The Packet and the Stagecoach

A romanticized cutaway sketch of an early Erie Canal packet boat.

(Syracuse Journal, September 18, 1891)

Fashionable Travel Sixty Years Ago

              ___ 

The Champlain Canal and the Red

            Bird Line of Stages

  [From The Spirit of the Times of Batavia]

 

   The present generation have little idea of the way in which the rapid transit by canal was conducted. The packet was a boat about the length of our largest canal boats of present date, but narrower - her bow built with some attempt at easy draught. Three horses in single file trotted on the tow-path, dragging the boat by a line of canal boats are now drawn.

  The cabin of the packet had lockers, used as seats, along both sides, and at night they were converted into berths, with another row above, not unlike the arrangement of a modern sleeping car. A kitchen was part of the equipment and the table was set lengthwise of the cabin. In pleasant weather most of the passengers sat on deck daytimes and moonlight evenings. A bowman was stationed on the front of the packet to give warning of bridges and other matters.

  At the cry of "low bridge" every passenger instinctively ducked his head in order to not get knocked "into the drink." The expression "into the drink" was so common that nobody thought of it as slang, nor was it used in a slangy way in which we now say "in the soup," but simply as a commonplace expression of the idea of falling into the water.

  As these packets met or overtook other boats a regular rule as to the right of way was expected to be carried out. When a packet overtook a slower-moving boat, if necessary, the latter was hailed by the bowman of the packet and was expected to veer off towards the heel path and let the fast boat pass on the tow path side, the team of the forward boat stopping on the outside of the tow path, letting its tow-line sink to the bottom of the canal, so that the passing boat would go over it, and the team of the passing boat would also pass over that part of the line that rested in the towpath. The 

 The rule was generally observed without trouble as between packets and freight boats, but when two packets of opposition lines got to racing for the next lock, an amount of scientific boating took place, compared with which a modern yacht race is a tame affair.

 When the bowsman of the rear boat shouted to the helmsman of the leading boat for right of way, he was generally asked to reply whether he would take it now or wait until he could get it. That settled the question of preliminaries. It meant a race. The driver of the rear team was told to put them through, and the leading driver with an the over his right shoulder, also cracked his whip and the race began. If the rear team could gain ground so that the bow of the over king boat was likely to strike the stern of the forward boat, the helmsman of the later, sometimes considering discretion the better part, would put his boat to the left and call on his driver to halt. 

   But if it determined to keep the lead at all hazards he called an assistant with a pike or fender to ward off the stroke of the rear boat. If the bow of the latter came against the front boat, and the helmsman of the latter still kept his in the way, so that both teams drew the front boat, the second stage of the controversy was settled. That meant a backdown by the rear boat or else war.

  If the later, the bowman of the rear boat called upon his crew and sprang upon the towpath, where he seized the leading team unless prevented by the other boat's crew. No football march of today compared with the struggle that followed. The driver of the leading team did his best to keep them moving, but if the rear boat so as to get up alongside and let the rear team overtake the other, unless the driver of the other halted his team and pulled to the outside of the tow path, thus giving up the race, the overtaking team would pass him on the outside and sweep his horses "into the drink" with the tow-line.

   Generally the dispute was decided before the team got drawn into the water but a good many teams have had to swim for it, nevertheless. Similar struggles often occurred at the locks when two boat entering the jaw at the same moment, one crew would attempt to draw back the rival boat. Capt. Jim Gandall, alluded to the above, was noted for carrying a picked crew "very skillful in navigation."

   The packet drivers and stage drivers of that section of the country were a rare set of characters. They are nearly all dead now, but I think at least among them- the old -time trainer and driver of the pacer Pocahontas, and many other good horses - Otis W. Dimmick, is still living somewhere in Ohio. He perhaps never drove on the Comstock line of stages, between Troy and Whitehall, but he was on some of the connecting lines. The stages used in those days wee of the old-fashioned mail coach pattern, hung on thorough braces. 

  When fully loaded they were very comfortable, but woe betide the single passenger that rocked and jolted within them as they swung along over the ups and downs and "thank-you-marms" of the roads of that day. Splendidly team and equipped was the Red Bird Line of coaches, and each stage as it came and went was an object of absorbing interest to everybody. The drivers were known by name to every man, woman and child along the whole route. Their comparative skill in driving and the use of the whip was canvassed and discussed as a subject of the weightiest importance.

   A whip in those days was a subject of great study. The stalk was of straight grained hickory, worked down to the nicest calculation, so as to bring the elasticity at the right point. The lash was put on with a loop and hung and hung slack from the tip of the stalk. The braiding of the lash was also a matter of weight. The belly must be just at the right point. When scientifically rigged, the precision with which a skillfully hand could use it was marvelous. 

  The boast that Joel Sullivan could pick a fly off the nigh leader's ear without ruffling a hair was hardly an extravagance. It was a poor hand that could not cut a "button hole" in the skin of an apple set on the top of a post as a target by cracking his whip at it. I wonder what one of those old drivers would think of the modern whip with its bow top, which fashion indicates shall be grasped something like a foot and half from the butt.

Nellis Tavern at St. Johnsville

The Nellis Tavern along Route 5 at St. Johnsville, Montgomery County, New York,  is a historic inn and tavern built about 1750 as a farmhouse and expanded about 1790 to its present form. It is a two-story, five-by-two-bay frame residence constructed atop a coursed rubblestone foundation. After the coming of the railroad in 1836 the tavern business along the old Mohawk Turnpike declined and the building became a private residence. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990. It was restored and is owned and operated as a museum by the Palatine Settlement Society. For further information go to www.palatinesettlementsociety.org and threerivershms.com/nellistavern2.htm

Stagecoach Driver with Prostate Problem

Geneva (N.Y) Gazette

June 20, 1884

              The Stage Driver's Story

                       ___

How General Scott's Life was Saved and

  How His Driver Twice Escaped Death

                      ____

   The traveler of the present day, as he is hurried by the lightning express, in its buffet cars and palace sleepers, seldom reverts in thought to the time when the stagecoach and packet were the only means of communication between distant points. It is rare that one of the real old-time stage drivers is met with now-a-days and when the writer recently ran across Fayette Haskell, of Lockport, N.Y.,  he felt like a bibliographer over the discovery of some volume of "forgotten lore."

    Mr. Haskell, although one of the pioneers in stage driving (he formerly ran from Lewiston to Niagara Falls and Buffalo), is hale and hearty and bids fair to live man yearsy. The strange stories of his early adventures would fill a volume. At one time when going down a mountain near Lewiston with no less of a personage than General Winfield as a passenger, the brakes gave way and the coach came on the heels of the wheel horses. The only remedy was to whip the leaders to a gallop. 

    Gaining additional momentum with each revolution of the wheels the coach swayed and pitched down the mountain side into the streets of Lewiston. Straight ahead at the foot of the steep hill flowed the Niagara river, towards which the four horses dashed, apparently to certain death. Yet the firm hand never relaxed its hold nor the clear brain its conception of what must be done in the emergency.

   On dashed the horses until the narrow dock was reached on the river bank, when by a masterly exhibition of nerve and daring , the coach was turned in scarce its own length and the horses brought to a stand still before the pale lookers-on could realize what had occurred. A purse was raised by General Scott and presented to Mr. Haskell with high compliments for his skill and bravery.

   Notwithstanding all his strength and his robust constitution the strain of continuous work and exposure proved too much for Mr. Haskell's constitution. The constant jolting of the coach and the necessarily cramped position in which he was obliged to sit, contributed to this end, and at times he was obliged to abandon driving altogether.

   Speaking of this period he said:

    "I found it almost impossible to sleep at night; my appetite left me entirely and I had a tired feeling which I never knew before and could not account for."

   "Did you give up driving entirely?"

   "No. I tried to keep up but it as only with the greatest effort. This state of things continued for nearly twenty years until last October when I went all to pieces."

   "In what way?"

   "Oh, I doubled all up; could not walk without a cane and was incapable of any effort or exertion. I had a constant desire to urinate both day and night and although I felt like passing a gallon every ten minutes only a few drops would escape and they thick with sediment. Finally it ceased to flow entirely and I thought death was very near."

   "What did you do then?"

   "What I should have done before: listen to my wife. Under her advice I began a new treatment."

   "And with what result?"

   "Wonderful. It unstopped the closed passages and what was still more wonderful regulated the flow. The sediment vanished; my appetite returned and I am now well and good for twenty more years wholly through the aid of Warner's Safe Cure that has done wonders for me as well as for many others."

   Mr. Haskell's experience is repeated every day in the lives of American men and women. An unknown evil is undermining the existence of an innumerable number who do not realize the danger they are in until health has entirely departed and death perhaps stares them in the face. To neglect such important matters is like drifting in the current of Niagara above the Falls.

Eagle Hotel, Batavia

Stagecoach Sign for Batavia

The Stage-Driver

Naples (N.Y.) Record

January 11, 1873

    There is a magic in the calling of a stage-driver. Everybody knows and aspires to know the stage-driver; everybody is known by, and is proud to be known by, the stage-driver.  The little boys remember it a month. if the stage-driver speaks to them. There is a particular satisfaction to be able to distinguish among drivers, and say it was Winkle, or it was Nason, or it was Mitchell.

    The stage-driver is prince of a peculiar realm; and that realm consists of the yellow coach he drives and the high seat he occupies, and his four mettlesome horses, and forty miles of country road, and the heart of several principal roads, not to speak of ten thousand little matters of interest and pleasure, business and profit, news and gossip, with which he is connected. Hence he, like a prince, is held in reverence of the populace.

    Of all the people on the earth, he is the one who rolls by on a gilded coach; he is the one who rides through his immense estate with the most lordly and consequential air, and all the rest of us seem to be but poor tenants and gaping boors. It is something to speak to a stage-driver. It is a great thing to be recommended by the stage-driver. To be perchance known by one who knows nobody, is nothing. To be known, to be pointed out, to have your name whispered in a bystander's ear, bygone who knows everybody, affects you as if Omniscience were speaking of were speaking about you.  The stage-driver differs from a steamboat captain, in that the latter is not seen to be so immediately connected with his craft as the former. We meat the captain at the breakfast-table; he is nobody; he is no more than we; we can eat as well as he can. But who dare touch the stage-driver's ribbons? Who dare swing his whip?

    How rapidly and securely he drives down one hill and up the next - and that with fifteen passengers and half a ton of baggage! Then how majestically he rounds to, at the door of the tavern! What delicate pomp in the movement of the four handsome horses! In what style the cloud of dust, that has served as an outrider all the way, passes off when the coach stops! How the villagers - the blacksmith, the shoemaker, the thoughtful politician, and the boozy loafers that fill the stoop - grin and stare, and make their criticism!

    How he flings the reins and the horses to the stable-boy, who presently returns with a splendid relay! How he accepts those from the boy with that sort of air with which a king might be supposed to take his armor from the hands of a valet! There are his gloves, withal; he always wears gloves, as  Saratoga fine lady, and would no sooner touch anything without gloves than such a lady would a glass of Congress water.

    There is, moreover, a mystery attached to the stage-driver - a mystery deeper than the question why the carcasses of elephants are found imbedded in the ice-mountains of the Arctics - even this. Why- the stage-driver is not frozen to death in our winters? His punctuality has something preternatural in it. How, in the coldest weather, in the severest storm, in fogs, in sleet, in hail, in lightning, in mud, when nobody else is abroad, the stage-driver appears rounding the corner, just as regular as just as quiet as the old clock in the kitchen!

The Old Inn in Winter