Salisbury House, Sandy Creek, New York

National Hotel Survivor of Canal and Stagecoach Days

The National Hotel was on the old Buffalo - Moscow stage route. River Road which intersects with Route 20A across from the hotel driveway was the main route to Mt. Morris and south to Dansville. The portion of Route 36 from Leicester to Mt. Morris was not constructed until 1947 for the cement trucks to travel for the Mt. Morris dam project. The River Road route may have been the Alleghany stage line south. The hotel was originally named the National Exchange House until 1844 when the name was changed to the National Hotel. The earliest recorded tavern license we could find was issued to Nelson Thinney in September of 1837. It was also along the Genesee Valley Canal and later the Pennsylvania Railroad.  It is on the National Register of Historic Sites. Photos by Richard Palmer.

Mail Stage to Ovid

Ithaca Journal
November 16, 1825

Wright's Tavern, Middlebury and East Road, Wyoming County, N.Y.

Bygone Days - The Stagecoach and the Tavern

Remnant of Stagecoach Days - Globe Hotel in Phelps, N.Y., in 1885

Geneva Advertiser

May 1, 1888
  The old Globe Hotel in Phelps will probably be declared a nuisance, and ordered either repaired or torn down. It is unoccupied and from outward appearance unfit for occupancy.  

Geneva Advertiser
April 14, 1891
  That eye-sore in the village of Phelps, the old Globe Hotel,  is likely soon to change hands, and will fall into those of S. K.Bowker, who will certainly tear it down or remodel it. Any change will improve it.

Geneva Advertiser
February 2, 1892
  The venerable David Clark died at Halls Corners on Thursday, January 28th, aged 72 years. He died on the place where he was born, now the home of his married daughter. The funeral was held on Saturday, Rev. A. B. Temple officiating, and the internment was in the burial ground of the Union Church, where rest the bodies of two wives. His has been a changeable life; he has been well-to-do in past years, but unfortunate dealings nearly wiped out his possessions, one of which was the purchase of the Globe Hotel in Phelps several years ago. 

Phelps Citizen
Thursday, May 1, 1902
  Fred Stephenson received word a few days ago of the death of his uncle, Charles Wormley who died in Paola, Kansas, on Tuesday of last week. Mr. Wormley was formerly a well known resident of this place and left here in 1868. He was proprietor of the old Lawrence House for a number of years. His last visit here was in 1895. He leaves a wife and one daughter. 

  Phelps Citizen, May 8, 1930
(Excerpt from article “Phelps Sixty Years Ago. Recollections of A. B. Thomas)
  “Seventy-five feet west of the Jackson building stood the old ‘Globe ‘ hotel, which at that time was conducted by ‘Charlie’ Wormley. Its roomy porches made a popular ‘hang-out’ on hot summer evenings. Wormley later went west and ‘Ves’ Bowers succeeded to the management. With the new Phelps hotel as a too vigorous a competitor, they gave up the hostelry after two or three years of hard sledding and the property was taken over by a Stanley, N.Y. man on forclosure proceedings and thereafter rapidly descended the scale to the ’break-o-day’ type.

1830 Stagecoach Advertisement

Old Toll Gate at Herkimer, N.Y.

Former Stagecoach Inn in Chittenango

Old Hotel at Stockbridge, N.Y.

Eldorado House in Harpersville in 1876

Rounds Turnpike Tavern in Vestal

    

House at appeared in 1844

 The old house at No. 2 Pumphouse Road in Vestal is a remnant of stagecoach days. It started life as the Rounds Turnpike Tavern in 1821. When brothers John and Jacob Rounds inherited their father's old business in 1844, they named their tavern after the clientele; Drovers Inn.

   “It was an inn for the drovers or the gentleman who brought livestock up through from Pennsylvania up through to cross the river and go into Union and go to market," says Vestal Town Historian Margaret Hadsell. The inn was a convenient stop before crossing the river, a leg of the journey the Rounds' capitalized on. They bought the ferry and collected fares to move the drovers and their livestock across the river to market.

   The large Rounds family was very influential in Vestal. "They really were involved in everything," Hadsell said. They were farmers, owned a mill and a logging business. One member of the Rounds family was station master at the railroad station. Another another ran the coal company, and Jacob Rounds served several terms as Town Supervisor starting in 1859. Jacob also served as Vestal Town Supervisor.

                                      Jacob Rounds in 1876

   The inn's grand opening event was a ball in celebration of President James Polk's election. The event gave rise to a rumor that the Rounds had installed springs in the floor. “I had heard that many many years ago," Hadsell said.  "There are no springs in the floor.” The inn remained in business for 11 years before Jacob Rounds turned it into a private home for his wife and four children. Although it started life as a tavern, it has served as a nursing home, funeral parlor, and a restaurant.

                                   As it appears today

Stagecoach Days in Binghamton

[From: Binghamton: Its Development, Growth and Development, and The Factors In Its History, 1800-1900 by William Summer Lawyer. Century Memorial Publishing Co., Binghamton]

Exchange Hotel in Binghamton catered to stagecoach travelers. From 1855 map of Broome County

(Page 269)  

    Mail  and Stage Coaching. - The first and principal object of the turnpike roads above mentioned was the expectation of profit on the part of their respective proprietors. Still other roads were projected

but were not built, but all these endeavors were directly beneficial to local interests. As early as 1816 or '17 to firm of Teeter & Huntington put a mail coach on the road between Newburgh and Owego, Conrad Teeter himself being the driver and traveling with a two horse team the entire distance, making one trip each way weekly.

    In 1818 a company was formed to operate a mail and passenger stage line over the same route, but extended the latter from Owego to Ithaca, and made tri-weekly trips.  In 1820, Dr. Tracy Robinson and Major Augustus Morgan succeeded to the company's interest in the line and inaugurated a system of travel and transportation which was maintained until the construction of railroads made the business unprofitable.

   This, perhaps, was Major Morgan's most conspicuous service in connection with the early history of Binghamton. He was partner for a time with Dr. Robinson but soon became sole proprietor. The firm ran the first regular stagecoach through this village about 1823. Among the principal lines in which Major Morgan was interested was that from Newburgh to Binghamton and thence to Ithaca. Another was from Jersey City to Owego, and still another from Catskill to Geneva. All were for years operated by the firm of A. Morgan & Co., with this village as general headquarters.

   At the terminal points connections were established and passengers and mails were thereby carried to distant parts of the state. In several of the connecting lines Major Morgan had an interest, though this village was the chief seat of his operations. Among his old-time partners, besides Dr. Robinson, were Isaac Tompkins, Sidney T. Robinson, and perhaps others whose names are not recalled.

   As early as 1818 or '19, a two-horse wagon began carrying passengers between this village and Oxford, under the proprietorship of one Willoughby, making weekly trips. After a year or two the number of

trips was doubled and George Mansell became owner of the line, doing his own driving. In 1825 he put a four-horse mail and passenger coach on the line and extended his route to Utica, but the easier means of

travel afforded by the Chenango canal eventually drove him out of business.

   In 1828 John McPherson put a two-horse stage on the Montrose (P. 270) Turnpike, making weekly trips and thus opening communication with northern Pennsylvania. Daniel Searle afterward became over of this line. the Montrose stage line was maintained until about 25 years ago, when the D., L. & W. Railroad and its connections superseded the wooer means of travel.     

   One of the most interesting periods in the early history of our village was that usually termed stage coaching days. When the system was at its best the daily arrival and departure of the stages was an occasion of great moment among the villagers, while the ever active agents and speculators were constantly on hand to extol the qualities of the land held by them for sale. Our streets were nightly thronged with strangers and frequently the capacity of the village taverns was overtaxed.

    The old Binghamton hotel, at the corner of Court and Water streets, Peterson’s tavern, at the corner of Main and Front streets, and the Broome County house (afterward the Phoenix and still later the Exchange hotel) were almost daily crowded with guests, business men and village hangers-on; and around the barns and in the streets stage coaches and vehicles of every description added to the thriving appearance of the place. The first serious blow to the staging industry in this locality was the construction of the Chenango canal, and the finishing stroke followed when the principal lines of steam railroads were opened for traffic.

Way's Hotel was another Binghamton hostelry in stagecoach days. From the 1855 wall map of Broome County.

    In this connection it is interesting to recall the names of some of the more prominent stage coach drivers who traveled through the village and made headquarters at the taverns of the place. They were “ Jack ”Finch, " Dave " Battle (who drove on the Binghamton, Corbettsville and Montrose line, and was a general favorite along the whole route), James Peterson (colored), ]ohn B. Bowen (who in later years was one of our most respected citizens), Erastus R. Campbell (afterward a business man in the city, for years chief of the fire department, and whose familiar figure is daily seen on our public streets), " Hank " Wolverton, Isaac Wilber, Ira Jennings, Milton Tousley, James Ager, Lemuel Winton, ]ohn Lampkins, Emory Truesdell (on the Montrose line), Asa and Merritt Truesdell, James Rockenstyre, Andrew Carter, “Jake " Hogan, Hubert Hogan, David Wormer and Harry Nash.

Conestoga Wagon Shared Roads with Stagecoaches