines on the map on p. 270) planned roads that were es- sentially local in character, that would have traversed thinly settled country in northern New Hampshire, or that would have served to draw traffic towards a market other than Boston. ' Other ports did acquire turnpike connections. Coos County produce found its way to Portland after the opening of the Tenth New Hampshire Turnpike through Crawford Notch, even though several other toll roads with which it was to have formed a highway system linking Portland with Lake Champlain failed to materialize.90 From Concord, which had highway connections with most parts of the state, market-bound traffic could follow the New-Hampshire Turn- 90Jeanette R. Thompson, History of the Town of Strat- ford, New Hampshire (Concord, 1925), p. 13E; W00d, pp. 221-225. , 109 pike to Portsmouth. But Concord also had turnpike con- nections with Boston and it may be significant, as far as the relative importance of the two routes is concerned, that the Londonderry Turnpike, leading towards Boston, still was in existence in 1852, while the New—Hampshire Turnpike had gone out of business twenty-seven years ear- lier, its profits between 1808 and 1818 having averaged less than one per cent a year.91 Even Coos County, the northernmost portion of the state, had overland trade with Boston and the toll roads between that city and Concord were described as "the great medium of communication be- tween the Coos country and the town of Boston."92 To what extent the pattern of turnpike building resulted from a dependence on the part of New Hampshire promoters on Massachusetts capital is impossible to say. A substantial number of shareholders in both the London- derry and Third New Hampshire turnpikes, for example, were inhabitants of Boston or northeastern Massachusetts.93 But the Fourth New Hampshire, on the other hand, was financed 91Londonderry Turnpike Corporation, Proprietors Records; First New Hampshire Turnpike, Records of the Directors, New Hampshire Historical Society; Wood, p. 218. 92Massachusetts Spy, January 1, 1806. 93Londonderry Turnpike Corporation, Proprietors Records; Third New Hampshire Turnpike Papers, New Hamp- shire Historical Society. llO largely by New Hampshire residents.94 And it may be that turnpikes were built in New Hampshire, as they were in eastern Massachusetts, largely to reinforce previously established patterns of trade. There had been teaming to Boston from.many parts of the state prior to the turn- pike era and the Merrimack Valley provided a natural line of communication between that city and central New Hamp- shire.95 The state had few centers of wealth to serve as sources of capital or to compete for trade, however, and those companies with routes leading towards Boston proved most successful in raising capital, while others experienced a high rate of failure. Had there been state aid to turn— pikes, as there was in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ohio,96 more toll roads might well have been built, particularly in the thinly settled country north and northwest of Lake Winnepesaukee, where the rate of turnpike-company failures was especially high. 9“Shirley, Granite Monthly, IV, 227. 95Bidwe11 and Falconer, p. 1A1. 96G. R. Taylor, Transportation Revolution, p. 23; Robert F. Hunter, "Turnpike Construction in Antebellum Virginia," Technology and Culture, IV (1963), 178. + 9U in" 410? h 'h'. fter 3’0 ch 01‘ R 4 q A Tl lVDO to CO "A gans," “Vb. 111 The statement of Jedidiah Morse in 1819, after toll-road building in New Hampshire had ceased, that "turnpike roads are constructed intersecting the most important parts of the state,"97 nevertheless was true. Post of the companies building these main routes re- ceived their charters at a fairly early date. With the exception of the Amherst Turnpike, incorporated in 1812 to complete the route of the Second New Hampshire Turn- pike to the Massachusetts line, all the companies with routes leading towards Boston had been chartered by 1808, most of them somewhat earlier. The peak year for incor- porations was 1804, when eighteen charters were granted, after which the decline was rapid.98 Turnpike building also declined early in Vermont. No charter was granted between November 7, 1805, a day on which fourteen companies were formed, and October 26, 1807.99 Eight of the fifteen companies chartered in 1805 failed to build roads and three others had to apply for one or more extensions of the time permitted them to complete_construc- ¥ 97The American Universal Geography (Charlestown, Mass., 1819), p. 315. 98Appendix I. 99Wood, pp. 266-273. 112 tion.100 Although twenty-one companies were formed be— tween 1811 and 1835, only five succeeded in building roads}Ol Vermont, like New Hampshire, had no great commer- cial center of its own and many parts of the state were at some distance from any market. As late as 1830, Governor Samuel Crafts complained that our surplus production has found a market only in the commerical towns of other states, where they are exchanged for such articles as necessities or fancies may require. These markets are distant from our inhabitants, from one hundred to two hundred miles; and the aggregate cost to the state for transportation has been es- timated to amount to Siafiral hundred thou- sand dollars annually. According to Dwight, "the markets to which the people of this state resort for the purposes of trade are Quebec, Montreal, Troy, Albany, New York, Hartford, Boston, and Portland," but "most parts of the State . . . carry on a 103 considerable trade with Boston." Vermont turnpikes were built in the directions of most of these markets. In the western part of the state toll roads led towards Lake Champlain and the Hudson River; in eastern Vermont a number of roads performed the dual functions of linking looghig. 101Appendix I. 102Records of the Governor and Council of the State 2£_Vermont, VII (montpelier, Vt., 1879), h69-h70. 103Dwight, II, #58. 113 inland towns with the Connecticut River and of forming extensions of New Hampshire turnpikes. Whether out-of-state interests played any signif- icant role in financing Vermont turnpike projects is not known. Some interest was expressed in Boston in the pro- posed road from Newbury to the Canadian border.101+ but that scheme proved abortive, as did efforts to build a road between Lake Champlain and the Connecticut River in the direction of Portland.105 Probably northern Vermont in particular was too far away to arouse serious interest among potential investors in the seaboard cities. In Vermont, as in New Hampshire, a majority of turn- pike companies failed to raise sufficient amounts of capi- tal to complete their projects. And as in most of the New England states, the turnpike movement there quickly reached its peak and as quickly declined. lo“Chilton Williamson, Vermont in Quandary, 1763- 1822 (Montpelier, Vt., l9h9), p. 251. According to Williamson, however, several public roads built during the early 1800's supplemented water routes between northern Vermont and Lower Canada. Ibid., p. 250. 105There were non-turnpike routes of trade between Portland and the northern Vermont counties of Orange, Caledonia, and Essex. Dwight, II, #58. CHAPTER IV TURNPIKES: FINANCIAL PROBLEMS Investors in New England turnpikes came from many walks of life. Proprietors' lists often included mer- chants, lawyers, manufacturers, ministers, educators, far- mers.l Undoubtedly some individuals invested more in the hope of indirect benefits than of direct profits. Samuel Slater, according to an early biographer, "considered the importance of good roads as a necessary appendage to the manufacturing interest." He invested in a number of New England turnpikes and in at least one instance purchased a bankrupt company, which could have offered little likeli- 2 Merchants and other busi- hood of ever proving profitable. nessmen undoubtedly sometimes invested in the hope of bring- ing trade to their towns or of having traffic pass near their stores or taverns. Moreover, investors sought to reduce transportation costs and to increase property values. 1Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records; London- derry Turnpike Corporation, Proprietors Records; Hartford and New Haven Turnpike Company Records, New Haven Colony Historical Society; Loisquisset Turnpike Company, Committee Book, Rhode Island Historical Society. 2George S. White, Memoir of Samuel Slater (Philadelphia, 1836), pp. 238—239; Rhode Island, Archives, Charters, 183h-36, p. 3h. 114 115 And they also realized that improved transportation was important to the development of their towns, states, and country and regarded investment in turnpikes as an expres— sion of patriotism.3 Uniting private interest with public utility," wrote the directors of one turnpike company,"is indeed the only proper foundation of every turnpike establishment."h But turnpikes were by no means the only form of enterprise the development of which was in the public interest. And even before it was obvious that they were not going to be lucra- tive to investors, there were few who were willing to entrust their fortunes completely to this one type of investment. To be sure, some companies were dominated by a few wealthy individuals. Thirteen persons owned more than half of the 866 shares in the Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike in 1802.5 Three hundred of the 800 shares in the Hartford and New Haven Turnpike originally were owned in equal holdings by two weal— thy lawyers - Oliver Ellsworth of Hartford, formerly chief h 3Rhode Island,Archives, Charters, 1790-1800, p. 24; 1800-05, p. #2; 1820—23, p. uh; Connecticut, Archives, Travel, Series II, Vol. IX, p. 1h; Columbian Centinel, February 3, 1796; Providence Gazette, July 9, 16, 1803; Green Mountain Patriot, January 27, 1807; Gallatin, American State Papers, Miscellaneous, 1, 87h. hProvidence Gazette, July 9, 1803. 5Ames, Draft of Letter to Prospective Stockholders, 1802, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. 116 justice of the United States, and James Hillhouse of New Haven, a United States senator. The printing firm of Hud— son and Goodwin owned 100 shares in the same company and Jeremiah Wadsworth, Hartford merchant and banker, sixty- five more. Even for large stockholders, however, turnpikes often were a minor investment. Wadsworth, for example, in 1804 left an estate valued at more than $124,000, of which less than one per cent was in the stock of three turnpike com- panies; he had more than $50,000 worth of bank stock.7 Isaiah Thomas, perhaps the wealthiest man in Worcester, was active in promoting the turnpike between Worcester and Boston and purchased shares in several other companies, as well. But his turnpike investment,valued at about $2,200 in 1813, was only a small part of his total holdings.8 Fisher Ames, who left an estate worth about $25,000, seems to have placed an inordinately large percentage of his savings in the turnpike company of which he was president, his forty shares costing about $8,000. But he once pointed out to fellow stock- holders, several of whom owned more shares than he did, that 6Hartford and New Haven Turnpike Company Records. 7Martin. pp. 201-202. 8Summary Account of the Book Stock and Other Property of Isaiah Thomas, Taken August 20th, 1813, Thomas Papers, American Antiquarian Society. 117 his risk was considerably greater than theirs.9 Even large companies such as the Norfolk and Bris- tol and the Hartford and New Haven were dependent in part on small investors. There were fifty—eight proprietors of the former company, while forty-one persons originally owned shares in the latter, of whom twenty-seven had less than ten shares.lo There were thirty-one shareholders in the First Massachusetts Turnpike, which cost only $11,200 to build. Some of these were persons of quite modest means who ap- parently decided to invest because of the liberal terms the company offered. Shares were priced at twenty-five dollars and an initial payment of only one dollar was re- quired. Thomas Dwight, president of the company, in retro- spect felt that this policy had been a mistake, that at the time the company was formed wealthy men still could have been persuaded to invest more heavily, and that "by having the Shares amount to so small a sum . . . you put it in the power of very little men of very little minds to become proprietors; and such will give you great trouble and throw embarrassments 11 in the way of every proper measure." Many companies, how- ¥ 9President's Message, 1806, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. 10Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records; Hartford and New Haven Turnpike Company Records. llDwight to Ammidon, March 10, 1800, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. 118 ever, found it necessary to seek the support of small in- vestors. Because of this, and also because ready money often was scarce, several expedients were resorted to in raising capital. Most companies permitted proprietors to pay for their shares in successive installments, assessments being made as money was needed. If proprietors fell into arrears, companies had the right to take and sell their shares.12 Efforts also were made to substitute labor for money wherever possible. Both the Passumpsic Turnpike in Vermont and the Rhode Island and Connecticut Turnpike in Rhode Island made public appeals to persons living near their routes to invest, citing the benefits that would accrue in the form of higher property values. These and other companies offered investors the opportunity of contracting to build a section 13 of road, paying most of the cost of their shares in labor. 12Londonderry Turnpike Corporation, Proprietors Records; Loisquisset Turnpike Company, Committee Book; Derby Turnpike Company and New Haven and Milford Turn- pike Company records, New Haven Colony Historical Society; New Milford and Litchfield Turnpike Company, Hadlyme Turn- pike Company, and Woodstock and Thompson Turnpike Company records, Connecticut State Library. 13Green Mountain Patriot, January 27, 1807; Provi- dence Gazette, July 9, 16, 1803. See also Hadlyme Turn- pike’Company Records; New Milford and Litchfield Turnpike Company Records; Woodstock and Thompson Turnpike Company Records; Connecticut, Archives, Travel, Series II, Vol.XV, p. 34. 119 The Jefferson Turnpike, which ran from Lancaster, New Hampshire, to the Tenth New Hampshire Turnpike, took up— wards of ten years to build because of difficulties in raising capital. The company eventually resorted to of- fering 100 acre lots, payment for which could be made in labor on the turnpike.lh Senator Theodore Foster of Rhode Island once offered to accept a year's rent on two farms in the form of labor on a turnpike in which he was in- terested.15 Those who subscribed to turnpike stock usually found that the value of their investment depreciated quickly. According to the clerk of the Sixth Massachu- setts Turnpike, its stock "had the same destiny as the old Continental money." The value of Hartford and Dedham Turnpike declined from$50 to $10 per share Within a few years. Shares in the Worcester Turnpike, which cost $260 in 1806, were worth only eighurseven dollars seven years later. Norfolk and Bristol stock enjoyed a brief resur- gence during the 1820's and the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance purchased more than 120 shares in 1827 and 1828. But even at that time, shares costing about $200 were sell— 11"New Hampshire Patriot (Concord), January 27, 1807. 15Providence Gazette, January 26, 1805. 120 ing at sixty dollars.16 Turnpike shares tended to change hands slowly, original proprietors frequently retaining their holdings and passing them along to their heirs.17 In some instances individual stockholders or the company itself gradually added to their holdings by acquiring additional shares from colleagues who had fallen into arrears in their payments or who were willing to sell at a depreciated price. Richard Ayer of Hooksett, New Hampshire, bought more than 200 shares of Londerry Turnpike stock from fel- low proprietors over a period of a number of years.18 Thomas, in an inventory of his estate, noted in regard to his stock in the wercester Turnpike that "there are a number of shares, not taken up, and a number more bought at auction - which belong now to the Stock holders, a part of course belong to me. These shares must rise in value."19 Some of the orig- inal proprietors of the Fourth New Hampshire Turnpike re- 16Reed, p. #5; William S. Tilden, History of the Town of Medfield, Massachusetts (Boston, 1887), p. 204; Summary Account of the Book Stock and Other Property of Isaiah Thomas; B. R. Nichols to William R. Staples, August 25, 1830, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. l7Cf}, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. l8Londonderry Turnpike Corporation, Proprietors Records. Summary Account of the Book Stock and Other Property of Isaiah Thomas. 121 linquished their shares because they were dissatisfied with the route finally decided upon. These were sold at auction for about thirty dollars each and must have proved a bargain to the purchasers, for the company paid dividends averaging about three per cent on a capitalization which averaged more than $150 per share for about twenty years.20 In general, however, proprietors seem to have been either reluctant or unable to sell their stock. "Sales are not made readily," the treasurer of the Norfolk and Bristol informed a would-be buyer in 1830. "There have been no sales for more than a year to my knowledge of shares in ye Turnp."21 In a petition to the legislature that year, the directors of the same company reported, "a large pro- portion of the present stockholders are original proprie- tors or their heirs at law."22 Turnpike companies, like individual investors, fre- Quently held onto their franchises as long as they were mak— ing even a small profit. The Norfolk and Bristol, which Protested against a proposed railroad between Boston and Providence in 1830, had earned only about one per cent a Year, but the directors argued that 20 Shirley, Granite Monthly, IV. h53-h5h. 21Nichols to Staples, August 25, 1830, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. 22Draft of Petition to the Legislature, 1830. NCIPfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. 122 for the great benefits which the corpora— tion have rendered the public, they con- ceive themselves justly entitled to be protected in their chartered privileges, and that the small recompense they are now receiving should not be taken from them unless 3t is demanded by the public exigencies.2 The Boston and Providence Railroad, opened in 1835, cut into the turnpike's revenues. In 1843 the company was permitted to abandon its road from Dedham to Seekonk, but it continued to operate the remainder of its route as a 2 toll road until 1857. A The Hartford and New Haven re- tained its franchise until 1855, although dividends over a fifty-year period had averaged only one per cent a year.25 The Mt. Tabor Turnpike in Vermont, which, like these other companies, failed to repay even the cost of construction, was still in business as late as 1839 and that year paid a dividend of about 2.7 per cent.26 A probable reason for such tenacity was that com- panies could expect little or nothing in the way of com- pensation if they did relinquish their franchises. They thus chose to remain in business as long as possible to 23Ibid. 2hW00d, p. 100. 25Hartford and New Haven Turnpike Company Records. 26Mt. Tabor Turnpike Company, Record Book, Vermont Historical Society. 123 minimize their losses. Although charters often speci- fied that the state could take over a road by paying a sum sufficient to repay the cost of construction, plus twelve per cent a year, only once did a New England state exercise such an option. A Rhode Island legislative com- mittee in 1831 investigated the earnings of the Providence and Pawtucket Turnpike, which operated a short road form- ing part of the main route between Providence and Boston, and found that its profits had come close to the maximum permitted under its charter. The committee also reported that the company had spent money unnecessarily for repairs and had failed to account for certain funds. The legisla- ture denied the company's request for a reduction in toll rates, which had occasioned the investigation, and in 1834 the state took over the route, paying the company a small sum and operating the road profitably for several years until it, too, fell victim to competition from the Boston and Providence Railroad. "The property," reported the agent in charge of the road in 1839, "is of great value; and the rights of the state should be clearly understood, diligently watched and faithfully preserved."27 Such a statement could have been made of only a 27Rhode Island, Archives, Providence and Pawtucket Turnpike Accounts; Reports to the General Assembly, X, 66. 124 few other turnpike properties in New England, however. When a turnpike road was given up, it usually was as the result of a plea on the company's part "that the toll collected has not even paid for keeping the road in repair," or of public oppoSition to a poorly maintained toll road, such as was expressed in a petition from the towns of Pomfret and Killingly that the turnpike of the same name "has be— come totally unnecessary for Publick use & convenience & very expensive to individuals and dangerous."28 A company's franchise,when relinquished under such circumstances, had outlived its usefulness and its property was almost without value. About the only hope of recover- ing any of its capital at all lay in exploiting the com- pany's value as a nuisance to the towns along the route. The Third New Hampshire, beset as early as about 1813 with declining revenues and rising costs of repair, sought for several years to persuade towns through which the road passed to take over its repair. In 1820 an agreement fi- nally was reached whereby the road was to be made free between Keene and the Massachusetts line in return for the towns assuming the burden of maintenance and paying $160 a year,the company having come down from a demand 28Connecticut, Archives, Travel, Series II, Vol. XV, p. 9; Windham County, Conn., Court Records, XXVI, 233. 125 for $200 a year. Four years later the legislature per- mitted the Third New Hampshire to surrender its charter and the entire road became free.29 The towns between Portsmouth and Concord, in order to have the New-Hamp— shire Turnpike made free, in 1825 raised enough money to pay the company at the rate of twenty dollars per share.30 The prospect of having a nuisance removed was not always sufficient, however, to induce towns to assume the expense of highway maintenance. When residents of Barnet and Ryegate, Vermont, remonstrated in 1837 against an ef- fort to alter the charter of the Passumpsic Turnpike, claiming the company charged "enormous tolls" and failed to repair its road, the principal owner replied that he was willing to relinquish his charter but had been unable to secure an equitable agreement. I have and shall continue to use my best exertions to cause said Turnpike to become a free road, on being paid a reasonable compensation for money actually expended in making and repair- ing said road, and incidental expences. I am willing to receive what judicious men shall say said stock is worth, in money, and when that Sum is paid, with its annual interest, said road shall be free: and I know of no proprietor but what is willing to do the same. 29Third New Hampshire Turnpike, Papers; W00d, p.220. 3C’New England Palladium, January 21, 1825. 126 But the inhabitants of these towns, he complained, had been granted the right to use the road without paying toll when "on their domestic family business" and "as a matter of interest . . . never will consent [either] to pay toll, or to have said Turnpike become free, so 31 When long as they, by any stratagem, can prevent it." petitions were submitted in 1830 asking that the London- derry Turnpike be made free, the town of Hooksett remon- strated that it was unable to assume the expense of main- taining its portion of the road.32 A few of the weakest turnpike companies succumbed during the years following the War of 1812. By 1840 more than twenty companies in Connecticut and more than thirty in Massachusetts had abandoned their roads either wholly or in part. The rate of abandonment increased rapidly during the 1840's and 1850's, but a number of toll roads still were being operated after the Civil War and as late as 1913, when Frederic J. Wood was gathering information for his study of New England turnpike companies, he paid 31Facts in Relation to the Pasumpsic Turnpike Company (Broadside, 1838), Vermont Historical Society. 32NewHampshire, Records and Archives, Legisla- tive Papers, Remonstrance of the Town of Hooksett, 1830. 127 toll to one of the last, Vermont's Peru Turnpike.33 Some toll roads did pay moderately well for a number of years and a very few approached the profits permitted under the terms of their charters. The Salem Turnpike, thought to have been the best-paying road in Massachusetts, reported average net earnings of better than three per cent for about sixty years, while the Fourth New Hampshire had similar earnings between 1820 and 1840.3“ The profits of the West Glocester Turnpike, as reported by a Rhode Island legislative committee in 1837, had averaged more than 5.8 per cent a year since 179b, while those of the Glocester Turnpike were about 35 9.3 per cent a year between 1805 and 1837. The latter company declared a dividend of six per cent as late as 1869.36 As previously mentioned, the Providence and Pawtucket Turnpike earned close to twelve per cent a year prior to its takeover by the state in 1834. In Connecticut, the Talcott Mountain Turnpike be- tween 1800 and 1843 had average annual earnings of about 33wood, p. 277; P. E. Taylor, "Turnpike Era,"p. 357. 3[*W'ood, p. 35; Shirley, Granite Monthly, IV, 453. 35Rhode Island, Archives, Reports to the General Assembly, X, 9." 36Wood, p. 297. 128 10.9 per cent. The company's peak year was 1805, when it earned 18.6 per cent; eighteen times between 1804 and 1837 annual profits were at least twelve per cent.37 Figures in two Oxford Turnpike Company accounts for the years 1845 and 1852 indicate that average yearly earnings between those dates were about 11.5 per cent and suggest that for the period 1795 through 1852 profits may have averaged as much 38 as seven per cent a year. The Derby Turnpike remained in business nearly a century and netted an average profit of about 4.1 per cent a year between 1801 and 1840. Origi- nally capitalized at $7,520, the company, still a paying enterprise, was able to secure damages of $10,000 when its property finally was condemned under court proceedings in 1896.39 The Torrington Turnpike, chartered in 1801, re— turned an average of about three per cent a year between that time and 1834.1)0 The weston Turnpike, incorporated in 1828 and in business until 1886, between 1832 and 1848 37Connecticut, Treasurer, Turnpike Road Accounts. 38Osborn Papers. Erastus Osborn was one of the com- missioners appointed by the state to examine annually the company's accounts. 39Derby Turnpike Records; "New Haven, Old and New" (M88. in New Haven Colony Historical Society), CXXXI, 59. 40 Connecticut, Treasurer, Turnpike Road Accounts. 129 also returned an average of about three per cent.“1 The New Haven and Milford earned 3.7 per cent for almost sixty years and the Bridgeport and Newtown paid dividends averag— ing 4.5 per cent during a thirty-five year period.“2 The problem of determining the long-term profitabil- ity of New England turnpikes is a difficult one because of a scarcity of evidence. Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1805 and 1806 respectively adopted laws requiring the sub- mission of annual reports of turnpike company earnings to the state.“3 In neither case was a penalty provided for failure to do so and it seems likely that few such reports were submitted. Few,at least, have been preserved in the public archives. None of the other states had such a law, charter provisions frequently stating that a company's books were to be subject to examination by the legislature at any time and by the courts at fixed intervals to determine whether earnings had exceeded the allowable limit. Few records of the results of such examinations have been found. Nor are many of the turnpike company records which have been pre- served illuminating in regard to profits. Alweston Turnpike Records, Connecticut State Library. 42P. E. Taylor, "Turnpike Era," p. 277. hBMassachusetts, Acts and Resolves, 1804, c. 125, sec. 9; Connecticut, Public Statute Laws,‘CompI1ed (1808), Title CLXVI, c. 1, sec. 5. 130 Some of the evidence cited above was not used in previous studies, however, and necessitates at least a slight modification of the usually dark interpretation of turnpike earnings. Wood, who wrote that "with the possible exception of the turnpike between Providence and Pawtucket, not one New England road ever came within gunshot of realizing" profits of twelve per cent,hh was unaware of the earnings of the Glocester and Talcott Moun- tain turnpikes. The latter company in 1812 would have had to earn only an additional $82.82 to have raised its average earnings since 1799 to twelve per cent, even though four years earlier it had been permitted to undertake an exten- sive rebuilding project which added close to forty per cent to the capitalization on which it was permitted to earn in- terest. Between 1804 and 1843 the company's capitalization more than doubled, largely because of further rebuilding and other "extraordinary repairs." Total earnings through 1843, however, had repaid the full amount of capitalization reached that year ($18,750), plus an average of 5.8 per cent a year interest on the same amoUnt. Considering only its original cost ($8,840), by 1843 the road had paid for itself and returned an annual interest of about fifteen per cent. Year-to-year earnings averaged 11.4 per cent thood, p. 35. 131 between 1800 and 1840 and 10.9 per cent between 1800 and 1843, the last year for which information is available.45 Probably few, if any, other companies did as well as the Talcott Mountain, the Providence and Pawtucket, or the Glocester. As early as 1808, Gallatin's Report showed the Talcott Mountain to be easily the most profitable road in Connecticut, a state in which turnpike earnings seem to have been above the average, while the two best toll roads in Massachusetts were supposed to be returning eight and 46 six per cent respectively. Although exceptions can be found - the Torrington Turnpike lost money between 1805 and 1807 - most of the roads for which information is avail- able had their best profits during their early years and later experienced a decline. Three Rhode Island roads had good profits, but these seem to have been the only companies the legislature investigated to determine whether their earnings had exceeded twelve per cent. There was fairly strong hostility towards turnpikes in that state and it seems likely others would have been investigated if they had appeared prosperous. “SConnecticut, Treasurer, Turnpike Road Accounts. 46Gallatin, American State Papers, Miscellaneous, I, 867; Appendix II. 132 It may be, however, that considerably more companies had long-term profits of as much as threegmu‘cent than has been supposed. Taylor doubted that more than five or six New England companies paid even that well.“7 Evidence un- covered during the present study shows that at least six other companies - the Talcott Mountain, Glocester, West Glocester, Oxford, Torrington,and Weston turnpikes - earned three per cent or more. More complete evidence probably also would turn up a number of other companies that failed to do even that well, such as the Shetucket Turnpike in Connecticut, which earned an average of slightly better than one per cent a year dur- ing almost thirty years of operation and eventually relin- quished its charter in return for a payment of about one- eighth the value of its original capitalization from the towns that were to maintain its route as a public road.LP8 Shareholders lost most of what they had invested in that company when it was sold and the small dividends they had received served only to lessen somewhat the eventual loss a7P. E. Taylor, "Turnpike Era," p. 266. h8Connecticut, Treasurer, Turnpike Road Accounts; Frances M. Caulkins, History of Norwich, Connecticut (Hartford, 1874), p. 530. 133 of capital. As Taylor has pointed out, to one degree or another this was the experience of most turnpike companies, including some which had had fairly good earnings for a time.79 Even the Talcott Mountain Turnpike experienced a sharp drop in profits after 1840, and although this road, unlike many others, had paid for itself, with a good profit in addition, it is unlikely that its property was worth much when it finally folded in 1870. The profits of New England turnpike companies prob- ably were not as uniformly poor as has been thought. Avail- able evidence, nevertheless, supports the opinion of con- temporaries such as Henry Clay that toll roads usually re- turned little in the way of direct earnings to their owners,50 since three per cent could hardly be called a good profit. According to Emerson, "he must be an unskilful merchant who should invest his money at three per cent."51 The poor re- turns a number of companies are known to have had, the de- preciation of turnpike stock, loss of capital at the time of corporate dissolution, the reluctance of New Englanders to invest after the first decade of the nineteenth century, and financial difficulties experienced by companies in other “9P. E. Taylor, "Turnpike Era," p. 280. 5OU.S.,Anna1s of Congress, 15th Cong., 2d Sess., 1818-l9, II, 1377. 51Emerson and Forbes, IV, 202. 134 parts of the country all support the conclusion that turn- pikes usually were a poor investment from the standpoint of profits. This was true for a number of reasons, one of which was overbuilding. Several of the principal toll roads, although considerably above average in the quality of their construction,were built at a cost entirely out of line with the revenues they produced. Unlike the Talcott Mountain Turnpike, a heavily traveled highway which fol- lowed closely the route of a former public road and cost only about $465 per mile,52 such turnpikes, usually built between two important towns, were entirely new roads, sub- stantially built, and following as direct routes as possi- ble. Except for the Salem Turnpike, none of these roads seeumtn have paid well. The Hartford and New Haven and the wercester Turn- pike were roads of this class. So was the Norfolk and Bris- tol, built in a nearly straight line over difficult terrain in such a manner as to be, in Fisher Ames's words, "worthy of the taste and magnificence of a wealthy metropolis." Ames determined at an early date, "it would be a wretched scheme of economy" to build anything less than "a great road," which included considerable reduction of hills and 52Appendix. III. 135 raising of valleys, covering the road with a heavy layer of gravel, and landscaping with poplar trees, planted four rods apart along either side. Unnecessary expenses prob- ably were the actual, although unintended, result of the company's, decision to have the directors supervise con- struction rather than hire outside contractors. Inexpe- rienced as road builders, the directors had to learn the business as construction progressed. The Norfolk and Bris- tol was one of the most substantially built roads in New England and carried a heavy flow of traffic, but earned no more than about two per cent during its best years.53 The Newburyport and Boston was another turnpike the amount of traffic on which never could have justified the high cost of its construction. Apparently hoping to com- pete with the Salem Turnpike by providing a shorter route between Boston and Newburyport, the company disregarded terrain and avoided centers of population in building a road that deviated no more than eighty-three feet from a straight line throughout its length of thirty-two miles. Property damages were high and difficulties were encoun- tered in construction. Costs included the reduction of a number of hills, the building of a large number of bridges, and construction of two hotels. The road cost $417,000, 53Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. 136 making the Newburyport and Boston by far the most heavily capitalized turnpike company in New England. As the com- pany's historian has written, to have returned the cost of the road, plus twelve per cent, "would have demanded a heavy stream of travel, day and night."51+ William Bentley drove over the Newburyport and Boston only a few years af- ter its completion and "found nobody travelling upon it."55 lost New England turnpikes were built at considerably lower cost than roads of this class. Perhaps some of them were so lacking in profit potential as to have failed to justify any-expenditure. Other roads, however, might well have returned greater profits had they been better built. One such road was Connecticut's Boston Turnpike, which ran from.East Hartford to the Massachusetts line in Thompson and formed part of what was for a time the shortest route be- tween Hartford and Boston. Like the Norfolk and Bristol and the Newburyport and Boston, this road was built "unfortunate- ly over many hills of great altitude with a particular view to a straight road."56 Little was done to reduce steep ShH. Follansbee Long, "The Newburyport and Boston Turnpike," Topsfield Historical Collections, XI (1906), 11-12. - 55 56Boston Turnpike Company Papers, Connecticut State Diary of William Bentley, III, 448. Library. 137 grades, however, and although it was several miles closer to Boston by way of the turnpike than by the post road through Springfield and worcester, the latter was con- sidered the better route.57 At the time of Gallatin's Report the company's earnings were only about half of one per cent a (year.58 It lost even the advantage of directness after the Stafford and Mineral Springs and the wercester Turnpike provided both a shorter and a bet- 59 ter route to Boston. Like a number of other such com- panies, the Boston Turnpike eventually sought to promote business by altering its route. In 1824, the directors, apparently regretting the early decision to pass directly over hills, contended in a petition to the legislature, "these hills may be avoided or the ascents in the road be rendered less and easier by Alterations which will not naturally increase the distance or incommode individuals."60 Another factor in keeping turnpike profits low was high maintenance costs. Even in Pennsylvania, where many toll roads were built on a substantial base of stone, it 57Thomas's Almanack (1800). 58Appendix II. 59Thomas's Almanack (1814). 60BostonhTurnpike Company Records. 138 was argued that "no turnpike can stand the wear and tear of five horse waggons, and be profitable to the stock holders."61 New England turnpikes were mainly dirt roads and although some efforts were made to prevent damage by establishing preferential toll rates for vehicles with wide felloes,62 considerable damage was caused by heavily 63 An all-day rain in loaded wagons and by the weather. 1819, for example, brought a flood which carried away twenty feet of causeway On the Worcester Turnpike. The Talcott Mountain Turnpike, although an inexpen- sively built road, always had sufficient revenue to pay for repairs. The Oxford Turnpike, although nearly half its revenue in 1844 went towards maintenance, earned a profit 65 of 6.3 per cent. But in some instances high maintenance costs meant the difference between profit and loss. A.Com- 61The Emporium of Arts and Sciences, I (1813), 341. 62Massachusetts, Acts and Resolves, 1804, c. 125, Sec. 4. 63Loisquisset Turnpike Company, Committee Book; Third New Hampshire Turnpike Papers, New Hampshire Histor- ical.Society; Rhode Island, Archives, Charters, 1821-31, P. 59; S23 (Pittsfield), October 7, 1800. 6“Benjamin T. Hill (ed.), The Diary of Isaiah Thomas (Worcester, 1909), I, 239. 65Osborn Papers. 139 mittee of the Rhode Island legislature found that the Providence and Norwich Turnpike had "no prospect of ever realizing any profit . . . so long as they have such a length of road to maintain, with such an income as hitherto afforded."66 The directors of the First Massachusetts Turnpike between 1802 and 1807 found their revenue insufficient to pay for necessary major repairs and permitted the condition of the road to deteriorate. When in 1808 they determined to spend $1000 (four to five times the usual sum) "to put the Road in perfect repair," the company that year operated at a loss.67 A poorly maintained turnpike, however, not only was subject to legal reprisal in the form of having tollgates opened to free passage as long as repairs were neglected, but often experienced a rapid decline in traffic, as well. A director of the Third New Hampshire Turnpike, reporting the poor condition of a section of that road, wrote, "I think we loose [sic] toll now for people are afraid to pass."68 One New England editor asserted that the de- 66Rhode Island, Archives, Charters, 1800-05, p. 31. 67 First Massachusetts Turnpike Corporation, Record Book. 68Thomas Bellows to John Preston, October 8, 1817, Third New Hampshire Turnpike Papers. 140 clining value of many turnpike stocks could be attributed to inadequate maintenance and a subsequent loss of revenue.69 Turnpike companies tried a number of means to mini- mize maintenance costs.. Perhaps the most successful of these was the farming out of their roads. Vermont's Mt. Tabor Turnpike Company, for example, in 1830 entered into a five-year contract with one Daniel Curtis, who was given the right to collect tolls and retain such profits as should accrue in return for keeping the road in repair and paying rent of $100 a year. Relieved of practically all expenses, the company, which had paid dividends only sporadically, be- gan to make regular returns out of the rent money. In 1833 the dividend was eight-seven cents per share, or about 4.3 70 per cent. The committee which investigated the Glocester and West Glocester turnpikes in 1837 found both companies farming out their roads and declared that the practice was "manifestly against law" and might be used in some instances as a subterfuge to make it appear that a road's earnings had not exceeded twelve per cent.71 Farming out, however, seems almost always to have been 69NewEngland Palladium, November 18, 1825. 70Mt. Tabor Turnpike Company, Record Book. 71Rhode Island, Archives, Reports to the General Assem- bly. X. 9. 141 used as a means of maximizing profits by minimizing costs. The practice seems not always to have been remunerative to the contractors. After 1833 the Mt. Tabor Turnpike Company put its road up for lease to the highest bidder, but apparently was unable to find a taker either in 1834 or 1835. In 1839 the highest bid was down to eighty dol- lars and the contractor that year failed to keep the road in repair.72 The frequency with which turnpike companies changed methods of repairing their roads - from hiring la- borers by the month to dividing maintenance among the pro- prietors or hiring a superintendent,indicates the importance of maintenance costs and also the difficulties encountered in trying to minimize them.73 The cost of collecting toll, although usually con- siderably less than that of maintenance, often was great enough to affect profits. Most turnpikes were small-scale enterprises with only limited revenues. Receipts often were insufficient to permit a company to pay its toll collectors full salaries and still earn a profit. The amount of toll collected at the Second NeW'Hampshire Turnpike's gate in ¥ 72Mt. Tabor Turnpike Company, Record Book. 73Woodstock and Thompson Turnpike Company Records; First Massachusetts Turnpike Corporation, Record Book; Loisquisset Turnpike Company, Committee Book; Third New Hampshire Turnpike Papers. 142 Unity averaged only about one dollar a day in 1822, 1823, and 1824, for example.74 Receipts at the Mt. Tabor Turn- pike's single gate were only $295.40 in 1818. Out of this the company paid its expenses and had a profit of $100, or about 3.3 per cent of its capitalization.‘ Although the cost of collecting toll was high - twelve per cent of re— ceipts, as against a similar expense of 5.5 per cent for the Talcott Mountain Turnpike, which earned 7.1 per cent that year - James Lincoln, employed by the Mt. Tabor Turn- pike to tend its gate, earned only $35.45, hardly enough to support himself and his family, even by the standards of the time.75 In order to find persons willing to take the job of toll collector at the salaries they were willing to pay, turn- pike companies had to permit them to supplement their income with other work. It was common to provide land adjacent to tollhouses on which the collectors could raise their own food. The Hartford and Tolland Turnpike Company, for example, which had two tollgates, was permitted under its charter to own a total of 100 acres for the use of its toll receivers.76 Col- 7hSecond New Hampshire Turnpike, Records of Gate No. 5, New Hampshire Historical Society. 75Mt. Tabor Turnpike Company, Record Book. After Lincoln's death his widow contracted to tend the gate. 760onnecticut, Resolves and Private Laws (1837),p.l328. 143 lectors and their families were permitted to live in the tollhouses, sometimes rent free.77 The first massachusetts Turnpike paid Abraham Fuller only sixty-five dollars a year to tend its Wilbraham gate, but moved the gate near his house, presumably so that he and his family could collect toll while at the same time continuing to farm their own land, and the company also hired him to keep a section of the road repaird.78 The Loisquisset Turnpike Company in Rhode Island built a cooper shop adjacent to its toll gate and leased it to a tradesmen,who collected toll and paid rent of twenty-five dollars a year in addition, while the Worcester Turnpike in 1819 advertised for "a Tollman, at the Gate, near Richards' Tavern, in Brookline - a good situation for a Shoe maker, whipmaker, or other tradesmen, whose work is confined to a shop."79 Although arrangements such as these permitted many turnpike companies to collect small amounts of toll at a cost they were able to afford, the job of toll collector, which was low-paying but physically undemanding and per- mitted the handling of money in a loosely supervised sit- uation, sometimes attracted a type of person who at best 77Mt. Tabor Turnpike Company, Record Book; Derby Turnpike Records. 78First Massachusetts Turnpike Corporation, Record Book. 79Loisquisset Turnpike Company, Record Book; leumbian Centinel, February 10, 1819. 144 proved perfunctory in performing his duties and at worst resorted to graft. Companies lost undertermined amounts of revenue as a result of the laxity and even dishonesty of such collectors. In moving their gate to the vicinity of Fuller's house, the directors of the First Massachusetts informed the other proprietors that they were motivated partly by a desire to get a responsible person to take the job. Fuller's predecessor had proved unsatisfactory. Al- though he had been warned once that he could grant credit to acquaintances who passed his gate only at his own risk, Jonathan Kilburn seems to have yielded to their continued importunities and to have accumulated a number of uncol- lectable debts. In 1808, two years after he was replaced by Fuller, Kilburn and his sureties still owed the company $390, which, the directors declared hopefully, "may prob- ably be paid at a future day." Had the amount owed by Kilburn and another collector been paid that year, the company would have earned a small profit instead of los- ing about $400.80 Luke Hitchcock, dismissed as keeper of the same company's Palmer gate in 1810, also showed favoritism to his friends at the company's expense, and his successor, Abial Lombard, was sternlywarned that 80First Massachusetts Turnpike Corporation, Record Book. 145 your duty as toll gatherer, both as it respects the Interest of your Employers and your own Interest and Reputation, will lead you to Collect of everyone, with undeviating Impartiality, the legal Toll as it may become payable on passing the gate. Hitchcock also was suspected of other dubious practices and Lombard was instructed "never to land or in any other manner dispose of the Monies you shall collect, . . . but for the purpose of settling with the treasurer." Finally, as a means of helping to make sure that the new collector received toll from everyone liable to pay and turned over everything he collected to the company, the First Massachu- setts, which, like a number of other turnpikes, previously had required no detailed accounting on the part of its col- lectors, ordered Lombard to enter daily in his ledger the amount of toll collected for each kind of vehicle and to pay the directors every two months "all the money you shall have received, or be intitled to receive."81 Whether practices such as have been described were common among toll collectors on other roads and how much they may have cost turnpike companies in the way of revenue is impossible to say. Occasionally the conduct of gate keepers did come under suspicion, as when the Londonderry Turnpike appointed a committee in 1817 to investigate the activities 81Ibid. 146 of one of its collectors.82 Certainly opportunities ex- isted for collectors to practice dishonesty, at least on a small scale, without being detected. In addition to the First Massachusetts, only two companies - the Worcester and the Norfolk and Bristol - are known to have required at any time detailed accounting of the number of vehicles pass- ing and the amount of toll collected for vehicles of each type. Both of these were important roads with several toll- gates and revenues well above the average. Conceivably the opportunities for wrongdoing might have been greater than for employees of smaller companies. But the Norfolk and Bristol required detailed accounting only sporadically - in 1814 and again beginning in 1824 — while the extent to which the 83 Worcester Turnpike followed this policy is not known. Fur- thermore, although instances can be cited of a collector having served long and honorably at his job - Daniel Bing— ham of Unity, New Hampshire, tended a gate on the Second 8 New Hampshire Turnpike for sixteen years or more - there was a rapid turnover on some roads, further evidence that 82Londonderry Turnpike Corporation, Proprietors Records. 83Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records; E.B. Crane, "Boston and Worcester Turnpike," Collections of the Worcester Society of Antiquity, XVII (1901), 598. 8“Second New Hampshire Turnpike, Records of Gate No. 5 I 147 a toll collector's job, although it involved a consider- able amount of responsibility, was not sufficiently at- tractive to enable a company to employ and retain per- sons strongly interested in its well-being. Those come panies which farmed out their roads relieved themselves not only of the costs involved in collecting toll, but also of the problem of finding responsible toll collectors. WOOd, in his study of New England turnpikes, attrib- uted the poor earnings of many companies to the fact that there simply "was not enough business to make the invest— ment pay."85 It is true that traffic on even the busiest New England turnpikes would scarcely be considered heavy by the standards of the twentieth century. On the busiest day in May, 1824, toll was received at the Roxbury gate of the Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike for the passage of 152 one—and two-horse wagons, seventy-five teams and carts, ten saddle horses, and one coach. The largest number of chaises paying toll on any one day during the same month was forty-two.86 Assuming that toll was collected between six A.M. and nine P.M. (gates often were left open during the night), on the day of heaviest travel that month, toll- 85W00d, P. 35. 86Gate Keepers' Accounts, 1824, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. 4‘ / I I 148 paying traffic would have passed the gate at the rate of one vehicle or horse every three-and-three-quarters min— utes, a rate undoubtedly well above the average for New England turnpikes, for the Norfolk and Bristol was one of the region's most heavily traveled roads and the Rox- bury gate was that road's busiest tollgate. Because of their small capitalization and their abil- ity to hold down their expenses, some turnpike companies were able to earn at least small profits with a light volume of traffic. But revenues were small, often fluctuated from year to year, and few companies seem to have had any sus- tained growth in the amount of their toll receipts. The treausrer of the Norfolk and Bristol claimed in 1826 that travel on that road had nearly doubled in the past few years.87 But the Talcott Mountain Turnpike, although it continued to earn good profits, reached its peak in receipts in 1811, when it took in $3,653. Between 1812 and 1840 re— ceipts fluctuated between a high of $3,617 (1836) and a low of $2,200 (1817).88 Although the $1,070 taken in by the Ox- ford Turnpike in 1852 was $271 more than its receipts in 1844, it was only a few dollars more than the average for 87Nichols, to John Varnum, January 31, 1826, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. 88Connecticut, Treasurer, Turnpike Road Accounts. 149 tolls received in 1804 and 1805.89 Still other companies experienced a sharp drop in receipts after their first few years in business. Gate five of the Second New Hamp- shire Turnpike took in $1,090 in 1803, $427 in 1813, $414 90 in 1823, and $354 in 1824. Gate four of the Third New- Hampshire Turnpike had receipts of $618 in 1803, $270 in 1813, and $288 in 1815.91 Turnpikes thus often did suffer for lack of business. Why was this so? Bidwell, it has been mentioned, contended that they failed to improve the region's roads sufficiently to bring inland towns into a market economy. But as was suggested in Chapter I, Bidwell probably underestimated the amount of movement and trade between inland areas and the coast. Furthermore, the fact that some toll roads ini-- tially carried a heavier traffic load than they were able to sustain over the long run suggests that there may have been potential business that, for one reason or another, turnpikes were losing. Beginning in the late 1830's, competition from rail- roads proved disastrous to some toll roads. The Providence andIhwtucket and W0rcester turnpikes, for example, suc- 89 --- Osborn Papers; Appendix II. 90Second Neleampshire Turnpike, Records of Gate No. 5. 1 9 Third New Hampshire Turnpike, Record Book of Gate No. 4, 1802-15, New Hampshire Historical Society. 150 cumbed shortly after the building of the Boston and Provi- 92 dence and Boston and Worcester railroads. But some com- panies with no direct competition from the newer form of transporation managed to survive until well into the rail- road era, while others had experienced financial difficul- ties even earlier. Few canals were constructed in New England and even where they competed directly with turnpikes for revenue the latter were able to hold their own. The superintendent of the Middlesex Canal reported in 1825, "attempts have been made to stop the teaming [to Boston] from Concord, N.H., and to change the transportation from land to water car- riage, but as yet the encouragement held out has not been sufficient."93 A report to the same company a few years earlier stated that traders and othersliving in towns ad- jacent to the canal took advantage of its considerably lower freight rates and "generally have their property car- ried by water." However, those in the interior who must employ teams to go to the river and the land- ing places thereon often send their teams quite thro' to Boston; for the expense is less in proportion to the 92Rhode Island Archives, Reports to the General Assembly, X, 66; Crane, Collections of the Wercester Society of Antiquity, XVII, 597. 93Christopher Roberts, The Middlesex Canali 1793- 1860 (Cambridge, Mass., 1938), p.7148. 151 distance than it would be, were they to send them only to Concord. For instance, a teamster charges 30 dollars to carry & the same to bring a Ton from Boston to Bath in N.H., a distance of 160 miles - & charges from Bath to Concggd 20 Dolls. per Ton, distance 88 miles.“ Besides charging higher rates for short hauls than for transportating goods long distances, teamsters, in suc- cessfully competing with the canal, offered advantages in service which the latter could not match. There was not the extra charge for trucking goods from warehouse to canal boat that those who used the canal had to pay. Traders had considerably more certainty as to when a shipment would ar- rive when entrusted to a teamster and wagons, covered against the weather, offered greater protection from storm damage to goods than did boats. There was also less likelihood of damage if goods were loaded at the warehouse and unloaded again only at their destination than if they had to be trans— ferred first to a canal boat and then to another wagon at the landing.95 Thus although canals offered lower freight rates than was possible on land, other factors offset this advantage and permitted turnpikes to compete with them for revenue 1. 9“Ibid., p. 149. 95Ibid., pp. 149-151. 152 Competition from Other roads was more serious. In some instances two or more turnpikes competed for the same traffic. This was particularly true in western Connecticut and in New Hampshire, where several routes leading from the Connecticut River towards the seaboard paralleled one another. Probably of greater consequence, however, was competition from free, public roads. The Second New Hampshire Turnpike, built in a straight line over hills and avoiding villages, gradually lost traffic to newer and better-located roads, while in Massachusetts the Union Turnpike suffered a simi- lar fate.96 Shunpikes - roads that permitted travelers illeg- ally to bypass turnpike tollgates - were another form of public road which often cut into turnpike revenues. Al- though the opening of turnpikes sometimes resulted in the discontinuance of nearby roads no longer needed to serve either through traffic or local residents, many old roads remained open. Unlike the limited—access toll roads of the present day, nineteenth-century turnpikes were in- tersected in numerous places by public roads. As a means of protecting the public against abuses such as had been per- 96George A. Cochrane, History of the Town of Antrim, New Hampghire (Manchester, 1880), p. 85; David WIlder, The History of Leominster, [Mass.] (Fitchburg, 1853), pp. 65‘660 153 petrated by some English turnpike trusts, which were under few restrictions as to the number of tollgates they were permitted to erect, turnpike charters in all the New England states except New Hampshire usually spe— cified that tollgates were to be no closer than ten miles apart.97 In some instances companies were permitted to erect so-called half gates at five-mile intervals, where half the usual rate of toll could be collected.98 But the location of gates usually was regulated closely by legislatures, county courts, or turnpike commissioners so as to prevent companies from placing them where toll might be exacted from large numbers of persons traveling only short distances on a turnpike. In addition, politi- cal pressures were exerted to prevent the erection of toll- gates within the limits of towns such as East Hartford and Providence.99 97See, for example, Massachusetts, Private and Special Statutes (1805), III, 558. New Hampshire, unlike the other states, which usually permitted the collection of the full amount of toll for ten miles' travel, regard- less of the actual distance a traveler had covered on a toll road, adopted the policy of charging by the mile, which permitted greater flexibility in the location of gates. See, for example, New Hampshire, Laws, VI, 0. 13 (1796). 98Connecticut, Resolves and Private Laws (1837), 1206. 99Joseph 0. Goodwin, East Hartford: Its History and Traditions (Hartford, 1879), p. 188; wood, p. 288} 154 Such restrictions helped to protect the public against corporate abuses, although in at least one in- stance a Rhode Island toll gate was destroyed by persons resentful of its location.100 Turnpike companies, however, claimed that they lost large amounts of revenue to which they were legally entitled because of the ease with which traffic could enter one of the old roads to avoid passing a tollgate. Many turnpikes, built in a generally direct line, crossed the old, winding routes they were meant to replace in a number of places. The short Powder Mill Turn- pike crossed the same road in nine places, enabling traffic to use the turnpike and still avoid paying toll. "There are persons," the directors complained, "whose age and standing in society would cause better examples to be ex- pected from them who not only pass round the gate them- selves but encourage others."101 The Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike crossed one old road thirteen times in the towns of Wrentham and Walpole alone. The company's revenues in 1806 were about $7,000 and, according to Fisher Ames, "the lowest computation of the travel which does not pass our gates is $3000 and probably $4000 or 5000." 100Rhode Island, Archives, Charters, 1828-31, p. 12. 101Ibid. 155 It has been apprehended that the in- creased wealth of the country would make our labouring classes lavish. This apprehension may be quieted by the fact that scores of teamsters will go a mile round to save half the number of cents in toll, that they charge for a mile's draft, and persons who spare no expence to adorn their chaises and harnessiazwill do the like to avoid a gate. Twenty years later the same company still was experienc- ing such difficulties. Providence-bound stages would leave the turnpike by way of an old road fifty rods above one of the gates, returning to the toll road about one rod below the gate. "Other travellers see- ing the Stages avoid the gate with impunity follow the example to such a degree that [the collector] says that he fears that he shall not be able . . . to collect enough to pay his own wages."103 Where Shunpikes were not already in existence, towns sometimes built short stretches of road around a tollgate. Killingly, Connecticut, in 1810 was ordered to close a road upon the complaint of both the Pomfret and Killingly and the Woodstock and Thompson turnpike companies that "sd road . . . is totally unnecessary to accomodate Public Travelling & was 102President's Message, 1806, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. 103John w. Ames to Nichols, June 21, 1826, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. 156 laid as & for a shunpike only."loh In order to get rid of one such road, the Fourth New Hampshire Turnpike voted to permit Boscawen inhabitants free passage of the gate in that town.105 The Londonderry Turnpike took a differ- ent approach, voting to "make all necessary fences and ditches to prevent Travelers passing from the Turnpike "106 to the old road near Turky River Bridge. In Mass- achusetts, however, there was a law against impeding pass- age from a turnpike to a public road.107 And although penalties were provided for evading a toll gate and turn- pike companies sometimes were permitted to erect half gates or move their gates to more favorable locations, the prob— lem of Shunpikes never was solved. Nor could it be as long as it was possible to leave and return to a turnpike road without paying toll. For several reasons turnpikes carried a considerable amount of traffic which never paid toll. Shunpikes were 6 lOl‘HNindham County, Conn., Court Records, XXIII, 53, 1 7. 105Fourth New'Hampshire Turnpike Company Records, New Hampshire Historical Society. 6 10 Londonderry Turnpike Corporation, Proprietors Records. 107Massachusetts, Acts and Resolves. 1804: c' 125' sec. 7. 157 one reason. So was the basic theory behind the toll- road movement: that travelers should pay the cost of maintaining highways. Nearly every turnpike charter contained a provision similar to the following: No toll shall be collected at any gate, or persons going to or from public wor- ship in the same or next adjoining town, or to or from funerals, or to or from the performance of military duty, when by law obliged to do the same, or to or from grist-mills, or to or from town, elec- tor's or society's meetings, or E88ut their ordinary farming business. To have taxed such traffic would have been deemed unjust and also inexpedient, for even at best turnpikes were un- popular with many people. But at any rate, much of the local traffic which used a toll road did so without pay- ing toll to offset the cost of the damage it Caused. Be- cause of the usual distance between gates, persons often could travel several miles on a toll road and reach their destinations without coming near a gate. Furthermore, exemptions from toll often were claimed fraudulently. According to the historian of the Fourth New Hampshire Turnpike, "ungodly sinners evaded the payment of toll by claiming that they were passing . . . to or from 'public worship,' when they never intended to attend any- 108Connecticut, Resolves and Private Laws (1837). p. 1328. 158 thing of the kind in any sense known to the religious world."109 The directors of the First Massachusetts Turnpike warned one toll collector to "not let those pass free who for the purpose of evading payment, put on a bag, and carry it to mill and then proceed on the Turn- pike road out of town for other business — this trick has been frequently practiced at the Gates on other Turn- pike roads." The same directors also were under the im- pression "that numbers of teams frequently wait on each side of the gate, in the evening until after bed time, to take the advantage of passing without paying toll."110 The Straits Turnpike Company complained to the Connecticut legis- lature that farmers claimed exemption from toll even when they were carrying produce many miles to market on the grounds that they were going about their ordinary farming business.111 Neither in New England nor in other parts of the United States — nor, for that matter, in England, from which the idea of toll roads came to this country — were turnpikes often successful financially. Perhaps the com- parative lightness of nineteenth century traffic was in 109Shirley, Granite Monthly, Iv, 430. 110First Massachusetts Turnpike Corporation, Record Book. 111Connecticut, Archives, Travel, Series II, V01“ XVI. p. 55. 159 large part responsible and Bidwell undoubtedly was cor- rect in suggesting that the quality of these roads served to limit the amount of traffic they carried.112 In con— sidering the reasons for the financial problems of nine- teenth-century turnpikes, however, it is well to remember that significant reduction of the costs of highway trans- portation, when it finally did come, required much more efficient vehicles than were available during the nine- teenth century, as well as better roads. Given the types of vehicles then in use, transportation would have been expensive even on much better roads than most New England turnpikes were. Even modern turnpikes, it must also be remembered, lose considerable amounts of traffic to nearby public roads, as can be seen, for example, by the amount of truck- ing on those stretches of route U.S. 20 which parallel the Massachusetts Turnpike. were it not for their ability to control egress from their roads, present-day turnpike au- thorities probably would be even less successful financially than their corporate predecessors, as plagued as the latter were by the problem of Shunpikes. As it is, one of the most profitable twentieth-century toll roads, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which has relatively little competition from pub- 112For a discussion of construction standards, see Chapter VI. \ .Illclluilall i 160 lic highways, was expected in 1965 to earn a profit amount- ing to only about four per cent of the $600 million spent on construction since 1937.113 Considering the conditions under which nineteenth-century turnpike companies had to operate,with much of the traffic which used their roads and contributed to their wear either legally exempt from paying toll or able to avoid it by illegal means, perhaps the most remarkable thing about the turnpike era is that a few companies did quite well financially and that many others, by resorting to such expediences as farming out their roads in order to minimize costs, were able to stay in business for years, earning small profits from very limited revenues. As light as traffic was by present-day standards, it is conceivable that many companies would have done better if they had been able to collect toll from everyone who used their roads. 113New York Times, October 17, 1965. CHAPTER V DECLINE OF TURNPIKES AND RETURN TO PUBLIC RESPONSIBILITY Although many New England turnpike companies still were in business in 1840, the importance of toll roads as part of the region's highway system had de- clined considerably by that time. A number of turnpikes had become public highways. Most road building since about 1810, furthermore, had been at public expense. In- deed, even between 1796 and 1808 - the years of turnpike fever in New England - the building of public roads by no means had come to a halt. Towns continued to construct and alter local roads as needs arose and county courts continued to exercise their authority in ordering the opening of public ways. In New Hampshire, the Hills- borough County Court laid out twenty-five new roads be- tween 1796 and 1807, while in Berkshire County, Massachu— setts, the court laid out eighteen roads and ordered alter- 161 162 ations in nineteen others during the same years.1 Most of these county roads (laid out by the courts, but built at the towns' expense) were local in charter, while some served as feeders to turnpikes. But although probably the great majority of market roads constructed during the years of the turnpike movement were toll roads, a few were public highways, including one built between Hopkinton and Amherst, New Hampshire, another from Hancock to Milford, New Hampshire, a road through Sheffield and Egremont, Massachusetts, to the New Yerk line, and one between Pittsfield and Springfield, Massachusetts.2 Construction at public expense continued after the decline in turnpike building. Twenty-four new county roads were built in Hillsborough County and ten in Berkshire County between 1809 and 1821.3 The court of Windham County, Connecticut, which had laid out ten new roads be- tween 1796 and 1808, ordered the building of fifteen more during the succeeding twelve-year period.‘P 1Hillsborough County, N. H., Records of Roads, Courthouse, Nashua, N. H.; Berkshire County, General Sessions of the Peace. 2Ibid. 3Ibid. “Windham.County, Conn., Court Records. 163 Road-building activity increased considerably dur- ing the 1820's and 1830's, declining somewhat after 1840 as railroads began to dominate overland transportation. Thirty-three county roads were built and fifty-nine others altered in Berkshire County between 1822 and 1840. Hills- borough County ordered towns to build thirty-six roads and make alterations in twenty during the same period. In Wind- ham County, Vermont, the court, which prior to 1824 had re- ceived petitions for highways only occasionally, during the late twenties and thirties frequently laid out three or more roads a year and in 1836 ordered the building of nine.5 Many of the highways built during the twenties and thirties provided access to factory sites and to the new settlements arising around them. In 1829, for example, a Hillsborough County road was built through Dunstable to provide easier communications between the factory towns of Nashua, New Hampshire, and Lowell, Massachusetts. The following year Hillsborough and Merrimack counties laid out a road from the Londonderry Turnpike in Hooksett through Manchester and Nashua to the Massachusetts line in the 6 direction of Lowell. None of these newly important manu- 5Berkshire County, General Sessions of the Peace; Hillsborough County, Records of Roads; Windham County, Vt., Court Records, County Clerk's Office, Brattleboro, Vt. 6Hillsborough County, Records of Roads. 164 facturing towns was on the turnpike route between Concord and Boston. The growth of manufacturing in Southbridge, Mass— achusetts, and in the western part of Woodstock, Connecti- cut, led in 1834 to the rebuilding of what is now Connecti- cut route 169 from Woodstock to Norwich, paralleling, sev- eral miles to the westward, the principal toll road from the Massachusetts line to Norwich.7 A new public road was built from Plainfield, Connecticut, to the Rhode Island line in 1827 in response to a plea that the turnpike route through Scotland, Canterbury, Plainfield and Sterling "is quite hilly" and "the increasing prosperity and growth of the manufacturing, mercantile, and agricultural interest of those places, call for such improvements as may be made . . . in facilitating the intercourse with the town of Providence."8 Few turnpike charters were sought to meet needs pre- sented by a changing economy and shifting population; even fewer toll roads were built. Outside of Connecticut, New England states acquired seventeen new turnpikes during the 1820's (nine of them in Massachusetts) and only four during 7Windham County, Conn., Court Records, XXIX, 333. 8Ibid., XXVIII, 380. 165 the 1830's. Thirty were built in Connecticut during the two decades, the last two successful companies receiving charters in 1835.9 "Few turnpike corporations are now granted," wrote a New Hampshire editor in 1825, "the more eligible method having been found to be public roads made at the expense of the towns."10 To be more accurate, however, building at the expense of the towns had become once again the only practicable method. Investors no longer were interested in turnpikes and efforts to transfer part of the burden to the states or the federal government thus far had been largely unsuccessful. The towns, which traditionally had been the principal agents of the states in regard to high- way matters, of necessity were required again to assume burdens that for a time had been undertaken by private investors. Although many towns probably were more prosperous during the 1820's and 1830's than had been the case dur- ing the post-Revolutionary period, they nevertheless re- tained their traditional antipathy towards taxing them— selves for the benefit of outsiders. Agents for Lee, Massachusetts, in objecting to a proposed county road, 9Appendix I. lONew England Palladium, November 18, 1825. 166 stated that the town already had to support six such high- ways and pointed to "the injustice of increasing the Bur- dens upon the town . . . too great in proportion to the advantages which s'd town derives from the County roads."ll When Lanesboro, Massachusetts, refused to construct a road laid out by the Berkshire County Commissioners, the latter hired a contractor to build it at the town's expense, only to find after construction was completed that "in conse- quence of some evil disposed person or persons having moved the stakes on the location," much of the work had to be done again. As a result, efforts were made during the twenties and thirties to strengthen the highway laws of several New England states to give the counties greater control over the activities of the towns. Massachusetts, for example, in order both to strengthen the counties' authority and to introduce a greater degree of expertise in the handling of 1Berkshire County, General Sessions of the Peace, III, 30-31. 12Berkshire County, Commissioners Records, IV, 58. See also, John G. Metcalf (ed.), The Annals of the Town of Mendon, [Mass.] (Providence, 1880), pp. 520 ff; WillithIttle, The History of Warren, [N.H.] (Manchester, N.H., 1870), pp. 455-456; A.P. Marvin, History of the Town of dechendon, [Mass.] (Winchendon, 1868), pp. 241-242; Stearns, History of Ashburnham, p. 372. 167 highway affairs, in 1826 placed jurisdiction over inter- town highways in the hands of county boards, consisting of five commissioners who were appointed by the governor to serve five-year terms. The law was revised two years later to make county commissioners elected officials. Previously, whenever a petition for a public inter- town road had been presented to a Massachusetts county court, a committee of freeholders had been appointed to hold hearings, lay out the road, and assess damages. The court then had proceeded to consider the committee's re- port and opponents of the proposed road who had been un- able to influence the committee still could hope to per- suade the judges, who had neither heard all of the parties concerned nor viewed the route, to reject the.report. Need- less to say, neither the judges nor the committee members necessarily had any knowledge of road building. Under the new Massachusetts laws, the commissioners were to consider all petitions for intertown roads and would hold office long enough to acquire some skill in handling highway matters. It was they, furthermore, who ultimately decided whether a road actually was to be built, thus mak- ing it more difficult to block action. Under the 1828 law, 13Massachusetts, Laws, 1826, c. 171; Laws,1828, c. 77. 168 county commissioners also were empowered to set specifi- cations for roads they ordered built. The 1828 law, in addition, authorized commissioners to order that up to half the cost of roads "of general use and importance to the public" be paid out of the county treasury. The purpose was to ease the burdens on the towns. But in Berkshire County, at least, the result was an increase in the number of roads under construction and a heavier tax burden on both the county and a number of its towns. The county tax in 1825 had been $4,000; in 1828 it was $14,000, of which $10,000 was for the laying out and building of roads and for commissioners' sala- ries.14 There was a considerable amount of dissatisfac- tion and it was charged that the commissioners "have been too ready to listen to petitions for the location or al- teration of roads."15 Opponents failed to get the Massachusetts laws re- pealed, but were more successful in Vermont and New Hamp- shire, which had followed their neighbor's lead and created 1“Berkshire County, General Sessions of the Peace, III, 161. By way of contrast, in 1964 the county tax in Berkshire County was $1.2 million, of which only about twenty-two per cent was for highway construction and maintenance and for the county engineer's salary. l5Sun, March 26, 1829. 169 the offices of county road commissioners in 1827 and 1829 respectively.16 The Vermont law, which contained no pro- vision for appeal from the commissioners' decisions, was described by one legislator at the time of its passage as "too tyrannical in its features to set well on the people of Vermont, and . . . the evils it would create would cause its repeal after one year's time."17 Although opponents were unable to get the law repealed in 1828, they did suc- ceed in amending it to include the right of appeal to the courts. Opposition continued, however, until in 1831 juris- 18 diction was returned to the county courts. In New Hamp- shire a similar law was repealed only six months after its passage.19 When Maine established the office of county commis- sioners in 1831, a Cumberland County man expressed the hope that the state's towns would be relieved of the "oppressive 16Vermont, Acts, October 1827, c. 15; New Hampshire, Laws, IX, c. 117 (1828;297I7 New Hampshire in 1831 enacted legIslation making it the only New England state besides Massachusetts to permit county aid in the building of roads "of general public utility." New Hampshire, Laws, X, c. 107 (1831). 17Vermont Patriot and State Gazette (Montpelier), November 19, 1827. 18Vermont, Acts, October 1828, c. 11; Acts and Laws, October 1831, c. 4. 19NewHampshire, Laws, x, c. 54 (1829), c. 17 (1830) . 170 burden" the courts had placed upon them in laying out too many roads. "Ask almost any sturdy industrious yeoman in the county, if we have not too many roads through many towns, and he will shake his head and tell you, wg_dg." Interested parties, the writer charged, had found it easy to influence court committees by ply- ing them with "good dinners, savory puddings, and rich Wines." People wishing "to bring the travel by their own doors, their own taverns and shops" had been able to convince the court that "swamps, mud, rocks and stumps [were] green and beautiful, altogether forming a fine chance for a new road." The county commissioners, it was to be hoped, would be better able to distinguish the difference between public opinion and "the clamor of a few interested individuals." Place a few more roads on the people in [Cumberland] county, and they must lay down the furrow.. . . Their labor and money are expended on such a multi- plicity of highways, that it is next to impossible to keep them safe and CEB- venient for the travelling public. Whatever public opinion in regard to the matter ac- tually was - and it is probable that a large segment of 2OEastern Argus (Portland), June 21, 1831. 171 the population was opposed to spending money for roads - the Cumberland County Commissioners began opening highways at a greater rate than the court had. During its last full year of jurisdiction (1830), the Cumberland County Court had laid out three new roads; the commissioners, during their first full year (1832), ordered the build- ing of six.21 In Maine, however, as in Massachusetts, county commissioners retained their powers and today still have jurisdiction over certain roads. Laws are subject to abuse and certainly this was true of the public highway laws of the New England states. Selfish interests undoubtedly succeeded more than once in getting roads built at public expense which were justified by no real need.22 Furthermore, in permitting a return to the system of local responsibility, legislators did nothing to solve the problem of achieving an equitable division of the costs of construction and maintenance. Towns had to pay most of the cost, but it was often outsiders who wanted and needed intertown roads. It is thus not surprising that many complaints were raised during the road-building period 21Cumberland County, Commissioners Records, Commis— sioners Office, Portland. 22Cf., Benjamin Hobart, History of the Town of Abington (Abington, Mass., 1866), pp. 11-13. 172 of the 1820's and 1830's. In strengthening the authority of the counties, however, the legislatures of four New England states23 took what must have seemed to observant persons a nec- essary step in order to make a system of laws based on local responsibility more workable. Towns long since had proved recalcitrant in performing their duties and the growth of travel and transporation long since had made roads more than just a local problem. The new laws were neither perfect nor pOpular. They were, however, a step towards the centralization of authority and employment of expert knowledge which in our day have helped to make good roads possible. At the same time that these developments were oc- curring, New England's turnpikes, which never had lacked opponents, were coming increasingly under attack. Trans— portation interests were particularly resentful of them as relics of a byegone era, which had outlived whatever usefulness they once might have had and now stood in the way of progress by taxing those who used the roads. "In the early days of this country," according to a petition to the New Hampshire legislature in 1834, 23Connecticut retained its old laws, under which county courts retained jurisdiction in highway matters, while in Rhode Island only the towns and the legislature had authority to order the building of roads. 173 such corporations tended greatly to facilitate the Public travel; yet, when towns became sufficiently weal- thy to support Free Roads, Turnpikes became a grievance to the inthitants, and a burden to the traveler. The Massachusetts legislature was requested in 1831 to revoke the charter of the Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike on the pretext that the location of tollhouses next to the road constituted an encroachment on the right-of-way and a violation of a charter provision that the road was to be at least four rods wide in all places. Had this petition been granted, most turnpikes in the state simi- larly could have been deprived of their charters.25 An- other group of New Hampshire petitioners in 1830 contended "that the publick good requires that the main Roads lead- ing from the interior and agricultural parts of the country to the great market towns of the Seaboard should be free."26 In an act aimed at turnpikes, New Hampshire in 1838 extended to county courts and town selectmen the power of eminent do- main over the property of a corporation. Thus a turnpike road could be condemned and taken over as a public highway 2“New Hampshire, Legislative Papers, Petition of Fitzwilliam and Richmond Inhabitants, 1834. ‘ 2 5John W. Ames to B. R. Nichols, April 29, 1831, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. 26NewiHampshire, Legislative Papers, Petition of Christopher Thom et a1, 1830. 174 in the same way as other private property.27 By this time many turnpike companies had been weak- ened by long years of low profits and were losing traffic to recently built public roads. A few companies, to be sure, prospered during the twenties and thirties. The Norfolk and Bristol, for example, enjoyed some of its best earnings. Manufacturers chose to send increasingly large quantities of goods high in value in proportion to their weight by land between Boston and Providence instead of shipping them by water around Cape Cod.28 Although the company's earnings never were sufficient to return the large investment in its road, Fisher Ames at last had been proven correct in his prediction of 1806 that 27NewHampshire, Laws, June 1838, c. 179. Massachu- setts many years earlier had passed a law providing that the state could dissolve a turnpike corporation after twenty years, regardless of earnings. Massachusetts, Acts and Resolves, 1804, c. 125, sec. 11. Connecticut in 1854 granted towns the right to take over and maintain a turn- pike as a free road. Connecticut, Statutes (1854), Title XXIV, c. 4, "In addition, 1854," secs. 1-67' Probably most turnpike franchises, however, eventually were relinquished voluntarily. 28Massachusetts, Report of the Board of Commissioners of Internal Improvements in Relation to the Building of a Railway from Boston to ProvidenceI1828), pp. 43-44. 175 our road is one of the great thoro- fares of the continent and must in- crease with the increase of our cit- ies. And as soon as manufacturing towns rise up, which on the cessa- tion of the great profits of trade they certainly will, the increase of tol will be augmented surpris- ingly. Some other toll roads undoubtedly also benefited from proximity to rising manufacturing towns. The newly important village of Willimantic, Connecticut, was made more accessible to the outside world in 1828 by the build- ing of a short public road to intersect with the Columbia 30 But most toll roads had been built prior to Turnpike. the growth of manufacturing to carry agricultural produce to market; it was largely coincidence if they also happened to pass near the waterpower sites where factories later were located. New roads had to be built to many such sites and most of them were public highways. Thus even before the coming of railroads, turnpikes, which had suited the requirements of the New England economy at the turn of the century, were coming to have less relevance to the needs of the 1820's and 1830's and were losing ground to newer public highways. Although a number of companies held 29President's Message, 1806, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. 30Windham County, Conn., Court Records, XXVIII, 433. 176 tenaciously to their franchises, seeking to earn small profits for as long a time as possible, their inability to prevent the building first of rival public highways and later of railroads portended an end that eventually would have come to most of them even without laws such as that enacted by New Hampshire. This was hardly the result some early opponents of the toll-road movement had anticipated. According to Dwight, some Rhode Islanders, including members of‘ the legislature, originally considered turnpikes an ob- noxious offshoot of the British monarchical system, which, like an established church, forced the people to support and perpetuate a privileged class. They believed "free born Rhode—Islanders ought never to submit to be priest- ridden, nor to pay for the privilege of travelling on the highway."31 One resident of that state told the traveler Henry Fearon in 1817 that turnpikes, "'I guess, are un- popular in this State: we think, I guess, that they are invasions of our liberties.”32 A writer in a Portland paper in 1805 wondered what chance a "private citizen . . . would stand in.a diSpute with an incorporated body of men." 3lDwight, II, 6-7. 32Henry B. Fearon, Sketches of America (London, 1819), p. 96. 177 Another correspondent to the same paper warned, "your every privilege [will be] taken away from you by IN- CORPORATED FEDERALISM."33 Had there been any basis for such fears? English turnpike trusts usually had been established for limited periods of time, but an almost universal inability to pay off their bonds had resulted in their perpetuation by means of successive acts. Receipts sometimes had been appropriated for the payment of bondholders, rather than for repairs, and parishes in some cases had been required to continue bearing the cost of maintenance. The large number of toll gates on some English roads occasionally had been a cause of rioting. Although most toll roads in New England and in other parts of the United States were operated by corpo- rations, these, like the turnpike trusts in England, were chartered to perform a public service. Acts of incorpora- tion contained a number of stipulations intended to insure the performance of that servicd and to prevent abuses of 33Eastern Argus, August 15, 1805, May 2, 1806. Prominent New England Republicans, however, including Levi Lincoln, Sr., William King, and Ephraim Kirby, were subscribers to turnpike stock. 3“Pratt, pp. 319 ff; Gregory, pp. 184 ff. 178 the privilege of collecting toll. Thus it was usually the legislatures or county courts, rather than the companies themselves, which laid out turnpike routes and awarded damages to property owners. By exercising the power of eminent domain, the public assured itself of a strong voice in determining the location of toll roads and thus erected a barrier against abuses such as later occurred when railroads were given considerable freedom in deter- 35 mining their routes. The one notable exception to this in New England occurred in New Hampshire, where turnpike companies were permitted to lay out their own routes, prop- erty owners having the right to appeal damage awards to the courts. The location of toll roads in that state often was determined by the interplay of competing interests, share- holders sometimes threatening to withdraw their support if a certain route was not followed or offering to pay the ex- pense of altering the route.3 35Massachusetts, Senate Document No. 64 (l835),pp.5-6. 36See, for example, Fourth New Hampshire Turnpike Records. A Hopkinton, New Hampshire, man wrote the direc- tors of the Union Turnpike in 1804: "I beg your honors as I am a very Sick man and can not come to see you that you wold consider the matter you are upon and not bleve the smothe tongue people who are makeing you bleve that they are . . . giveing the oners of the road eleven hundred Dollars as a present when at the Same time they are takin thousands of Dollars in business of making the road. I pray your honors that you wold reconsider from Heneker mettinghouse to hopkintonand go Down by Mr. Silvers. . . . It can be made thousands of Dollars cheaper and . . . bet- ter." Union Turnpike Papers, New Hampshire Historical Society 179 A turnpike company usually was required to spend a minimum amount of money on its road before it could be- gin to collect toll. Connecticut, to prevent overcapitali- zation, also usually stipulated the maximum amount to be spent. If a corporation failed to keep its road in repair, the gates could be ordered opened by the courts. Connecti- cut and Vermont appointed commissioners to inspect toll roads. Nearly every charter contained a provision stating the maximum earnings to which a company was entitled and re- quiring periodic submission of financial statements. There often was a limit on the amount of land a company could own in addition to its right—of-way. Legislatures or courts usually determined the location of tollgates and the states set toll rates and required companies to display prominently at their gates the rate of toll for each type of vehicle. There also were penalties for overcharging or unreasonably delaying the progress of travelers.37 Charter provisions, however, sometimes were difficult to enforce. The Green Mountain Turnpike Company three times 37For charter provisions, see Connecticut, Resolves and Private Laws (1837), II; Massachusetts, Private and Special Statutes (1805), II, III; New Hampshire, Laws, VI-X; Rhode Island, Acts and Resolves, l79h-l838; Vermont, Acts and Resolves, 1796;1835. 180 evaded conviction for not keeping its road in proper re- pair by failing to appear in court to answer the indict- ment. It finally was convicted of contempt of court, but escaped with a fine of one dollar.38 Although turnpikes often were in poor repair, it sometimes was months before a court could meet and act upon a complaint; in the mean- time, the company was free to continue collecting toll.39 One might wonder, moreover, how well the public's interest would have been protected if turnpikes had proved themselves a lucrative form of investment. Edward Kendall, an English traveler, claimed to have been told by "an estab- lished idol of the people" in 1807 that every member of the Massachusetts legislature "has some interest in a lottery, a bank, a bridge, a road or a canal, or depends upon others who have; and his care, therefore, is to serve, and to be served.”0 While this may have been an exaggeration, many shareholders in turnpike companies were involved directly in politics or were men of wealth and political influence. Sometimes influential lawmakers served as legislative agents 38Windham County, Vt., Court Records, VI, 130. 39Berkshire County, General Sessions of the Peace, I, 379-389; Rhode Island, Archives, Petitions to the General Assembly, XLI, 28. “OKendaII, III, 228. 181 for turnpikes.Al The Connecticut legislature in 1808 permitted the Talcott Mountain Turnpike to rebuild part of its road, increasing its capitalization by almost forty per cent and hence reducing its rate of profits at a time when earnings were approaching the limit imposed under its charter.“2 Had it proved necessary, tactics such as this might well have been used to prevent other charters from expiring. By the 1830's, few charters having been granted for more than two decades, it is probable that turnpike interests were less well represented in state legislatures than they once had been. But if acts of incorporation had continued to be sought during those years and if profits had been high, it is conceivable that toll-road interests might have had a greater degree of success in hindering railroad development. On the whole, however, abuses were more potential than real. The public was by no means at the mercy of vested interests. Turnpike officers, in fact, often felt that the opposite was true. Fully aware of the effect that Shunpikes, for example, might have on their business, they sought to 41State of Connecticut, Public Records, VIII, n., h57-h58. A2Connecticut, Treasurer, Turnpike Road Accounts. 182 avoid giving cause for complaint. Fisher Ames refused to prosecute property owners who had forbidden his surveyors "to cross their Land to Lay out any Road at the peril of [their] lives," because "it would create difficulties in the adjustment between the owners of the Land & the Turn— pike Company.“3 Although initially there was a great deal of opposition to the Norfolk and Bristol, Ames hoped that time would "sooth the angry prejudices that obstructed the progress of our act of incorporation."up The directors of the company, complaining about a shunpike to the select- men of Roxbury in lSOh, wrote, As we expected time and truth would allay the irritations which attended the passage of the Turnpike Act, we thought it our prudence, and it no less comported with our intentions, to be not only just, inoffensive and cautious in our transactions, but to be forbearing and even slow in assert- ing our just rights. You, gentlemen, need not call for testimony of our moderation, for you can give it. We have paid liberally, if not extrava- gantly. we have extorted nothing, threatened no one, vexed no one with suits. we have relied and we trust not in vain, that if we gave no provocation and took none, the most ABWilliam Taylor to James Richardson, August 12, 1817, Norfolk and BristolTurnpike Company Records. 44President's Message, 1806, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. 183 stubborn errors would at length yield, the most virulent passions relent: and that all men, not even excepting those who were at first the most inflamed against our undertaking would at last agree in pronouncing it an important acquisition to the public though of distant and zgubtful profit to the adventurers. The directors of the First Massachusetts Turnpike, al- though their charter did not specifically exempt persons having business at mills from paying toll, did "not wish to embarrass people living in the neighborhood of the gate in their course to mill and who travel but a very small distance on the Turnpike road." They authorized the col- lector to let such persons pass free, provided he could be Tully satisfied of their intentions.“+6 It is doubtful, moreover, that fear of their power was the real cause of much hostility towards turnpikes. Criticism usually involved specific grievances against specific companies. Connecticut towns often objected to being required to pay property damages for turnpike rights- #7 of—way. Property owners frequently were dissatisfied hsTurnpike Directors to Roxbury Selectmen, 1804, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. héFirst Massachusetts Turnpike Corporation, Record Book. Connecticut, Archives, Travel, Series II, Vol. IX, p. 56; Vol. XI, p. 33; Vol. XII, pp. 9—10. 18h with damage awards and occasionally, as in the case of persons living along the route of the Norfolk and Bristol, resorted to violence. Ames, however, claimed that the actual reason for "rage" against that company in Roxbury was that the town itself unsuccessfully had sought per- mission to erect a tollgate on the old road between Boston L8 The loca- and Providence, which ran through its center. tion of tollgates was another source of irritation}P9 So was the failure of some turnpike companies to keep their roads in repair. A resident of Keene, New Hampshire, not surprisingly "said some hard words" to a toll collector on the Third New Hampshire Turnpike when the latter demanded payment for his having passed the gate several months ear— lier. The previous passage had occurred during a snowstorm and he claimed he had "found the gate open, no person there, and had to break the road the whole way to Keene through snow drifts from two to six feet deep."50 The town of Lyme, Connecticut, however, voted not to oppose the chartering of the New London and Lyme Turnpike hBPresident's Message, 1806, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. hgconnecticut, Archives, Travel, Series II, Vol. IX, p. 24; Rhode Island, Archives, Charters, 1800-05, Remon- strance against Turnpike from Providence to Connecticut line, 1803. 50James Wilson to John Preston, June 10, 1818, Third New Hampshire Turnpike Papers. 185 Company provided it would pay all property damages.5l Ashburnham, Massachusetts, opposed the opening of a proposed county road in 1802 and offered to contribute $1,000 in the event that a turnpike company would take over the route and leave the town at no further expense.52 Pelham, Massachusetts, voted to help maintain the Sixth Massachusetts Turnpike on the condition that the company remove its gate from that town.53 What New Englanders most resented about turnpikes undoubtedly was the impingement upon their pocket books in the form of tolls. Opposition frequently was abandoned once favorable concessions had been secured from toll-road companies. Despite frequently stated preferences for "free" roads, furthermore, opposition also was raised in many in- stances when it actually came to paying the cost of such roads. This, too, in many cases was rationalized as a defense of liberty. By 1840 highways had become once again largely a public responsibility. Toll roads gradually disappeared. Yet the importance of the turnpike era was considerably 51Connecticut, Archives, Travel, Series II, Vol. XIV, p. 9. 528tearns, History of Ashburnham, pp. 378-379. 53Donald W} Howe, Quabbin: The Lost Valley (Ware, Mass., 1951), p. 192. 186 greater than is suggested by its relatively short dura- tion or by the poor earnings of many companies. With the coming of toll roads had come also the first wide— spread improvement of New England's roads, public as well as private. "The roads of our Country are rapidly progressing to extensive improvement," a Vermont editor observed in 1800.5h "A Gentleman of observation . . . gives it as his opinion, that, Churches, School—Houses and Roads, and other public accommodations, in the country generally, were never before in so good a condition as at the present time," the Pittsfield_§un informed its readers in 1802.55 William Bentley wrote in 180h, "Banks & Turn- pikes have greatly aided the prosperity of the Commerce & agriculture of our Country. . . . It is impossible to visit at the smallest distance & not see the effect upon our roads, of the Turnpiking systems."56 Lieutenant Gov- ernor Levi Lincoln, Sr., assessing the results of more than a decade of turnpike building in Massachusetts, pre- dicted in 1809 that "most of our great [roads] are now 5“Green Mountain Patriot, December 25, 1800. 5SSun., January 11, 1802. 56Diaryof William Bentley, III, 71. 187 in such convenient and unalterable directions, as will probably command an increasing travel for centuries to come."57 Turnpike builders, as will be seen in Chapter VI, popularized some errors in construction that hindered progress for years. And it took considerably less time than Lincoln had supposed to discover that many roads built during the turnpike era were located poorly. But New Englanders recognized the new highways as a distinct improvement over what they had had previously and imitated turnpike builders' methods in improving many of the roads that remained under public control. Reverend Thomas Rob- bins in 1800 found the inhabitants of Danbury, Connecticut, "much engaged in making roads after the manner of turn- pikes."58 Bentley wrote in 1803 that "the spirit for improvements in roads is general & very happy for our country."59 Daniel Webster recalled in later years that during the early nineteenth century "there was no road from river to river [in New Hampshire] for a carriage fit 57Massachusetts, Resolves of the General Court, 1809, p. 230. 58Tarbox, I, 116. 59Diary of William Bentley, III, 36. 188 for the conveyance of persons," but turnpikes such as the Fourth New Hampshire, of which he had been an early advocate, had helped to change this. Perhaps the most valuable result of making these and other turnpike roads was the diffusion of knowledge upon road-making among the people; for in a few years afterward, great numbers of the people went to church, to elec- toral and other meetings, in chaises 60 and wagons, over very tolerable roads. An inhabitant of Goshen, Connecticut, replying in 1812 to a circular letter from the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, wrote, The common roads in this town have for the last ten years been in a state of rapid improvement. This has been owing partly, to the runningof two turnpike roads through the town, crossing each other at the meeting house, which, not only throws more labour on the common roads but gives us at the same time a precedent; and partly to the inventiogl of the ox scraper, now in common use. By awakening public interest in better roads and provid— ing models of such roads, the turnpike movement had an influence that continued to be felt long after the de- cline of corporate ownership of New England highways. 60The Works of Daniel Webster (Boston, 1851), II, [+0 9"th 0 61Thompson R. Harlow (ed.), Connecticut Towns: Goshen in 1812 (Hartford, l9h9), p. 15. CHAPTER VI CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTTNANCE "Finished work on the new street. The Selectman came and surveyed it & laid it out in form. The Light Infantry Company,under arms, . . . marched thro it, halted on the bridge, and discharged three vollies. The Gentle— men of the Street prepared a large tub and two pails full of excellent punch, and the Selectmen, at the request of those present and in conformity to their own proposal, named the street Thomas street. The Infantry Company were refreshed with as much punch as they chose to drink and all present. Three Cheers were given, and the Company marched off."1 The writer was Isaiah Thomas, who,four years earlier (1802), had retired from his successful publishing business. Among the many undertakings of his busy retirement years was the building of Thomas Street through land he owned in what is now downtown Worcester. Thomas also contracted with the town to build a bridge at Lincoln Square, was active in the promotion and in surveying the route of the WCrcester Turn- 1Hill, I, 25-26. 189 190 pike, and served for a number of years as a director of that company.2 The United States produced few trained civil engi- neers prior to l8h0. The majority of engineers acquired their skills under an apprenticeship system, but were in- volved most commonly in canal and railroad—building proj- ects.3 Virginia in 1816 established a board of public works, headed by an engineer, to administer funds the state invested in turnpike companies and to provide advice to un- trained contractors}+ Perhaps the nearest approach to such a body as this in New England,however was the county commis- sioners in Massachusetts, who, beginning in 1828, made a practice of drawing up detailed specifications for roads they ordered the towns to make. But county commissioners seldom were engineers. Some New Englanders seem to have made a business of road building, traveling from town to town or even from one state to another to practice their trade. Samuel Bailey, a Connecticut man, contracted to build both the First Massachu— setts Turnpike and the Hartford and New Haven Turnpike, al- 2Ibid., pp. 3, 110. 3Daniel H. Calhoun, The American Civil Engineer: Origins and Conflict (Cambridge, Mass.,l960), p. 37. “Hunter, Technology and Culture, IV, 178. 191 though he was dismissed from the latter job and replaced as contractor by Senator James Hillhouse, one of the prin- cipal stockholders.5 By at least the 1820's, towns were beginning to seek bids from outside "Turnpike Makers" for the building of some of their principal roads.6 Nathaniel Hawthorne witnessed the bidding for a county-road contract in North Adams, Massachusetts, in 1837 and noted that twenty or thirty persons were present, some having come "from a dis- tance."7 Their wealth and social status notwithstanding, however, it was men such as Isaiah Thomas and James Hillhouse, rather than engineers or professional contractors, who were typical of New England road builders during the early nineteenth cen- tury. In an economy in which occupational specialization was incompletely developed, the typical roadbuilder was a farmer or storekeeper, or even a lawyer or retired publisher, who occasionally became involved in a construction project in his own locality or in the building of a turnpike in which he had a financial interest. Public roads, which were the responsibility of the towns, were particularly likely to be 5Dwight to Ammidon, March 10, 1800, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records; Hartford and New Haven Turnpike Company Records. 6Massachusetts Spy, May 5, 182A; March 2a, 1830; June 2, 1830; New Hampshire Sentinel, May 19, 1836. 7Randall Stewart (ed.), The American Notebooks by Nathaniel Hawthorne (New Haven, 1932}, p. 55. 192 constructed by local amateurs. Frequently such roads were built under the same system by which they were repaired - by local inhabitants working out their highway taxes under the supervision of elected surveyors of highways.8 Alter- natively, petitioners for a road might agree to build it themselves or a town might enter into a contract with a local individual to do it.9 Such persons may have learned something about road building from reading. In England, beginning in the late eighteenth century, the Board of Agriculture published a number of papers on the subject and in his Rural Economy, published in 1806, S. W. Johnson, an American, included a section on turnpike building, based on British practices.lO American periodicals such as American Farmer, The Cultivator, The Farmer's Monthly Visitor, and even the American Railroad Journal published reviews of books by British engineers and presented practical advice from.American contributors. 8Andover, N.H., Town Records, New Hampshire Historical Society, II, 103-113; III, 39; Edward P. Hamilton, A History of Milton, [Mass.] (Milton, 1957), p. 172. 9Hartland, Vt., Papers, Vermont Historical Society; Daybook of Silas Ball, 01d Sturbridge Village Library; Brook- field, Mass., Selectmen's Records, Quabaug Historical Society, West Brookfield; Richard W'. Musgrove, History of the Town of Bristol, Grafton County, New Hampshire (Bristol, l90h), 122:123,128. 10S. W. Johnson, Rural Economy (New Brunswick, N.J., 1806), pp. 198- 238. (V 193 "we have derived many of our improvements from Great Britain," an American editor wrote, "and from no country can we draw more useful teachings, in regard to road making, than from her."11 Much of what was written abroad, however, was inapplicable to American needs. For example, John L. McAdam's method of keeping a roadbed dry by covering it with an impene- trable layer of interlocking, broken stones provided English builders with a less expensive alternative to hand-laid stone foundations. But few roads of the latter type ever were built in New England, and prior to Eli Whitney Blake's invention in 1858 of a stone crusher that replaced the process of breaking stones by hand with a hammer, macadamizing also was expensive; Blake claimed that at the time he began experiments leading towards his invention (1851), "'there were not a dozen miles of macadam road in all the New England states.'"12 In 1836 the town of Worcester appointed a committee tolook into the possibility of macadamizing streets in the center district. The committee learned that Boston had found it "'the most expensive mode of maintaining the streets, of any which the City has ever adOpted,'" and had not tried the process on a new street for more than ten years. The committee reported "the cost alone, without regard to any other consideration llThe Cultivator, III (1836), 15h. 12John L. McAdam, Remarks on the Present System of Road Making(London, 1820); Charles Singer et al (eds.), A History of Technology (Oxford, 1958), IV, 532; New Haven Colony Historical Society Papers, VIII (l9lh), A5. 194 is a sufficient objection to its adoption"; the town voted to postpone the matter indefinitely.13 An American, John S. Williams, in 1833 Proposed to publish the type of book most needed in this country on the subject of road making: "One that might enable any persons with a tolerable education, by close application, to make a first rate road, or to improve in the best man- 1h ner those already made." But probably the first practi- cal treatise of real merit to be written by an American was William M. Gillespie's A.Hanual of the Principles and Practice of Road-Making, which first appeared in 18h? and went through a number of editions. New England road builders probably acquired most of their knowledge of the subject by observing and doing. The turnpike projects of the early years of the century presented ample opportunity to observe construction methods.15 Thou— sands of New Englanders acquired experience in working on these projects. The Salem Turnpike hired considerably more than one hundred men as laborers, while the Newburyport and Boston hired three hundred to work on the section between Malden and Peabody's Mills alone.16 Furthermore, most New 13Worcester Town Records, 1833-1848, ed. Franklin P. Rice (Worcester, 1895), pp. 38L-385. l("Mechanics Magazine, I (1833), 181-182. 15Diary of William Bentley, III, 31. 16;p;g.; Long, Topsfield Historical Collections, XI, 7. 195 England men had had the experience of working out highway taxes on the roads in their towns. Construction of a road could begin only after the requisite legal steps had been taken to have it declared a highway. Whether the road was to be a turnpike or a pub- lic highway, the first step was to submit a petition to town selectmen, a county court, or a state legislature, de- pending upon which had jurisdiction. Whether a town, county, or state was involved, the procedures followed were roughly the same. Upon the submission of a petition to a county court, for example, the selectmen of the towns in which it was pro— posed that a road be built were notified to appear at the next session to present whatever objections the towns might have.17 If they failed to appear, or if the judges deemed their objec- tions insufficient, the court would appoint a committee of freeholders from towns not affected by the proposed road to decide whether there was a need for it. The committee, hav- ing placed an advance notice of the time, place, and purpose of their meeting in a local newspaper or on the town sign- post, would hear the interested parties and view the proposed route. 17For the powers of county courts, see Connecticut, Public Statute Laws Compiled (1808), Title LXXXVI, c. 1, secs. 11-12, 1h, 16; Massachusetts, Acts and Resolves 1786, c. 66; NewIHampshire, Laws, V, c. 36 (1791); Vermont, Laws, Revised (1808), c. 45, sec. 2. 196 If they decided there was a need and that it was practicable to build a road, the committee would have the route surveyed and would lay out the line of the road "ac- cording to their best skill and judgment with most conven- ience to the public, and least damage to private property."18 In Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, a typical surveying party included the three-man court committee, a surveyor, two chainmen, a target man, an axeman, and three witnesses. With the aid of a compass or other sighting instru- ment and a Gunter's chain, the route would be marked out and recorded in terms of distances, points of the compass, and prominent landmarks. Thus the survey of a road in Hartland, Vermont, in 178A began at "a beach tree about fifteen rods East of Mr. Silas Gallops House, Thence N A [degrees] East 20 " The 55 rods, Thence N 28 [degrees] East #0 rods . . . . purpose of the recorded survey was to provide a detailed and permanent record of the road, without which legal diffi- culties sometimes arose.21 The use of the compass for this purpose had become widespread by the late eighteenth century, 18Connecticut, Public Statute Laws, Compiled (1808), (1808), Title LXXXVI, c. 1, sec. 11. 19Hillsborough County, Records of Roads, I, 295. 20Hartland, Vt., Papers. 21Rhode Island, Archives, Petitions to the General Assembly, XXXVII, 102. 197 Vermont requiring it by law in 1781, because many surveys previously had been accepted which "did not describe the points of compass; and . . . contentions and animosities have and likely will arise . . . respecting the legality of such surveys."22 Unfortunately, surveying methods continued to leave ample room for legal difficulties. Mainein 1828 enacted a law requiring towns to erect permanent stone posts at every angle of county highways,23 but most New England roads were surveyed and recorded in terms of temporary landmarks and the time sometimes came when a beech tree had disappeared or no one was sure where Mr. Silas Gallop's house had been. Furthermore, in later years, when the need arose to re-estab- lish the line of a highway by reference to the original sur- vey,. it often proved impossible to verify the compass direc— tions. A compass points towards the magnetic north pole, but surveyors seldom bothered to note whether angles had been recorded in relation to the magnetic meridian or had been corrected in terms of true north. A civil engineer pointed out in 1870 that in Massachusetts 22Vermont State Papers: Being a Collection of Records and Documents and the Laws 1779 to 17867TMiddle— bury, 1823), pp. 422-h23. 23Maine, Laws, III (1831), c. 199, sec. 1. 198 the needle . . . has never, so far as is known, pointed within five degrees of north; and it is constantly changing at irregular dates, varying from one to six months each year; and the extreme dif- ference of variation at the same time in different parts of the state is about three degrees. So that the record of one place may not answer for another ten .miles distant. The result was "great uncertainty in retracing many old surveys Where the corners are gone."zh The laying out of a road by a legislative or court committee, county commissioners, or town selectmen often had even more immediate consequences than this. A road's usefulness depended in large part on the skill of these per- sons in determining its route, and complaints that they had done their work poorly,which often were heard during the eighteenth century, continued to be voiced during the nine- teenth. Petitioners in 1816 claimed that a recently sur— veyed Berkshire County road in Great Barrington "is unnec- essarily circuitous, uneven and over ground where it will be almost impossible to make a road."25 Even county com- missioners, who had considerable experience in laying out roads, sometimes showed a want of good judgment in their proceedings. Between 1836 and 1838 the Berkshire County 2“Massachusetts, Board of Agriculture, Seventeenth Annual Report (1870), p. 266. See also, Belknap, III, 57. 25Berkshire County, General Sessions of the Peace, II, 229. 199 Commissioners were obliged to discontinue four roads they recently had surveyed which proved impracticable to build.26 Lack of skill on the part of those empowered to sur- vey highway routes was one source of difficulty; a prefer- ence for a straight road rather than a level one was another. "A level straight road is decidedly the best," wrote S. DeWitt Bloodgood in 1838.27 But in New England and much of the rest of the East, it often would have been prohibi- tively expensive to build straight roads that were also relatively level. The earliest roads had been both cir- cuitous and hilly and in their efforts to improve them New Englanders were conscious of the importance of both factors. As early as 1724 the Connecticut General Assembly voted "that a high Road shall be laid out and marked on ye most Conven- ient ground and Straightest Course from Hartford towards Boston."28 But, as S. W. Johnson put it — and most of his contemporaries probably would have agreed - The shortest line is a straight one, and cannot be rivalled, and as such, merits the first consideration. The next is how level it can be made. . . . An ele- vation of three degrees is quite enough 26 Berkshire County, Commissioners Records. 278. DeWitt Bloodgood, A Treatise on Roads (Albany, 1838) p P0 1330 28Connecticut, Archives, Travel, Series I, Vol. I, p. 7. 200 for most places; yet a line may be more adviseable that may necessarily require, in partggular places, a much greater ele- vation. Americans also were aware that the Romans had built 30 and during their great roads in a generally direct line the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries under the influence of the classical revival, straighteness in roads and streets was considered a mark of elegance and beauty. Fisher Ames, seeking subscribers to the stock of the Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike, pointed out that the road "will be nearly straight - in some places four, in others nearly five miles perfectily strait" for the information of "those who pay regard to the beauty as well as the useful- 31 Timothy Dwight found Northamp- ness of such undertakings." ton, Massachusetts, which had been laid out during the seven- teenth century,'a.very interesting object to the eye," but was not pleased with the irregularity of its streets, which presented "no very distant resemblance to the claws of a 29s. W. Johnson, Rural Economy, p. 200. 30Bloodgood, p. 33; William Jackson, A Lecture on Rail Roads, Delivered January l2pgl829, before the Mass- achusetts Charitable Mechanic Assocation (Boston, l829),p.6. 31Ames, Draft of Letter to Prospective Investors, 1802, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. 201 crab." He found the layout of Portland, the streets of which were at almost right angles to one another, more to his taste, objecting only that "like those of most other towns in this country, [Portland's streets] are destitute of that exact regularity [italics mine], both in their position and direction, which would have rendered them en- tirely beautiful."32 In improving their roads, then,New Englanders took as their primary goals straightening them and shortening distances. The Londonderry Turnpike Corporation was au- thorized under its charter to lay out such a route "as in the best of their Judgment shall combine shortness of distance with the most practicable ground," but the pro- prietors authorized their surveying committee "to ascer— tain by actual survey the air line from Buttan Corner to Andover bridge, and to lay out said road . . . as nearly conformably thereto, as in their judgments is practical 33 The result was a road which "pursued its 31» and prudent." course straight as an arrow over the hills." Rigid straightness was not characteristic of every New England turnpike. In Berkshire County, for example, it 2 3 Dwight, I, 328; II, 168. 33New Hampshire, Laws, VII, c. 12 (180A). 3"The Farmer's Monthly Visitor, IX (1847), 88. 202 would appear that the terrain forced turnpike builders to 35 make a great many deviations from a straight line. But it was common. The Dorchester Turnpike Company, in fact, was required under its charter to build "as near on a straight line as circumstances will permit." At the be- ginning of the century, wrote Worcester's historian in 1837, "it was a favorite principle . . . that roads must be carried on a straight line between the points to be con- nected, without any deviation from the direct course to conform to the undulation of the surface."36 Although straightness has tended to be associated with turnpikes, it also was a characteristic of many new public roads and streets. As early as 1753 a road was laid in a straight line over the mountains between New Ipswich and Rindge, New Hampshire, the average grade on which was more than thirteen per cent.37 The town of Enfield, Connec- ticut, in 1827 accepted a road the selectmen had surveyed, "so amended as to make a straight road from the place of 35See Berkshire County, Commissioners Office, laps of Towns, 1830. - 36William Lincoln, History of Worcester (Worcester, 1837), p. 388. 37George A. Morison, History of Peterborough, New Hampshire (Rindge, N.H., 195L), pp._279:280. 203 beginning to the stake aforesaid."38 Dwight, visiting Burlington, Vermont, found that "two streets ascend from [Lake Champlain] to the summit of the slope, and are crossed by others at right-angles. Ultimately, the whole ground is to be formed into regular squares."39 A visitor to the neighborhood around Beacon Hill in 1808 found new streets there wide and regular, a decided contrast to the winding lanes of the older parts of Boston. As a result of the policy of straightening roads, distances were shortened considerably. In Cumberland County, Maine, alteration of the road from Gorham Corner to Buxton meeting house in 1822 reduced the distance from A1 By 1805 eight miles, 310 rods to six miles, 251 rods. an all-turnpike route had shortened the distance between Boston and Concord, New Hampshire, by fourteen miles. Comparison of mileage tables in Thomas's Almanack for 1800 and 1814 shows that reduction in mileage between 38Allen, p. 527. 39Dwight, II, 424. “Clambert, III, 111. “LMaine Historical Society, Map No. 306, Gorham, Cumberland County. h2Massachusetts Spy, January 1, 1806. 20h most major towns occurred during the turnpike movement. In 1800 it was 11h miles from Boston to Hartford by the shortest route; by l8lh it was ninety-seven miles. It was thirty-nine miles from Boston to Mower's Tavern in Worces- ter after the opening of the WCrcester Turnpike, as against forty-four miles on the old post road. The Salem Turnpike, fourteen miles long, brought Salem eight miles closer to Boston than it had been in 1800, while the Boston and New- buryport Turnpike,thirtytwo miles long, shortened the trav- eled distance between those two towns by twelve miles. The distance from Boston to New York was reduced from 237 to 208 miles, during the turnpike era. Some of these distances, indeed, were shorter than on present-day highways}+3 The reduction of grades was not wholly neglected. Pe- titioners for a toll road between Hartford and Middletown argued, "not only [can] the road . . . be shortened but, it can be made to run on better Ground."hh Dwight in 1798 found the Straits Turnpike, through Woodbridge and Water- bury, Connecticut, "laid over a rough country with unusual "BFor example, according to a recent highway map, it is 102 miles from Boston to Hartford and 229 miles from Boston to New York via recommended routes. thonnecticut, Archives, Travel, Series II, Vol. XIII, p. 1. 205 skill and judgment. It is not incommoded by a single disagreeable ascent, or descent.“+5 According to Ben- jamin Silliman, the route of the Talcott Mountain Turn- pike "was, but a few years since, a most rugged uncom- fortable road; now [1819] we passed it with ease and rapidity, scarcely perceiving its beautiful undulations," the ease of travel being interrupted only by a three-mile climb over the ridge of Talcott Mountain.A6 In crossing Vermont from Burlington to Hanover, New Hampshire, Silli- man found that "wherever practicable, they have followed the river courses along the alluvial bottoms, and where they have wound around the hills, it is done with great skill and judgment," although from the height of land above the Connecticut Valley, "for six or seven miles, we des— cended with great rapidity, the carriage almost constantly urging the horses forward."h7 Dwight also observed that the rise on a turnpike route through western Connecticut and Massachusetts was "so gradual, as to ascend the summit of the Green Mountains in a manner, absolutely impercepti— A5Dwight, II, 365. héBenjamin Silliman, Remarks Made on a Short Tour between Hartford and Quebec (New Haven, l82h), pp. 2-3. “71bid., p. 414. .F ‘I‘un. 206 ble by the traveller."u8 All too often, however, grades were sacrificed to the goal of shortening distances. Cotton Tufts, replying to Gallatin's inquiry concerning the turnpikes of Massachu— setts, wrote that hills, meadows, and ledges "in some in- stances . . . are insurmountable, and make it necessary to take a different or more circuitous course, to avoid them; the instances, however, are but few, where resolution, pa- tience, and perseverance will not surmount them." Tufts é, claimed that grades on the state's turnpikes did not ex- ceed five degrees.)+9 But according to Lincoln, the Wor- cester Turnpike, a straight-line road, "climbed to some of the highest elevations of the country it traversed, when inconsiderable circuit would have furnished a better 50 Alexander WClcott reported to and less costly route." Gallatin that in Connecticut "an opinion has prevailed that something like a general principle has been adopted, that no ascent greater than five degrees should be allowed. 48Dwight, I, 299. thallatin, American State Papers, Miscellaneous, I, 867. 50Lincoln, p. 338. 207 Nothing, however, is more certain than that no such prin- 51 ciple has been ahered to." Dwight called the Hartford and New Haven Turnpike "one of the best roads in the State," but added, "had a less rigid attention been given to the scheme of making a straight road, several disagreeable hills might have been avoided, much of the expense pre- vented, and the distance very little increased."52 Enthusiasm for straight-line roads had been tempered considerably by the 1820's. "Travellers have long since learned that the distance over hills is equal to that round them in most cases," wrote the anonymous author of a history of Berkshire County in 1829, who expected that future roads would follow that county's valleys rather than climb over its mountains.53 A.Massachusetts legislative committee re- ported in 1827 that the location of roads "in a straight or air line over a hilly country, does not accord with the prin— ciples of science. The expense of transporation as much de- pends upon a level line of draught as upon the distance or 51Gallatin, American State Papers, Miscellaneous, I, 869. 52Dwight, II, 285. Dwight was a shareholder in this company. 53A.History of the County of Berkshire, iassachu- setts (Pittsfield, 1829), p. 93. 208 length of the road."54 The Farmer's Monthly Visitor re- ported in 1839 that in recent years New England towns had incurred great expenses to improve roads pgph by shortening distances and by "evading bad hills." Travelling directly among our mountains seemingly almost impassable, we find smooth roads with an elevation and de- pression rarely exceeding four to six r degrees, winding through the vallies, and carrying you towards your point of destination without the haltingsof your horse from a steady trot. The steepness of grades nevertheless remained a E common defect of New England roads. The principal road between the Connecticut and Housatonic valleys in Mass- achusetts still had grades of as much as twelve degrees in 1828.56 The Gardiner Lyceum's committee on roads re- ported in 1831 that five degrees should be the maximum allowable angle on a road, but that the expense of reduc- ing the grades of Maine roads even to five degrees would be too great to be readily accomplished.57 Even a slope 5“Report of the Select Committee of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts on Constructing a Rail- way from Boston to the Hudson River (Boston, 1827), p. 7. 55The Farmer's Monthly Visitor, I (1839), 53. According to Gillespie, "it is advantageous to increase the length of a level road to twenty times the perpendicu— lar height to be saved." Gillespie, p. 28. 56 American Traveller (Boston), November 21, 1828. 57Gardiner Lycuem, Report of the Committee on Roads, p. A. 209 of five degrees affected the cost of transportation by limiting the amount of weight a horse could pull. Ex- periments showed that on common American road surfaces the friationa horse was obliged to overcome on a slope of one foot in twenty (about three degrees) was double that that he encountered on a level road; if the grade were any greater than that, the friction could be over- come only by carrying a reduced load or by adding animals ‘ to a team.58 L The way a road was laid out thus was extremely im— portant. Committee members, in addition to holding hear- ings and surveying the route, also recommended the amount of damages property owners were to receive and determined the width of the right—of—way. Roads during the eighteenth century had come to consist of a single, well-defined path- way and there no longer seemed to be a need for the great widths that had been reserved for early highways. By the latter part of the century a number of towns were disposing of excess rights-of-way.59 Petitioners to the Windham County (Connecticut) court reported that many of the early roads in 58Gillespie, pp. 41—43. 59State of Connecticut, Public Records, VI, 62, 217-218, 318-319. 210 Woodstock had been laid six and eight rods wide, but "now to be more than four rods wide can answer no public bene- fit."60 The right-of—way now had to be wide enough to ac- comodate the road itself, plus ditches, and also to permit sunlight to reach the road. Most New England turnpikes were laid four rods wide.61 The rights-of—way of county roads built between 1790 and 1840 were most commonly three or four rods wide.62 Of fifty—six roads laid out by the selectmen of Rutland, Vermont, between 1785 and 1831, thir- ty-four were three rods, twelve were four rods, and five were two rods wide.63 The committee,upon completing its work, would report to the court during its next session, at which time final objections would be heard and the justices would accept or reject the report. In accepting the route described in the survey as a public highway, courts frequently granted prop- erty owners several months' time to remove from what was formerly their land all the timber, "except so much of it 60Windham County, Conn., Court Records, XXIX, 158. 61See, for example, Massachusetts, Acts and Resolves, 1804, c. 125, sec. 2. 62Berkshire County, General Sessions of the Peace and Commissioners Records; Windham County, Conn., Court Records. 63 . Rutland, Vt., Road Papers, Vermont Historical Society. 211 as shall be found necessary to be used in making & repair- ing s'd highway."64 The judges also would order the towns to pay property damages and the cost of laying out the road within their limits and would set a time limit for comple- tion of construction. According to Vermont law, the time allowed was to be at least one year, but towns frequently sought and received extensions of time.65 With the exception of the Massachusetts county com- missioners, state and county officials responsible for lay- ing out turnpikes and public roads seldom specified con- struction methods. Usually there was simply an order to 66 make a road "passable, safe and convenient." But cer- tain principles of construction, known as the”Turnpike fashion" in recognition of the influence toll—road builders had exerted on road making, commonly were practiced. The specifications laid down by Massachusetts county commis— sioners were similar to those which had been contained in contracts for the making of turnpike roads. And although the WCrcester County court, for example, established no 6"Berkshire County, General Sessions of the Peace, I, A68—A69; II, 327; Worcester County, Sessions Records, VI, All. 6SVermont, Laws of a Public and Permanent Nature (Thompson, 1835), c. 30, no. 11. 66Worcester County, Sessions Records, VIII, #88. 212 specifications for a highway between Ashburnham and Win- chendon in 1817, the road was built in a manner that closely resembled both earlier turnpikes and later public ways built under the county commissioners.67 One can thus as- sume that there was general agreement as to what a "pass— able, safe and convenient" road was. L The most distinctive characteristic of the roads built “hm‘kl'.-' .‘ I during the turnpike era and the years that followed it was crowning, which had come into widespread use in England dur- ing the eighteenth century. A crowned road was one made higher in the center than at the sides so that water would drain off rather than soaking into the roadbed and turning it into a quagmire. Prior to the turnpike era, American road building had consisted of little more than cutting the trees in the pathway "as near as possible to the ground, 68 In 179A a that the stumps may not impede travelling." resident of Holliston informed the Massachusetts Historical Society of that town's first attempts at making crowned roads. 67Stearns, History of Ashburnham, p. 381. 68Belknap, III, 58. 213 The stones, which for years had been thrown out of the way against the walls, are thrown back,each side of the way is ploughed, the stones are covered with the dirt, and the miggle of the road is left the highest. "It is within our own memory," wrote a New Hampshire editor in 1847, "that we had in the interior of the country no such thing as roads worked by throwing the earth to the centre."70 The first step in construction was to remove stumps 1 and all the stones near the surface.7 "The ground should then be ploughed, and the furrows constantly turned towards the centre, and after every ploughing, ltEflNNIUibe harrowed, and this continued till the centre is raised sufficiently high for the water to pass off freely."72 Sometimes, how- ever, dirt was hauled to the construction site in carts, dumped onto the roadway, and worked into shape with shovels, 73 rakes, and hoes. David Stevenson, a Scottish civil engineer who vis; 69Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Series I, Vol. III (l794)7p. 18. 70The Farmer's Monthly Visitor, IX (1847), 88. 71Berkshire County, General Sessions of the Peace, III, 189; Derby Turnpike Company, Record Book, p. 12; Gardiner Ly- ceum, Report of the Committee on Roads, p. 2. 72Gardiner Lyceum, Report of the Committee on Roads, p. 2. 73Massachusetts, Board of Agriculture, Eighteenth Annual Report (1871), p. 67; Wood, p. 37. 214 ited the United States during the 1830's, found New England roads notable for the liberal use their builders had made of gravel.74 Indeed, many of the roads built during the thirties were graveled. The WCrcester County Commissioners, for example, regularly required an eight-inch layer.75 But on the other hand, the Berkshire County Commissioners some- times required its use only in wet and soft places and even then only "when gravel can [easily] be had."76 And before the 1830's the practice was less widespread. According to Gallatin's Report, the Newburyport and Boston, Salem, and Norfolk and Bristol turnpikes were all "covered with an artificial stratum of gravel"; on other Massachusetts turn- pikes, "if the ground is a light or heavy loam, it will re- quire much gravelling, but a very compact earth, whose parts adhere closely together, [requires] less gravelling."77 In the making of Connecticut toll roads, according to Wblcott, "no other materials are used than the earth found on the spot. Gravelling, strictly speaking, is unknown."78 The Fourth New 7(+David Stevenson, Sketch of the Civil Engineering of North America (London, 1838), p. 218. 75worcester County, Commissioners Records, XI, 170, 310, 51+3, 561. 76 77Gallatin, American State Papereriiscellaneous, I, 737, 867. 78Ibid., p. 869. Berkshire County, Commissioners Records, V, 49. 215 Hampshire Turnpike adopted the policy 0f using gravel only where the softness of the soil necessitated it.79 As late as 1831, the Gardiner Lyceum's committee on roads in rec- ommending that all roads be covered with sharp-edged gravel, capable of being cemented "together into a solid mass," found it necessary to inform readers that "gravel is much more abundant than is commonly supposed.8O As a final step in construction, some turnpike com- panies used rollers to settle the roadway and make it smooth. The New-Hampshire Turnpike purchased an eight-foot wooden roller weighing about one ton.81 How common a practice this was among New England road builders is not known. Crowned roads, built in the manner just described, were recognized as an improvement over earlier highways, but their value often was lessened by errors in construc- tion. Although thousands of miles of country roads in Mass— achusetts alone remained single tracks on which it was im- possible for two teams or vehicles to pass without one of them turning out,82 ‘ it was intended that turnpikes and 79Fourth New Hampshire Turnpike Company Records. 8OGardiner Lyceum, Report of the Committee on Roads, p. 7. 8lFirst New Hampshire Turnpike, Records of the Direc- tors, New Hampshire Historical Society. 82Massachusetts, Board of Agriculture, Eighteenth Annual Report (1871), p. 67. 216 many of the county roads built during the period 1790 to 1840 should be wide enough to accommodate two-way traffic. According to the report of the Gardiner Lyceum,this meant that pathways should be from eighteen to thirty feet wide.83 Massachusetts law required that toll roads be a minimum of twenty-four feet in width.84 The Fourth New Hampshire Turn- pike was twenty-four feet wide, the Derby eighteen, and the ; Williamstown Centre Turnpike in Vermont sixteen feet wide.85 Roads built under the direction of the Berkshire County Com- missioners varied between about sixteen and twenty-four feet in width.86 Although they were theoretically wide enough to accom- modate two-way travel, such roads often were usable only in the middle because of the way they were crowned. From gutter to center line of the Fourth New Hampshire Turnpike - a dis- tance of twelve feet - there was a rise of two feet.87 0n 83Gardiner Lyceum, Report of the Committee on Roads, 8hMassachusetts, Acts and Resolves, 1804, c. 125, sec. 2. 85Vermont, Acts and LawsL January 1804, c. 50, sec. 1. 86Berkshire County, Commissioners Records. By way of contrast, a town road in Savoy which the commissioners ordered built in 1840 after the selectmen had refused to lay it out was only ten feet wide. Ibid., V, 163. 87Fourth New Hampshire Turnpike Company Records. 217 New Hampshire's Chester Turnpike the rise was thirty inches in a distance of thirteen feet.88 A typical county road laid out in Egremont, Massachusetts, in 1840, was to be twenty feet wide, with the center sixteen inches higher than the sides.89 According to the Gardiner Lyceum re- port, such roads "are frequently raised so high in the centre, as to make it dangerous, or at least inconvenient to ride on the sides; where this is the case the travel is always in a single track in the centre."90 3 The difficulty resulted not only from the great rise of the crown, but also from its shape. The crown usually was in the form of a segment of a circle, so that the road sloped considerably more near the sides than at the center, "the only place where a carriage stands upright."91 By concentrating traffic in the middle, road builders not only failed to provide adequately for the flow of traffic“ 88Benjamin Chase, History of Old Chester, [N.H.] (Auburn, N.H., 1869), pp. 217—218. 89Berkshire County, Commissioners Records, v, 108. 90Gardiner Lyceum, Report of the Committee on Roads, p. 2. 91GillesPie, p. 48; Massachusetts, Board of Agricul- ture, Eighteenth Annual Report (1871), p. 47. According to Gillespie, "the best transverse profile . . . on level ground is that formed by two inclined planes," meeting in the center at a slightly rounded angle to form a uniform slope. The same authority recommended that the slope from center to side be no more than one foot in twenty. 218 but also tended to defeat the purpose of crowning. Most of the wear was in one part of the road, which quickly became rutted. Water thus remained on the road and the problem was compounded by an absence of drainage facili- ties under the roadbed.92 In addition, the foundations upon which these roads were built often were inferior. During the 1830's the Worcester County Commissioners usually specified that "the top soil where the same is unsuitable for making a hard and . permanent road be removed out of the travelled way," while if the subsoil was sandy, it was to be covered with a coat of loam four inches thick and then eight inches of gravel.93 But removing topsoil by means of shovels, ploughs, and the ox-drawn scrapers many towns ownedgl+ was expensive. Thus it was common merely to turn over and use the surface soil, which, because of its high content of vegetable matter, quickly rotted and made the road mirey.95 Even with a cover- 92Gardiner Lyceum, Report of the Committee on Roads, p. 2; Massachusetts, Board of Agriculture, Eighteenth Annual Report 11871), p. 66. 93Worcester County, Commissioners Records, XI, 543, 561, 170, 310. 9"Gardiner Lyceum, Report of the Committee on Roads, p. 2; Vermont, Laws, Revised (1808), c. 45, no. 4; Allen, p. 503; Beach, p. 257; C. M. Hyde, The Centennial Celebra- tion and Centennial History of the Town of Lee, Massachusetts (Springfield, 1878): p. 23. 95Gardiner Lyceum, Report of the Committee on Roads, p. 2; Derby Turnpike Company, Record Book, pp. 12-13. 219 ing of gravel, foundations remained soft and Stevenson found that "it is only for a few months during summer that [New England roads] possess any superiority, or are, in fact, at all tolerable."96 Causeways commonly were Constructed where roads crossed swamps and other soft places. Primitive "corduroy roads," or "gridiron bridges," as many New Englanders called them, con- sisting of a base of either logs or squared timbers covered with dirt and gravel, still were in existence during the 1830s Ff‘j“. -.,‘._ .. and continued to annoy travelers by the tendency of the gravel and dirt to wear away and expose the timbers, which often were heaved out of place by frost.97 But a more durable type of "cassway," built on a foundation of fascines, had come into use on projects such as the Salem Turnpike.98 The Berk— shire County Commissioners adopted the newer method, requir- ing that on a road in Alford and Egremont, for example, wet ground "shall be filled with fascines sufficient to support a well wrought super structure of earth which shall be cov- ered with gravel at least four inches thick."99 96 Stevenson, p. 218. 97Christian Mirror (Portland), October 24, 1823; Gardiner Lyceum, Report of the Committee on Roads, p. 5. 98 Diary of William Bentley, III, 31. 99Berkshire County, Commissioners Records, V, 109. 220 The earthen superstructures of these raised road- ways frequently were reinforced with timbers or stone walls.100 According to Bentley, however, the sides of the causeways on the Salem Turnpike were "turfed at a convenient angle." And the road committee of the Gardi- ner Lyceum reported that turfed embankments had been found more permanent than either timbers, which quickly rotted, or stone walls, which often were ruined by frost.lOl Although steep grades remained common, some efforts were made to reduce hills. Near its Wbrcester end, the Worcester Turnpike "went through a considerable eminence 102 The directors of the Derby Turnpike by a deep cutting." specified that "the top of the North Hill or knowl shall be taken off seven feet and the South Hill ten feet."103 During the 1830's the Worcester County Commissioners re- quired a considerable amount of cutting.loh lOOIbid., p. 105; Dwight to Ammidon, March 10, 1800, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records; Derby Turn- pike Company, Record Book; "The Coos Turnpike" (typescript in New Hampshire Historical Society), pp. 11—12. 101Diary of William Bentley, III, 31; Gardiner Lyceum, Report of the Committee on Roads, pp. 3-4. 102Lincoln, p. 338. 103Derby Turnpike Company, Record Book. 10“Worcester County, Commissioners Records, XI, passim. 221 Blasting was the principle labor—saving device used in making cuts. Prior to the invention of the time fuse, the method of setting off an explosion was by laying a train of powder.105 The process was a dangerous one and fatal ac- cidents sometimes occurred. Two laborers on the Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike were killed within a few weeks of each other in explosions caused by the driving of iron spindles into charged rocks.106 In addition to crowning their roads as a means of keeping them dry, New Englanders constructed side ditches. According to a travel account written by a Pennsylvanian in 1810, turnpikes in New England and New York were charac- terized primarily by ditching and crowning.107 References to ditching in building specifications often were vague, indicating that little was known as to the proper means of construction. For example, the contract under which the Derby Turnpike was built called for "sufficient Ditches & 108 Gutters on each side of the Road to lead off all water." It was complained that turnpikes, because of their crowned 105Wood, pp. 37—38. 106Providence Gazette, August 6, 1803. 107Alvin F. Har10W, Old Post Bags (New York, 1928), pp. 296-2970 108Derby Turnpike Company, Record Book. 222 surfaces, were often bare during the winter. The solu- tion adopted by some companies was to build ditches flat and broad enough to serve as winter roads. Thus Vermont's Caledonia Turnpike was to have a ditch at least six feet. wide on either side of the road "for the convenience of sleighs and sleds, in the winter season wherever the same can be made, without great inconvenience."109 The WCrcester County Commissioners usually Specified fairly Shallow ditches - eight inches in most places and twelve inches where the soil was especially soft. A typical ditch in that county was to be not less than eighteen inches wide on the bottom, eight inches deep, and the slope on the interior or road side must not have an angle greater than about thirty-three degrees, or one and a half foot SlOpe to one foot rise, and the side ditch must gradually descend in the direction of the road toward the point of discharge of the water, in such manner that no waterlign permanently stand by the road side. A correspondent to a Portland newspaper in 1823 implied that ditches in that area frequently were not as deep as eighteen inches, which he considered the proper depth. He also com- 109Dwight to Ammidon, March 10, 1800, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records; Vermont, Acts and Laws, January 1804, c. 50, sec. 1. 110Worcester County, Commissioners Records, X1, 544. See also, Ibid., pp. 170, 177, 311, 555, 569. 223 plained that they were often well made "except in one or two spots," where large rocks or roots were left undis- turbed, and that "to that very spot the rain which falls on 100 or 1000 acres of the adjoining field is conducted; and is left to chuse whether it will take a ditch, or run down the centre of the road." There being no ditch at such a point, water, "taking the road, will soon form deep gullies, and destroy the fine road which had been formed lll with great labor." 1“,?! - : Sluiceways, usually of stone, were used to carry water under a road from its upper to its lower side and were built at places where it was convenient to conduct water away from the road or where overflows from the up- per ditch were likely to cause flooding.112 0n hills, in order to prevent water from flowing down the road, catch- waters or waterbars were built to divert it into the ditches. According to Gillespie, the best type of catchwater was a shallow, paved ditch, built in the form of a V, the point 111 112 Gardiner Lyceum, Report of the Committee on Roads, pp. 2-3; First New'Hampshire Turnpike, Records of the Direc- tors; Third New Hampshire Turnpike Papers; Berkshire County, Commissioners Records, passim; Worcester County, Commis- sioners Records, passim. Christian Mirror, October 24, 1823. 224 of which was in the center of the road with the sides point- ing downhill, towards the side ditches.113 But in country towns it was common, as late as the early twentieth century, to fill the need with "thank'ee Ma'ams" - earthen or gravel dams, built obliquely across the road - which received their name "from the involuntary motion of the head" in riding over them.114 Often consisting of a single load of dirt or gravel, formed into a high, steep bar, they were an annoy- ance to travelers, but were easily broken down by the weight of passing teams and wagons and thus failed to fulfill the purpose for which they were built.115 Certain facilities for the safety, comfort, or infor- mation of travelers often were to be found along the roads. County commissioners in Massachusetts regularly required the placing of either wooden railings or a continuous line of rocks where there was a dropoff from the side of a new road.116 The Worcester County Commissioners frequently called upon towns, in building county roads, "to provide convenient 113Gillespie, pp. 180-182. ll1"Underwood, p. 119. 115George F. Beede, Country Roads (Exeter, N.H., 1904), p. 7; Morison, pp. 288-289. 116 Worcester County, Commissioners Records, XI, 46. 225 watering places by the road Side, when it can be done."117 Travelers on the Providence and Pawtucket Turnpike were accommodated with "handsome footpaths, rows of trees on each Side of the road, and even milestones every quarter of a mile."118 In every New England state laws passed during the late eighteenth century required towns to provide guide boards, or finger posts, at important intersections, point- ing towards the next town. Rhode Island's law, enacted in 1798, called for a substantial post, at least eight feet high, upon the upper end of which Shall be placed a board or boards, upon each of which . . . shall be plainly . . . painted, the name of the next town, with such other noted town or places as may be judged most expedient for the direction of travellers, to which each of the roads may lead, together with the distance or number of miles to the same; and also the figure of a hand, with the forefinger thereof pointing towards the town or place19 to which the said roads may lead. According to the Englishman Bernard, however, neither 117Ibid., p. 549. 118James Stuart, Three Years in America (Edinburgh: 1833) 9 I, 352' 119Rhode Island, Public Laws, Revised (1822), p. 428 ("an act for the erection and support of Guide-Posts upon the Public Roads," sec. 3). 11‘! L 226 milestones nor guideposts were of much help to the traveler during the early nineteenth century. In Vermont he found that milestones often were either misleading or illegible; instead of standing upright, they usually had "their heads pillowed softly against some knoll or bank." Guideposts were few in number, frequently lacked a finger pointing in the intended direction, and were carelessly maintained. Bernard found one such post lying in the road and described another he saw as having been fastened to a tree with a Single nail, with the result that the wind and the weather shaking the tree have necessarily loosened the nail, and the board, . . . acting on mathematical principles and the law of gravitation, has turned round on its axis, the nail, and now hangs lengthwise, with its heav— iest end to the ground. . . . [Thus]you are led to imagine that . . . the object of your journey is either . . . some sub- terranean settlement in a coal-pit, or an Aladdin's cave to which you perceive no descending avenue, or from the sublime direction of the letters, that it is Situated somewhere in the celestial re- gions, a fact which the topography of the country, not to say the character of the inhabitants, most likely alto- gether denies. 20 There were seldom Sidewalks for those who went about their errands on foot in country towns prior to 1840. Boston 120Bernard, pp. 321-322. 227 acquired "paved" (stone) footpaths under a Massachusetts law passed in l 99, but as late as 1829 there Was no paved path between the post office and the corner of Bath and Congress streets and during the muddy season "it is im- possible for one to cross without having his shoes filled with the contents of the gutter."121 The ship-building and commercial town of Bath, Maine, spent about one-Sixth of its highway tax during the late 1820's in building walks of pine plank, while the shire town of Exeter, New Hampshire, acquired its first gravel walk on Court Street in 1807.122 Concord, New Hampshire, had no Sidewalks until well into the nineteenth century and during the winters pedestrians had to run the risk of being run down by sleighs in the 123 roadway. Isaiah Thomas helped to lay flat stones on the walk past the Worcester courthouse in 1811 and again 124 in 1818, when it was widened from two to four feet. And by 1820 the growing town of Springfield, Massachusetts had two sidewalks.l25 121Massachusetts, Acts and Laws, 1799, c. 31- 122Gardiner Lyceum, Report of the Committee on Roads, p. 15; Charles H. Bell, History of the Town of Exeter, New Hampshire (Exeter, 1888), p. 126. 123James O. Lyford, History of Concord, New Hampshire (Concord, 1896), I, 304-305. 124Hill, I, 109, 400. 125Richard D. Brown, Urbanization in Springfield, Massachusetts,,l790-l830 (Springfield, 1962), pp. 16-17. 228 Smaller towns such as Littleton, New Hampshire, and Enfield, Connecticut, however, built their first stone walks during the 1840's. And pictorial evidence such as is contained in John Warner Barber's views of Massachusetts and Connecticut towns suggests that few Villages had paved walks or even separate footpaths prior to that time, although frequently there were green strips between the traveled way and the fences which were to be found in front of many houses and public buildings. Visitors were struck by the breadth - and sometimes by the beauty - of New England village streets, particular- ly in the towns of western Connecticut and Massachusetts and the Connecticut Valley. Hawthorne in 1838 found the streets of Litchfield "with wide green margins, and sometimes a[wide] 127 In some green space . . . between the two road-tracks." towns, however, the streets remained unsightly until well into the nineteenth century. Brimfield, Massachusetts, im- proved its main street, a six-rod road leading towards Spring- field, during the late eighteenth century by moving the trav— eled path away from the houses on the south side of the 126John warmer Barber, Massachusetts Historical Col- lections (Worcester, 1839), pasSim; Connecticut Historical Collections (New Haven, 1838), passim. l27Randall Stewart, American Notebooks, pp. 69-70. See also, Silliman, pp. 420, 428; Whnsey, p. 45. 229 street, leaving space for dooryards. But on the north side, the common, which originally had been part of the road, re- mained treeless, "cut up in every direction by cart paths, [and] a most unattractive place for many years."128 Similar- ly, the common in New Milford, Connecticut, was a swampy area, situated between the wagon tracks on either side of the main street and habituated by hogs, cattle, and geese until about 1838.129 New Milford was by no means alone in having animals II - ‘1 continue to run free and graze along its roadsides until well into the nineteenth century. Windsor, Connecticut, took the step of prohibiting horses, cattle, swine, geese and other animals from running at large in 1797; Springfield began to limit the free movement of such animals in 1792, 130 but did not stop it completely until 1820. Worcester voted to keep horses from running free in 1806, but did not prohibit yoked and ringed swine or milk cows from go- ing at large until about 1814. In 1817, although Wickford, Rhode Island, had prohibited hogs from running loose for 128Charles M. Hyde, Historical Celebration of the Town of Brimfield (Springfield, 1879), p. 72. 129Samuel Orcutt, History of the Towns of New Milford and Bridgewater,4Connecticut (Hartford, 1882), p. 448. 130Connecticut Courant, May 8, 1797; Richard Brown, Urbanization in Springfield, p. 16. 230 seventeen years, the inhabitants were disconcerted to find them entering town by way of a bridge from Elan's Mills.131 Troy and Peterborough, New Hampshire, as late as the second and third decades of the century prohibited the movement of animals only during the fall and winter months.132 Town streets and roads thus frequently remained public grazing grounds. A Massachusetts decision in 1822, however, held that an individual had no right to turn his cattle into the road for grazing, since the only right the public ac- s 133 quired in a highway was that of passage. Wide village streets often were encroached upon by neighboring property owners. Main Street in Concord, New Hampshire, originally ten rods wide, was reduced to six rods by encroachments.13h A visitor to TCpsham, Maine, in 1820 found its twelve-rod main street "one of the most capacious" in the United States and remarked that it also would be one of the most elegant "were it not for the neglect of the police, in allowing individuals to project some buildings 13thode Island, Archives, Petitions to the General Assembly, XLV, 84. 132M. T. Stone, Historical Sketch of the Town of TroyL New Hampshire (Keene, N.H., n.d.), pp. 174-175; Morison, pp. 286-287. 133Stackpole v. Healy,'l6 Mass. 33 (1822)- 13"Lyford, I, 304-305. 231 135 beyond the direct line." A Wercester town committee re- ported in 1826 that Main Street was supposed to be Six rods wide, but "by what authority it has been reduced for a con- siderable part of its length to its present width, . . . your committee are ignorant [and] can find no permission on record." Fences in front of a building belonging to Gov- ernor Levi Lincoln projected into the street, as did the steps in front of a number of houses built on the line of the street.136 9 Towns continued to be responsible for maintaining all the roads within their limits except turnpikes. During the late 1820's Bath and Augusta, Maine, adopted the policy of making the highway tax payable in cash only.137 Worcester in 1828 voted a similar measure, but Six years later returned to the old system, which gave persons a choice of working out their taxes themselves, hiring a substitute, or paying cash}38 Ashburnham, Massachusetts, twice during the 1830's voted to raise half the highway tax in money, but both times rescinded 135A Description of Brunswick, Me., in Letters by a Gentleman from South Carolina to a Friend in that State (Brunswick, 1823), pp. 8-9. 136Worcester Town Records, 1817—1832, pp. 235-239. The committee found that most of the townTS roads also had been encroached upon by fences. 137Gardiner, Lyceum, Report of the Committee on Roads, PP- 12-14- 138 Worcester Town Records, 1817-1832, pp. 230, 256. 232 139 the vote before the tax was assessed. The voters of Andover, Massachusetts, tried the new system in 1832, but in 1834 returned to "the good old way.nl40 Approximately 115 Massachusetts towns still collected their road taxes either wholly or partly in labor in 1871, including a ma- jority of the towns in the western counties of Berkshire and Franklin.lLPl The highway repair system, which had had opponents during the late eighteenth century, continued to be criti- cized during the nineteenth. Critics, however, no longer saw the possibility of turning over town responsibilities to corporations or other agencies. Rather, they believed it more necessary than ever for towns to face up more fully to the duty of providing good roads. And they believed that this required a change of the system based on elected sur- veyors and voluntary labor. "It was ever found to be a bad system," argued the Gardiner Lyceum's committee on roads, "and good roads were never made or maintained under it in any country; and in the old world, it has gradually been 139StearnS, History of Ashburnham, p. 385- lhoAndover, Mass., Town Records, Microfilm Copy, Merrimack Valley Textile Museum, North Andover. l"lIMassachusetts, Board of Agriculture, Eighteenth Annual Report (1871), pp. 23 ff. 233 superseded by a better."ll*2 "Now," wrote a Massachusetts advocate of internal improvements in 1829, "in Scotland, and pretty generally in England, the statute labor is commuted into a payment in money, instead of personal service. The country is divided into districts, of from 100 to 200 miles of roads, with but one surveyor in each, who receives an annual salary for his services." This had "reduced the principles of road-making to a system, the na- .J43 tnral tendency of which is improvement. 11f. As had happened during the post-Revolutionary period, Americans during the 1820's and 1830's again looked to Great Britain for a system to emulate. But pleas for such a re- form continued to be heard during the forties and for decades thereafter, for no rapid change took place such as had oc- curred during the turnpike movement. Progress was slow, particularly before 1840. Basically what was wanted was to place responsibility for maintenance in the hands of one or two competent men in each town, rather than the ten, twenty, or more highway surveyors many towns elected. l42Gardiner Lyceum, Report of the Committee on Roads, p. 10. l1*3Jackson, p. 8. 234 The improvement consists in having a small number of superintendants appointed by, and responsible to the selectmen, who have an adequate compensation to make the repair of the roads their principal bus- iness, who can watch the roads and pre— vent injuries, and who have the means to make the repairs at the proper time, who can arrange their plans for a series of years, and are never obliged to employ any but good hands and never more than can be profitably employed, who have al- ways proper tools to work with, and ma- terials of every kind provideghin season and purchased at fair rates. The idea was similar to that which lay behind the establishment of the office of county commissioners to supervise the construction of roads in four New England states. "To make a good road, as much judgment and expe- rience is required as in most of the mechanic arts," the Gardiner Lyceum report contended.lh5 There had been op- position to the county commissioners and only in Maine and Massachusetts did they become a permanent institution. But in those states the concurrence of a majority of the mem- bers of the legislatures had resulted in the adoption of laws which permanently affected road-building policy on a lM'Gardiner Lyceum, Report of the Committee on Roads, p. 14. See also, Jackson, p. 8; Eastern Argus, January 17, 1825; American Rail Road Journal, I (1832), 273; Hobart, pp. 10-11; MassaEhusetts, Board of Agriculture, Eighteenth Annual Report (1871), p. 57. l[*5Gardiner Lyceum, Report of the Committee on Roads, p. 9. . - . 'u - I, II!- t .m- ‘1‘ ~. I 1 235 statewide basis. The manner in which highway taxes were collected and spent, however, was left at the option of the towns and each town could vote on the matter as often as it chose. Thus Maine in 1821 passed a law permitting towns of 800 or more population to raise a highway tax in money if they so chose and in 1832 extended the choice ' to towns of half that size. The 1832 act also permitted localities to elect up to five road commissioners in place of the highway surveyors, who could divide responsibility 111 turn" as they saw fit rather than having fixed districts assigned them by the selectmen. But it was still up to the town meeting to determine whether these officials should col- lect the tax in money or call out laborers.lh6 As a resident of Newton, Massachusetts, put it in discussing the money tax in 1871, "you know that in town meetings we run against the prejudices and honest convic- tions of a great number if we propose radical changes."157 Such a statement probably would have been even more appli- cable to town meetings during the twenties and thirties. In a rural economy in which the exchange of goods and ser- 146Maine, General Laws (1822), c. 118, sec. 19; Maine, Public LawsL January 1832, c. 17, sec. 1. l[*7Massachusetts, Board of Agriculture, Eighteenth Annual Report (1871), p. 65. 236 vices still was important, the payment in money of a tax traditionally paid in labor would have been considered a radical step in itself; for towns to have gone even fur- ther by hiring full-time officials to administer the high- way tax would have been unthinkable, particularly in View of the lack of concern many persons still had for the con- dition of their roads. One of the Augusta selectmen in- formed the Gardiner Lyceum committee, "if repairs enough were made to secure the town against indictment, this [formerly] was thought to be sufficient."ll+8 Under the system Augusta adopted in 1825, the select- men assumed responsibility for the roads, hiring "judicious men to superintend the expenditure." Laborers were hired at an average wage of seventeen dollars a month, whereas taxes previously had been worked out at a rate of ten cents an hour. The superintendents, "who knew what was required," had gravel spread on the roads and replaced wooden bridges and causeways with more permanent ones made of stone. "A proper width was secured, stone drains were laid and the road put into a handsome shape so as to secure ease and safety to the traveller." Repairs were made where and when 148Gardiner Lyceum, Report of the Committee on Roads, p. 16. m flu .. 237 they were needed, particular efforts being made to insure drainage during spring thaws and after storms. According to the selectman, the town's roads had been improved greatly within a few years with an annual expenditure of about $2,000, whereas under the old system it had been common to vote $3,000 in labor, which had had to be supplemented by about $1,000 out of the town treasury. There had been opposition to the plan, but it had gradually subsided}!+9 In Bath the system was somewhat different. The resi- dents of the central part of town paid their taxes in money and the selectmen supervised its expenditure, although it had proved necessary "to conciliate the people of the remote districts, who were loath to abandon entirely the old system of working out their highway taxes." District surveyors con- tinued to be elected in rural areas of the town and they were to permit anyone on their lists to work out his tax "if he is disposed to labor as cheap as others can be hired."150 Most rural inland towns, however, continued to vote sums of money to be worked out at inflated rates; those who chose to pay rather than work generally were able to do so at a reduced rate. Thus under Vermont law anyone who worked 149Ibid., Pp. 16-17. 150Ibid., Pp. 15-16. 238 out his tax was to be allowed ten cents an hour, but he also could pay in cash at a discount of twenty-five per cent.151 But, it was often possible to make an even bet- ter deal by hiring a substitute, Isaiah Thomas in 1823 got the surveyor in his district to work out his tax of $48.25 at a reduction of almost thirty-eight per cent.152 According to the Gardiner Lyceum report, farmers generally chose to labor on the roads, working off their taxes at a rate of about one dollar a day, but in the villages most IT- taxes were worked out by substitutes. These were generally "the cheapest or poorest laborers," willing to take fifty or Sixty cents a day from individuals who normally paid from eighty-three to ninety cents "for laborers in their private business."153 Even at inflated rates, a town's highway tax lists, at least on paper, represented a great many man-days of labor. There were 101 names on Manchester, New Hampshire, highway tax lists in 1800. Had the tax been collected fully in labor (at sixty—seven cents a day), forty-six individuals would have had to work four days or more, l l 5 Vermont, Revised Statutes (1840), c. 21, sec. 9. 152Hill, II, 140; n., 144. 153 pp. 10-11. Gardiner Lyceum, Report of the Committee on Roads, 239 eight of them owing between ten and seventeen days.154 Of 133 Andover, New Hampshire, taxpayers in 1790, forty- five owed the equivalent of between three and eight days' labor each.155 Highway taxes were assessed against 358 polls and property owners in Durham, New Hampshire, in 1813, for 129 of whom taxes were equivalent to between ) four and ten days of work. 5 There were 451 rate payers in twenty-four of Hartland, Vermont's, twenty-five highway districts in 1833. For about seventy per cent of them the highway tax amounted to four days' labor or less (the median amount being between two and three days); but for sixteen individuals it was equivalent to between ten and twenty-six 157 days each. The same year there were 356 names on eighteen district lists in Barnet, Vermont. Assuming a ten-hour day and an average rate of nine cents an hour 158 (the rate ac- 154Early Records of the Town of’Manchester, ed. George Waldo Browne, III (Manchester, 1908), pp. 21-27. lssAndover, N.H., Invoice Receipts, 1781-1798, New Hampshire Historical Society. 156Durham, N.H., Highway Accounts, 1810-1830, New Hampshire Historical Society. 157Hartland, Vt., Papers. 158Most of the figures in this paragraph are based on an assumed ten-hour day. The actual working day, however, often was eight hours. See M. T. Runnels, History of Sanborn- ton, New Hampshire (Boston, 1822), p. 196; William B. Lapham, History of Rumford, Oxford County, Maine (Augusta, 1890),p.59. 240 tually was ten cents an hour during the summer, when two- thirds of the tax was to be worked out, and seven cents during the falD, if everyone had worked out his tax, eighteen would have owed one day's work or less, 149 would have had to work between one and two days, 171 between two and ten days, and eighteen between ten and ] 159 nineteen days. The tax in these eighteen districts h-. w! in 1 -' Liana. (there were at least three other districts for which no returns are available) would have amounted to roughly 1,200 man-days. This was the maximum amount collectable and it is doubtful that anywuere near the maximum ever was paid in labor. Individuals received credit against their taxes by furnishing teams, carts, ploughs, and lumber and other materials needed in undertaking repairs. Allen Packard of Charlotte, Vermont, paid $4.83 of his $14.83 highway tax in 1820 by supplying brandy for the use of highway 1a— 160 borers. Furthermore,although all the New England states had laws under which a person could be compelled to pay his 159Barnet, Vt., Highway Surveyors Accounts, property of David Warden, Barnet, Vt. 160Charlotte, Vt., Memorandum Book of Credit of Work Done on the Roads in the Fifth Highway District, Vermont Historical Society. 241 tax in one way or another, they were not always strictly enforced and individuals often were permitted to be de- linquent in meeting their obligations.161 Eighupnine in- habitants of Hartland in 1833 owed arrears from previous years which exceeded the amount of their 1833 tax and thir- ty of these apparently made no payment whatsoever that year} A day on the roads was not often spent in hard work. According to the above-mentioned Augusta selectman, under the highway labor system, "no man feels any particular in- E terest except to see the sun set from day to day, and if V his taxes are cancelled, he cares not whether the roads are improved or not."163 Charles L. Flint, secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, in 1871 recalled,"near- ly half a century ago, seeing the men sitting by the sunny Side of a bank in early spring, drinking their grog and telling stories a larger part of the time than they were at work on the roads."164 In his memoirs of life in En— 161NewHampshire, for example, required surveyors "to levy the delinquent's part or proportion of said money by distress, in the same manner as the several constables and collectors are enabled by law to do in collecting the state tax." New Hampshire, Laws, V, c. 14 (1786). 162Hartland, Vt., Papers. 163Gardiner Lyceum, Report of the Committee on Roads, p. 170 161*Massachusetts, Board of Agriculture, Eighteenth Annual Report (1871), p. 58. 2&2 field, Kassachusetts, during the 1830's, Francis Underwood recounted the doings of a group of highway laborers. Pro— ceeding towards the town line, they met a similar party from Ware, "and, as there were various old scores to be settled between the respective towns' champions, the surveyors in charge on either side got very little more work done that day." There were foot races, a tug—of-war, and other con- L tests, "and at the luncheon new rum was freely circulated." 165 The afternoon was spent in story-telling and singing. A working party on the roads J88 never a ! just representation of the people of Quab- bin [Enfield] . Few thriving mechanics, and none of the men of influence, did per- sonal service, because it was better to pay the money than lose a day. The force which a surveyor could muster was largely made up of hirelings, and of those who did not count for much in town or church af- fairs; and that accounts for the hilarity, as well as thelggsy-going way in which the work was done. It was complained that surveyors refused to hold their 167 posts for more than a year. Although this was not always the case, there was a large turnover in the job. Of 1&2 men 165Underwood, pp. 120-127- 166Ibid., p. 127. Tradesmen sometimes permitted their customers to settle accounts by taking their place on the roads. See Account Book of Jesse Hitchcock, Old Sturbridge Village Library, pp. 108—109. 167Gardiner Lyceum, Report of the Committee on Roads, p.10. 243 who served as surveyors of highways in Durham, New Hampshire, between 1810 and 1830, one held office every year and three others served ten, fourteen, and fifteen years respectively. But ninety-four had the job only one or two years.168 Thus the majority of highway surveyors in Durham had little op- portunity to gain experience. Some New Englanders did spend a number of days of work on the roads during the course of a year. Joseph Shaw, a Southbridge storekeeper and farmer, worked ten days on the 169 Q t“ I o." -‘ _' roads in his district when he was surveyor in 1820. ilas Eldred of Falmouth, Massachusetts, a storekeeper who served many years as surveyor, worked twenty-six days in 1831 and more than thirty days in 1832. Of thirty-three men in his district, eight worked five days or more and one worked seventeen days during the latter year.170 Although it seems likely that Eldred and his men were involved in building roads as well as in repairing them, the expenditure in time was considerable. How much actually was 168Durham, N.H., Highway Accounts, 1810-1830. 169Daybook and Diary of Joseph Shaw, Old Sturbridge Village Library. 170Account and Daybook of Silas Eldred, Old Stur- bridge Village Library. 2M; accomplished can only be conjectured, however, and one also is struck by the seasonal nature of the work. In 1831, for example, Eldred spent four days clearing snow in January. With the exception of one day in July, the remainder of the work was done between May 30 and June 21 and between the first and twentieth of August. Six of Shaw's ten days on the roads were in June and the other four in . September. Vermont law required that at least three-fourths of the highway tax be worked out in May and June and the re- 171 mainder in September and October. It was believed that the time to undertake extensive repairs was "as soon as the earth shall have become perfectly settled after the spring rains, say the 25th of May or first of June."172 By late May, however, roads usually were in worse condition and required more work than would have been the case if minor repairs had been made during the spring. As a Norway, Maine, man pointed out, with the use of a hoe a surveyor could make temporary drains to draw off pools formed by melting snow in March or April, bestowing " a little labor . . . to perhaps better advantage than at any 171Vermont, Revised Statutes (1840): c. 21: sec. 14° 1 172Dwight to Ammidon, March 10, 1800, Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company Records. 2h5 other season of the year."173 Surveyors, nevertheless, concentrated on making major repairs, calling out large crews during a relatively short period. Thus a Charlotte, Vermont, farmer with a large tax to pay worked it out dur- ing two days in June, 1818, by laboring himself and by bring— ing two yoke of oxen, a plow, a Negro hired man to hold the plow, and a boy to drive the oxen.17h Repair work often was poorly done. A foreign visitor traveling through western Massachusetts on a spring day in 1833 observed "The American system of road—mending; or more a correctly speaking, road-destroying." A plough, drawn by four, and occasionally six oxen, with two drivers, one man hold- ing by the stilts, and another standing on the beam, is passed along the margins of the road, turning every fifty yards. The loosened earth is then moved to the centre of the road, by men with shovels, or by a levelling-box [scraper] drawn by ' oxen, the stones, great and small, being first carefully removed from amongst the earth, and in many instances more were thrown aside tiag sufficient to Macada- mize the road. A quarter of a century earlier a traveler on the road between Stafford Springs and Brookfield saw an even more primitive l73Norway Advertiser, April 12, l8uh. l740har1otte, Vt., Memorandum Book of Credit of Work Done on the Roads in the Fifth Highway District. l75Patrick Shirreff, A Tour through North America (Edinburgh, 1835), p. 37. 2A6 operation. There were "above twelve yoke of oxen drag- ging a sort of scoop along the road, to level the ruts; behind the scoop, large boughs and branches of trees were fastened, for the purpose of smoothing the gravel."176 Probably the most common fault lay in using sod, rather than gravel, to fill up holes and ruts. According to the Gardiner Lyceum report, the usual method of repair- é ing was to plough up the ditches, using the turf and other vegetable matter which had accumulated there to patch the road. Such materials "never . . . can form a solid road."77 Frequently, too, repair crews simply would leave dirt piled in the center of the road, trusting in vain that traffic eventually would level it and make the road smooth. "I have seen patches," wrote one observer, "which were thus rendered impassable for several weeks."178 Repairs such as these never were permanent. One other type of maintenance, that often had to be performed,was breaking a path after snow storms. The ob— ject was not to remove snow - the Third New Hampshire Turn- pike instructed its superintendent to shovel snow into the 176Lambert, III, 89- 177Gardiner Lyceum, Report of the Committee on RoadS, p. 7. 178Christian Mirror, October 2A, 1823. 2A7 road when it became bare179 - but to form a smooth, hard track for sleighs and sleds. On public roads this work also was done under the direction of the highway survey- ors. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, snow rollers came into widespread use.180 Earlier, however, it was common after a heavy storm to form a pair of run- k ner tracks with a heavily loaded sled, drawn by a long . 18 line of ox teams. "The common roads of the United States are inferior to those of any other civilized country," wrote the American civil engineer William Gillespie in 1847.182 The Scottish engineer David Stevenson a decade earlier had reached a sim- ilar conclusion, but also found New England roads, although 183 good only during the summer, the best in the country. This had been the approximate position of New England roads 179Third New Hampshire Turnpike Papers. lBOHenry N. Andrews, Jr. "Rolling the Roads." Old- Time New England, XXXVIII (19485, on. “‘ 181Mabel C. Coolidge, The History of Petersham, Massachusetts (Hudson, Mass., l9h8), p. 16h; Edith de Wolfe et al (eds.T: The History of Putney, Vermont (Putney, 1953), pp. 32-83; Levi W. Leonard and Josiah L. Seward, The History of Dublin, New Hampshire (Dublin, 19201, p. 582; Morison, Pp. 2877.288 0 182Gillespie, p. 1. 183Stevenson, p. 218. 248 relative to those of Europe and other parts of the United States during the late eighteenth century, as was shown in Chapter I. Nevertheless, the methods of construction and repair discussed in this chapter, as primitive as they still were, represented an advancement that manifested it- self in roads considerably better than those of the late eighteenth century and capable of supporting a growing com- merce. An inhabitant of Peterborough, New Hampshire, con- trasting conditions at the time of that town's centennial * 2"". in 1839 with those during his boyhood, said, E when I was a boy, a weekly mail, carried upon horseback by a very honest old man by the name of Gibbs, afforded all the mail facilities which the business of the town required. Now, Sir, we see a stage coach pass through and transporting a heavy mail. Your highways and bridges have been astonishingly improved, showing a praiseworthy liberality on the pagt of the town to that important object. A "Of late years," wrote an editor, also in 1839, New Eng- landers had shown a "passion for improving roads" which had resulted in "their actual improvement to an extent be- yond what . . . settlers fifty or sixty years ago would have anticipated." New England roads were poor during the spring and fall, he continued, but "so much has travel in— l8l’fJohn H. Morison, An Address Delivered at the Centennial Celebration in Peterborough, N.H., October 24, 1839 (Boston, 18397, p. 96. 249 creased, so great is the transit of heavy goods, as well as of many travellers to and from the interior and sea- board, that at the worst period of the roads there seems, 185 Much remained to be if possible to be most travel." done, but the period of 1790 to 18AO had been one of im- provement in the roads of New England. 185The Farmer's Monthly Visitor, I (1839). 53. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY This study was drawn from a wide variety of sources, including public records, business records, newspapers, diaries and travel accounts, and secondary works, including local histories. A discussion of the most useful sources follows: I. Public Records. Petitions and related docu— i TY' ments in state archives were useful sources of informa- tion as to road conditions, the typesof’roads being built, and public opinion in regard to roads. Of great- est use were: Connecticut, Archives, Connecticut State Library, Series I, II; New Hampshire, Records and Archives, Concord, Legislative Papers; Rhode Island, Archives, Rhode Island State Capitol. Materials in the last-named repos- itory are particularly well catalogued. Supplementary New Hampshire material was found in Documents and Records relating to the Province of New Hampshire, ed. Nathaniel Bouton et a1. (#0 vols.; Manchester, N.H., l872-19h3). The records of county courts served similar pur- poses and, in addition, were one of the few sources of information as to construction standards. The records 250 fl“? 251 of at least one county in each state except Rhode Island were studied. Rhode Island law gave county courts only limited jurisdiction in highway matters. The records used were as follows: Berkshire County, Mass. General Sessions of the Peace and Commissioners Records. County Commissioners Office, Pittsfield, Mass. Cumberland County, Maine. Sessions and County Commis- sioners Records. County Commissioners Office, Portland, Maine. Grafton County, N.H. Highway Petitions, 1773-1800. County Courthouse, Woodsville, N.H. a Hillsborough County, N.H. Records of Roads. County Courthouse, Nashua, N.H. Windham County, Conn. Court Records. Connecticut State Library, Hartford. Windham County, Vt. Court Records. County Clerk's Office, Brattleboro, Vt. Worcester County, Mass. Sessions and County Commis- sioners Records. County Engineer's Office, Worcester, Mass. Most Connecticut court records for the late eight- eenth and early nineteenth centuries now are to be found in the Connecticut State Library. Connecticut colonial laws are found most easily in The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, ed. J. Hammond Trumbull §E_§1. (15 vols.; Hartford, 1868- 90). The Public Records of the State of Connecticut, ed. Charles J. Hoadly g§_§1. (Hartford, 1890-) thus far has continued the earlier series to the beginning of the 252 nineteenth century. Connecticut turnpike charters are to be found in Resolves and Private Laws of the State of Connecticut (2 vols.; Hartford, 1837), II. For Massachu- setts colonial laws, see The Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachusetts Bay (21 vols.; Boston, 1860— 1922). Early Massachusetts turnpike acts are in Private and Special Statutes of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (- (3 vols.; Boston, 1805), II, III. New Hampshire laws, both public and private, passed between 1670 and 1835, are contained in Laws of New Hampshire, ed. Albert S. Batchellor g£_gl.(10 vols.; Manchester, Concord, Bristol, N.H., l90h-22). Other than these series, the principal sources were session laws and the various compilations and revisions cited throughout this work. One other public document deserves special mention. Albert Gallatin's "Report on Roads and Canals," American State Papers, Miscellaneous, I, contains valuable informa- tion about turnpikes in New England and elsewhere. II. Business Records. Other than the account books of storekeepers, tradesmen, etc., the business records used for this study were principally turnpike company records. These contain information about stockholders, about cor- porate policies and problems, and - in all too few cases - about finances. The largest collections are in the Connect- icut State Library, the New Hampshire Historical Society, 3 17 17 125 79 12 Total 11 13 44 10 14 24 17 18 15 15 2 0 12 O 15 4 APPENDIX I H . 25 N. 21 Mass. 12 roads; those at the right are for com- 10 represent companies that built their panies that failed to do so.) (The figures at the left of each column 44 37 l TURNPIKE INCORPORATIONS BY STATES, 1794-1840a Conn . 0 4 O 4 6 2 5 2 1 8 6 5 0 1 5 1 5 5 0 36 1 1 2 1794 1795 1796 1797 1798 1799 1800 1801 1802 1803 1804 1805 1806 1807 1808 1809 1810 1812 1813 1814 1815 1816 1817 1818 1811 66 1 2 260 1 0 3 261. DL hdass. Conn. 0 0 11 1819 1820 0 1 0 4 3 1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 4 2 3 3 1 1 l 4 2 1831 1832 1833 1834 1835 1836 1837 1838 1839 1840 0 0 0 0 l4 Tknal, 1794- 1840 29 34 242 150 18 23 28 33 15 64 50 98 aWood, passim; P. E. Taylor, "Turnpike Era, " pp. 345-346. bIncluding Maine . APPENDIX H COST PER MILE OF NEW ENGLAND TURNPIKES Connecticuta Cost per Company Cost Length Mile Hartford 81 New Haven $79, 261 34 3/ 4 mi. $2, 281 Rimmon Falls 9, 443 6 1, 574 Farmington 81 Bristol 15, 252 10 1, 525 Cheshire 22, 810 17 l, 342 New Haven 81 Milford 15, 742 12 1, 312 Farmington River 11, 751 11 1, 068 Waterbury River 38, 770 41 946 Derby 7, 520 8 940 Greenwoods 19, 482 2 1 928 Bridgeport 81 Newtown 22, 620 26 870 Stafford Pool 10, 515 13 809 Ousatonick 13, 885 20 694 Torrington 1 1, 889 18 660 Hebron 81 Middle Haddam 7, 908 13 608 Salisbury 81 Canaan 6, 005 10 600 Hartford 81 Tolland 8, 874 16 555 New Preston 5, 405 10 540 Canaan 81 Litchfield 10, 565 20 528 Oxford 4, 046 8 506 Middlesex 17, 545 35 501 Litchfield 81 Harwinton 5, 406 11 491 Straits 16, 796 36 467 Woodstock 81 Thompson 5, 597 12 466 Talcott Mountain 8, 840 19 465 Pomfret 81 Killingly 3, 706 8 1/ 2 436 Granby 8, 438 20 422 New Milford 81 Litchfield 4, 507 12 376 Norwich 81 Woodstock 14, 100 39 362 Boston 17, 073 52 328 262 263 Cost per Company Cost Length Mile Windham 8, 680 30 289 Hartford, New London, Windham 81 Tolland County 5, 881 23 256 New London 81 Windham County 4, 807 24 200 Danbury 81 Ridgefield 1, 908 10 191 Fairfield, Weston, 81 Reading 1, 895 12 158 Norwalk 81 Danbury 2, 834 22 129 Massachusettsb Salem 182, 063 12 1/2 14, 600 Newburyport 81 Boston 417, 000 32 13, 031 Blue Hill 78, 303 8 9, 800 Dorchester 43, 686 5 8, 740 Andover 81 Medford 48, 921 6 8, 150 Norfolk 81 Bristol 228, 798 34 6, 729 Braintree 81 Weymouth 38, 250 8 1/ 2 4, 500 Worcester 150, 000 40 3, 750 Lancaster 81 Bolton 6, 291 2 1/2 2, 520 Essex 67, 905 28 2, 425 New Bedford 81 Bridgewater 49, 662 25 1/ 2 1, 950 Hartford 81 Dedham 32, 029 16 1/2 1, 940 Union 35, 484 22 1, 600 Taunton 81 South Boston 34, 435 21 1/2 1, 600 North Branch 25, 740 17 1/4 1, 500 Alford 81 Egremont 8, 219 6 1, 370 Tenth Massachusetts 48, 000 36 1, 340 Housatonic River 16, 647 13 l, 260 William stown 10, 000 10 l, 000 Fifth Massachusetts 54, 965 58 948 Third Massachusetts 29, 989 32 937 Great Barrington 81 Alford 8, 799 9 1/ 2 925 Barre 10, 000 11 910 First Massachusetts 11, 200 13 861 Fifteenth Massachusetts 16, 353 19 1/2 839 Sixth Massachusetts 33, 000 43 767 Twelfth Massachusetts 12, 771 20 639 Belchertown 81 Greenwich 4, 900 7 3/ 4 633 Becket 4, 229 7 600 Ninth Massachusetts 13, 223 22 600 If Khm- 2611 Cost per Company ' Cost Length Mile Douglas, Sutton 81 Oxford 6, 256 11 570 Worcester 81 Fitzwilliam 4, 300 8 1/4 500 Petersham 81 Monson 14, 317 41 350 New HampshireC Tenth New Hampshire 40, 000 20 2, 000 Second New Hampshire 80, 000 50 1, 600 Sixth New Hampshire 16, 000 10 1, 600 New-Hampshire Turnpike Road 55, 799 36 l, 550 Jefferson 18, 400 14 l, 314 Coos 15, 074 12 l, 256 Fourth New Hampshire 61, 157 51 1, 200 Croydon 35, 948 34 l, 057 Third New Hampshire 50, 000 50 l, 000 Branch Road'and Bridge 7, 510 7 1/ 2 1, 000 Cheshire 19, 610 24 817 Rhode Islandd Providence 81 Pawtucket 6, 800 4 1, 700 West Glocester 5, 500 7 785 Glocester 5, 040 7 720 Providence 81 Norwich 7, 200 19 379 We Passumpsic 26, 000 20 1, 300 Mt. Tabor 3, 000 11 273 aGallatin, American State Papers, Miscellaneous, 1, 871-872. bWood, Pp. 57-212. cHarmer and More, A Gazetteer of the State of New Hampshire (Concord, 1823), pp. 15-16; First New Hampshire Turnpike, Records of the Directors; Shirley, Granite Monthly, IV, 429. 265 dRhode Island, Archives, Providence and Pawtucket Turnpike Accounts; Petitions to the General Assembly, X, 9; XXXII, 45 . eWood, p. 270; Mt. Tabor Turnpike Company, Record Book. APPENDIX IH SHORT-TERM EARNINGS OF THIRTY CONNECTICUT TURNPIKES PRIOR TO 18088’ Average Earning Cost of Annual Company Period Road Tolls Expenses Profit Talcott Mountain 3 Yrs . $8, 839 .67 $7, 361 .44 $3, 053 .60 16 .2% Oxford 3 4, 045 .61 2, 096 .45 532 .84 12 . 9 New Milford 81 Litchfield 4 1/2 4,506 .95 3, 313 .49 1, 182 .53 10.5 Litchfield 81 Harwinton 4 5, 406.28 3, 094 .63 1, 147 .48 9.0 Hartford, New London, Wind- ham, 81 T01- land County 3 5,881.50 3,692.07 2, 157.37 8.7 Canaan 81 Litchfield 4 1/6 10, 565 .23 7, 048 .78 3, 753 .06 7 .5 Danbury 81 Ridgefield 2 1, 907 .80 409. 98 140.21 7 . l Hartford 81 Tolland 3 8, 874.17 2,489.35 726.01 6.6 Greenwoods 3 5/12 19, 481.87 9,453.03 5,486.21 6.0 Straits 4 16, 796 .47 11, 582 .90 7, 994 . 12 5 .4 Bridgeport 81 Newtown 2 22,619.81 3,357.27 914.80 5.4 Derby 2 7, 520.00 1, 049. 19 273 .48 5 .2 Cheshire 3 22, 810.44 5, 494.23 2, 105 .89 5 .0 Norwalk 81 Danbury 2 2, 833 . 64 677 .42 429 .03 4 .4 Windham 1 11/12 8,679.75 2,985.75 2,309.64 4.1 Middlesex 2 17, 544 .88 4, 494.22 3, 096 .73 4 .0 Granby 2 3/4 8,438.13 1,753.76 991.13 3.3 New Preston 2 5, 405 .07 426 . 17 115 .07 2 . 9 266 267 Average Earning Cost of Annual Compagy Period Road Tolls Expenses Profit Farmington River 3 1/2 11,751.28 2,110.41 1,025.32 2.6 Salisbury 81 Canaan 3 6, 005.05 713.87 294.33 2.3 Farmington 81 Bristol 3 15, 252 . 10 1, 147 . 13 224 . 99 2 . 0 New London 81 Windham County 9 11/12 4,806.92 3,451.08 2,498.22 2.0 Waterbury River 2 1/6 38,769.94 1,572.40 365.67 1.4 Rimmon Falls 3 9, 443 .45 1, 256 .38 985 .04 0 . 96 Fairfield, Weston, 81 Reading 2 1, 895.02 198.05 165.50 0.81 Hartford 81 New Haven 5 79, 260.95 8, 800.74 5, 808 .02 0.76 Ousatonick 3 13, 884 .58 l, 941 .60 1, 719 .84 0.53 Boston 1 1/3 17,073.30 2,085.35 2,072.78 0.05 Torrington 2 11,889.07 1,089.77 1,201.15 -0.47 Norwich 81 Woodstock 2 11/12 14, 100 .00 408 .90 705 .00 -0.72 aGallatin, American State Papers, Miscellaneous, I, 871-872. “I‘D Lt)0 r r r 51'“ re. 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The richest collection of records for a single toll road is that of the Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike Company in the Dedham (Mass.) Historical Society. III. Newspapers. A great deal of time was spent rewardingly in scanning newspapers of the period 1790 to l8AO for articles containing descriptionsand criticisms of road and travel conditions, as well as for advertise— ments suggesting the types of goods being tranSported overland. Among the newspapers used most extensively were the American Traveller and the Columbian Centinel (Boston), the Connecticut Courant (Hartford), the Green Mountain Patriot (Peacham, Vt.), The Massachusetts Spy (Worcester), the Providence Gazette, and the_§ug (Pitts- field, Mass.). Clarence L. Brigham, History and Bibli- ography of American Newspaper§,1690-1820 (2 vols.; Worcester, 19h?) is a useful guide to the location of newspapers. IV. Diaries and Travel Accounts. The authors of both categories of works frequently commented about the condition of the roads and the types of traffic that were to be found in them. Diaries of greatest use were: The Adams Papers: Diarygand Autobiography of John Adams, ed. Lyman H. Butterfield (h vols.; Cambridge, 1961); The 25h Diary of William Bentley,yD.D. (h vols.; Salem, Mass., 1905-1A); The Diary of Isaiah Thomas, ed. Benjamin T. Hill (2 vols.; Worcester, 1909); Diary of Thomas Robbins, DLQ.,ed.Increase N. Tarbox (2 vols.; Boston, 1886); and A Journal for the Years 1739-18Q§_byyCharles Lane of Stratham, New Hampshire, ed. Charles L. Hanson (Concord, N.H., 1937)- Timothy Dwight, president of Yale, was an inveterate traveler who visited nearly every corner of New England, as well as other parts of the United States, during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and left vivid descriptions of much of what he saw. His Travels in New England and New York (4 vols.; New Haven, 1821), although filled with pieties, is an important source for the student of New England life during that period. Among the many travel accounts written by foreign visitors to the United States, those of greatest value for this study were: John Bernard, Retrospections of America, 1797-1811 (New York, 1887); J. P. Brissot de warville, New Travels in the United States of America, 1788 (Cambridge, 196A); Francois Jean, Marquis de Chastellux, Travels in North America in the Years 1780, 17811_and 1782 (2 vols.; Chapel Hill, 1963); Edward A. Kendall, Travels through the Northern Parts of the United States (3 vols.; New York, _; 255 1809); John Lambert, Travels through Lower Canada, and the United States of North America, in the Years 1806, 1807Lg1808 (3 vols.; London, 1810); Patrick Shirreff, A Tour through North America (Edinburgh, 1835); David Stevenson, Sketch of the Civil Engineering of North America (London, 1838); Henry ansey, An Excursion to the United States of North America in the Summer of 179A (Salisbury, England, 1798); and Isaac Weld, Travels through the States of North America (London, 1807). V. Autobiographies and Reminiscences. These must be read with considerable care, as the events they des- cribe often are hazy memories of the authors' early lives. Several such books, nevertheless, provide useful descrip- tions of roads and travel in New England during the period under consideration, the accuracy of which can be verified by comparison with other sources. These include: S. G. Goodrich, Recollections of a Lifetime (2 vols.; New York, 1857); Francis H. Underwood, Quabbin (Boston, 1893); and Sidney Willard, Memories of YOuth and Manhood (2 vols.; Cambridge, 1855). VI. Treatises on the Building and Repairing of Roads. Several books published in the United States dur- ing the first half of the eighteenth century proved val- uable not only for what they reveal about contemporary 256 theories about the subject, but also for what they show about actual practices, which usually fell far short of theory. These were: Gardiner Lyceum, Report Of the Com- mittee on Roads (Gardiner, Me., 1831); William.M. Gilles- pie, A.Manual Of the Principles and Practices of Road- Making (1st ed.; New York, 1847), which for many years was a standard work on the subject; and S. W. Johnson, Rural Economy (New Brunswick, N. J., 1806). Essays in The Eighteenth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture (Boston, 1871) show that practices did not change greatly before the post- Civil war period. VII. History of Roads and Transporation. For the colonial period, see Isabel S. Mitchell, Roads and Road- Making_in Colonial Connecticut (Tercentenary Commission of the State of Connecticut, 1933). A good starting point for the study of New England turnpikes is Fredric J. Wbod, The Turnpikes of New England and Evolution of the Same through England, Virginia, and Maryland (Boston, 1919), which contains information about a large number of indi— vidual turnpike companies. Philip E. Taylor, "The Turn- pike Era in New England" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1934) is especially strong in its dis- cussion of the economic aspects of the toll-road movement. 257 A few conclusions, however, require updating. The best history of a single turnpike company is John M. Shirley, "The Fourth New Hampshire Turnpike," Granite Monthly, IV (1881). ' Studies of turnpikes in other areas of the United States in which they were of great importance include: Joseph A. Durrenberger, Turnpikes: A Study of the Toll Road Movement in the Middle Atlantic States and.Maryland (Valdosta, Ga., 1931) and Robert F. Hunter, "The Turn- pike Movement in Virginia" (unpublished Ph.D. disserta- tion, Columbia University, 1957). Sources used for Eng- lish roads and transportation were: J. W. Gregory, The Story of the Road (London, 1951) and Edwin A. Pratt, A.History of Inland Transport and Communication in Eng- lggg (London, 1912). Other aspects of transportation during the period are discussed in Edward C. Kirkland, Men, Cities and Transportation: A Studypin New England History, 1820- lEQQ (2 vols.; Cambridge, 19h8); Christopher Roberts, The Middlesex Canal, 1793-1860 (Cambridge, 1938); and George R. Taylor, The TranSportation Revolutioni 1815- lgég (New York, 1951). VIII. Local History. The quality of local his- tories is extemely uneven and one must use them with great care. However, in cases in which the author was describ- 258 ing events with which he was personally familiar or in which he had access to otherwise unavailable materials, they can be of great help. Ellen D. Larned, A History of Windham County, Connecticut (2 vols.; WOrcester, 1874, 1880) is still a model of what a good local history should be, both for its depth of research and for its relating of local events to happenings in the larger world. An excel- lent recent work is Peter J. Coleman, The Transformation of Rhode Island,1790-l860 (Providence, 1963). Other works that proved useful for a study of roads were: Jeremy Belknap, The History of New Hampshire (3 vols.; Dover, N.H., 1812); Ernest L. Bogart, Peacham; The Story of a Vermont Hill Town (Montpelier, Vt., 1948); Richard D. Brown, Urbanization in Springfield, Massachusetts (Spring- field, 1962); Benjamin Chase, History of Old Chester [N.H.] (Auburn, N.H., 1869); George A. Cochrane, History of the Town of Antrim, New Hampshire (Manchester, N.H., 1880); Benjamin Hobart, History of the Town of Abington (Abington, Mass., 1866); Ezra L. Johnson, Newtown (Newtown,Conn., 1917); William.Lincoln, History of Worcester (Worcester, Mass., 1837); John K. Lord, A History of the Town of Hanover, New Hampshire (Hanover, 1928); George A. Morison, A History of Peterboropgh,,NeW'Hampshire (Rindge, N.H., 195h); Jonas Reed, 259 A History of Rutland [Mass.] (Worcester, 1836); and Ezra S. Stearns, History of Ashburnham, Massachusetts (Ashburn- ham, 1887). IX. General History. The standard account of economic life in inland New England ca. 1800 is Percy W. Bidwell, "Rural Economy in New England at the Be- ginning of the Nineteenth Century," Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, XX (1916), pp. 241-399. As has been suggested in this work, some of Bidwell's conclusions are in need of revision. Certain shortcomings of the Bidwell thesis are pointed out by Rodney C. Loehr in "Self-Sufficiency on the Farm," Agricultural History, XXVI (April, 1952). A work of con- siderable merit is Margaret E. Martin, "Merchants and Trade of the Connecticut River Valley," Smith College Studies in History, XXIV (Northampton, Mass., 1938-39). HIGRN STRTE UNI V )3) ))))|3|)) 3)))))|)))) 4()3) |))|)))3)|))))L))))|)3)|