Letter from Bathsheba H. Morse Crane

Letter from Bathsheba H. Morse Crane

Taverns
Revolutionary America

Bathsheba Crane describes the town of Westminster, Vermont. She extols the virtues of Vermont and its people, as well as its beautiful landscape. She also describes the old Tory Tavern in romantic terms, describing its elegance and beauty, as well as painting a rich Revolutionary story in the context of the tavern's uses.

Bathsheba H. Morse Crane

Life, Letters, and Wayside Gleanings, for the Folks at Home

North American Women's Letters and Diaries: Colonial to 1950

1811

Kira Stalker

Vermont has been called the home of the brave and the land of the free, which highly complimentary and just tribute is full of tender and beautiful conceptions, as the place where patriotism is born and nurtured, the abode of liberty, where man is allowed to pursue his own plans for the good of his family, to choose his own occupation, and enjoy the avails of his labor, with all the pleasurable associations connected with it. It is called, too, the representative of republican institutions, and her star on the national banner has ever shone with a serene and steady light. Its inhabitants, in yielding to the necessity for labor and economy, have come to be regarded as a hard-working, close-fisted, plodding race, and ignorance and folly, with ridiculous sectional hate, have sneered and poured out their vituperations in opprobrious epithets upon her people. But they, as quiet, law-abiding citizens, have done their own thinking, sustained their political and moral rectitude, and gained new glory by their steady patriotism. It has never bowed the knee to slavery, and the grand workings of its government are seen in its freedom, its equality, and its industrial pursuits. Where organic changes are necessary, the greatest good of the greatest number is consulted, and its social equality comes of building up, not of keeping down, -- from the absence of any arbitrary distinction of
class, and that aristocracy of wealth and fashion so common in other states.
Its free labor, free schools, and free institutions all tend to bring out the energies of its inhabitants, and train them in everything that really ennobles humanity and leads to an upright, moral life; and it is the privilege of every one to win his way to respect and influence by culture and noble living. The poorest man's child may attain the highest honors of state. To the question of the tourist, "Well, my boy, what do you raise up here?" the lad promptly replied, "We raise men, sir." If we look among artists, journalists, lawyers, physicians, educators, divines and statesmen, we shall find that a large proportion of them were once farm-boys among the hills, some of whom were trained in the school of poverty, and, like doves in the east, have come from out the rubbish with "wings covered with silver and feathers with yellow gold." Many of the noblest women originated in retirement, -- in houses with lowly roofs, and small, meagrely furnished rooms with low ceilings.
The state is now filled with a well distributed, intelligent, and prosperous population. There is little poverty, and scarcely a native can be found who cannot both read and write. The fine arts, music, painting, drawing, embroidery, and ornamental work find a place in almost every household.
The last thirty years have greatly changed the social and financial condition of Vermont. While its hard, abstruse thinkers and invincible, self-made men, with their elements of greatness, their stern integrity and devotion to truth and justice, like its old gray churches and public buildings, have passed away; its facilities for education, at home and abroad, have largely increased, its schools and institutions of learning multiplied, and the more modern men of culture have taken their places. Rail-roads and steam navigation have brought it into connection with the large cities, greatly increasing its trade,

commerce, and material wealth. Well do I remember the novel sight of a train of cars passing over its first road. A low, heavy, distant roar, accompanied by a rushing sound, awaking echoes unheard before, announced its approach. We alighted, climbed a little eminence that overlooked the track, and waited. Soon a heavy freight train of eighty cars, propelled by two engines, came from among the green hills, and moved proudly along through the valley, far away among the adjacent woodlands, throwing off dense clouds of smoke, and making the earth tremble. It was a grand spectacle, and picturesque in the extreme, foreshadowing the almost unprecedented future, when the iron horse would traverse every part of the state. An active, well-directed industry has softened down the original ruggedness of the soil, and, by the appliance of labor-saving machinery, the grass and grain growing sections are in a high state of cultivation, producing an abundance for man and beast, whilst every few miles' travel, in almost any direction, presents a charming village, with its churches, public edifices, blooming gardens, and ornamented grounds. Every inhabitant of these villages seems to feel the obligation to do his part in adorning it by the neatness of his habitation, and by keeping everything in perfect repair. It would be difficult to distinguish an old building from a new one but from its antique style of architecture; paint keeps all in a perfect state of renovation. Its cities wear the same aspect of neatness and thrift. Fine homesteads dot the landscape everywhere, looking like opals in settings of green, and furnished with the comforts and elegances of life. When the uninitiated go up to Vermont to rusticate, they sometimes take along their old clothing as "plenty good" to wear in such a backwoods place; but after being introduced to its homes and well-dressed population, the old clothing not unfrequently returns with its owner, as little damaged by wear as that of the Israelites after a sojourn of forty years in the wilderness.
Also, standing alone in antique dignity, are to be met substantial buildings, that belonged to a generation long since passed away. They are "four-square to every wind that blows," (like the men of those times in principle and practice,) two stories high, with square, flat roofs, heavy cornices, and two stacks of chimneys, -- elegant mansions in their day. Among the very ancient are the Town House, bearing the date of 1770 over its door, and the "old Tory Tavern," in the old town of Westminster. 1 The tavern derives its name from having been the headquarters of Tories during the Revolution. It is a large, two-story, gambrel-roofed house, and looms up out of the past full of historic interest, a centenarian in fallen majesty among the more modern structures. Ah, how many brave, strong arms built up its deep cellar of heavy, rough stone! How many toil-worn hands hewed the cumbrous frame-work from the forest, and with patient blows vanquished the difficult task of putting it together, long since forgotten! How many summer heats moulded the bricks that made its massive chimneys with their ample fireplaces! How many lordly pines ceiled up its walls, and gave finish and touch to its carvings on mantel, lintel, and cornice! Aye, how many winters it has battled with the winds that have moaned around its palings and sung through its gables! The sight of its gray walls brings afresh the dark deeds and hair-breadth escapes of a period in the nation's history, when the enemy most to be dreaded and avoided was often a man's nearest neighbor. It has large, square rooms, and two stacks of chimneys, literal piles of masonry, around which are located cupboards, book-cases, closets, wood boxes, and with the appurtenances for the cooking department, each occupies space enough for a good-sized room. In one of them, directly over the great oven, in a little room, or closet without window, is the
"smoke-hole," a kind of opening or fireplace for smoking meat. It is entered from a back chamber in the second story, and while surveying the aperture, nooks and corners about these old chimneys, you cannot avoid the impression that some panel may prove to be a secret door into a private passage in their cavernous sides, where a man might conceal himself if necessary. The spacious entrance-hall in the center is a prominent feature of the house. It has a fireplace toward the farther end, and just inside the front door, against the wall, is the oat-bin, from which the horses were fed. Around this great open fireplace the twilight pictures gather, and waking from their spell, stand out in bold relief in the slumberous air. Here a tallow candle sent its pale rays through the room, dimly disclosing its outlines, and the figures gliding through it. Here the traveler sat in the warm flush of the fire-light, and waited for his mug of flip, while the poker was being heated in the coals upon the hearth. Here wits, bon-vivants, and men about town, assembled, and mirth, story, and song prolonged the hours; and the country beaux and lasses, in quaint costume, came flocking in to spend an evening in the hilarity of an old-fashioned dance in the adjoining rooms. Here friend met friend, and men gathered in knots to discuss the topics of the hour and the interests of the country, maintaining the closest surveillance, lest a fellow-lodger prove a spy in disguise to betray them. Here, too, the Tories, a proscribed and dangerous class, in their love of royalty and allegiance to the king, came when the world was asleep, to plan the defeat of our military operations, and deliver our men into the hands of the enemy. Near by, in the ancient cemetery, are the graves of two men shot by them, at a public gathering of citizens in the town house, March 13, 1775, said to be the first blood shed in the Revolution. The celebrated Ethan Allen, who so valiantly defended and assisted the state in securing its independence, was
married in this old tavern. Legislators, judges, and counselors have graced its festive board.
Vermont is rich in scenery to the lovers of nature. Its hills, mantled in eternal green; its dark ravines, where the sun seldom shines; its gorges, walled up on either side by high, bold, projecting rocks, forming frightful chasms through which the whole volume of a broad river rushes, whirling, eddying, and foaming terrifically in its straitened channel; its falls, overhung by an almost perpendicular mountain wall of granite and boulders; its fortification of rocks, that look as if God had some day ploughed the ground with an earthquake, and "driving his furrows deep," had turned the land upside down, and piled its granite into mountains; its far-reaching forests; its mountain fastnesses, with their peaks and summits, affording extensive views of the grand and sublime, and where play the clouds and storms; its beautiful lakes, with their bays and islands, steamboats, barges, and sloops; its rivers, winding through verdant meadows and among the hills; its bright streams, sunny hillsides, and sweet vales; its very ruggedness even, and irregularity, mingled with its softer bloom of beauty and verdure, -- combine to make it extremely picturesque, and furnish the lover of nature, who calls this delightful scenery all his own, with something new at every turn and at almost every step. It is a kind of Switzerland, where the people of tired cities can find "a rest in the road of life," and learn that beauty deeper than all -- faith in life's hard moments.