[1] United States Statutes at Large, vol. ii, p. 173.

[2] Senate Reports, 9th Cong., 1st Sess., Rep. No. 195.

[3] Keyser’s Ridge.

[4] The dates on which the three states gave their permission were: Pennsylvania, April 9, 1807; Maryland, 1806; Ohio, 1824.

[5] Richardson (editor): Messages and Papers of the Presidents, vol. ii, p. 142.

[6] Harriet Martineau’s Society in America, vol. ii, pp. 31-35.

[7] See Appropriation No. 27, in Appendix A.

[8] For specimen advertisement for repairs see Appendix B.

[9] The early official correspondence concerning the route of the road shows plainly that it was really built for the benefit of the Chillicothe and Cincinnati settlements, which embraced a large portion of Ohio’s population. The opening of river traffic in the first two decades of the century, however, had the effect of throwing the line of the road further northward through the capitals of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Zane’s Trace, diverging from the Cumberland Road at Zanesville, played an important part in the development of southwestern Ohio, becoming the course of the Lancaster and Maysville Pike. See Historic Highways of America, vol. xi.

[10] See Appropriation No. 14, in Appendix A.

[11] See Appropriations Nos. 20 and 21, in Appendix A.

[12] Private Laws of the United States, May 17, 1796.

[13] Springfield Pioneer, August 1837; also Ohio State Journal, August 8, 1837.

[14] Harriet Martineau’s Society in America, vol. i, p. 17.

[15] Wabash-Erie, Whitewater, and Indiana Central Canals and the Madison and Indianapolis Railway. Cf. Atwater’s Tour, p. 31.

[16] Illinois in ’37, pp. 766-767. This was probably passenger and freight traffic as the mails went overland from the very first, until the building of railways.

[17] Ohio State Journal, January 8, 1836.

[18] Laws of Pennsylvania (pamphlet), p. 500.

[19] See Appropriation No. 27, in Appendix A.

[20] Laws of Ohio, XXIX, p. 76. For specimen advertisement for bids for erection of tollgates in Ohio see Appendix D.

[21] Laws of Pennsylvania (pamphlet), p. 419.

[22] Id., p. 523.

[23] Id., p. 477.

[24] Laws of Ohio, XXXIV, p. 41; XXV, p. 7.

[25] Id., XXIII, p. 447.

[26] Id., XLIII, p. 89.

[27] Laws of Pennsylvania (pamphlet), p. 477.

[28] Laws of Ohio, XLIII, p. 140.

[29] Id., LVIII, p. 140.

[30] Laws of Pennsylvania (pamphlet), p. 500.

[31] Laws of Ohio, XXVI, p. 41.

[32] Id.

[33] Concerning the celerity of opening the road after the completion of contracts, Captain Weaver, Superintendent in Ohio, made the following statement in his report of 1827:

“Upon the first, second and third divisions, with a cover of metal of six inches in thickness, composed of stone reduced to particles of not more than four ounces in weight, the travel was admitted in the month of June last. Those divisions that lie eastward of the village of Fairview together embrace a distance of very nearly twenty-eight and a half miles, and were put under contract on the first of July, and first and thirty-first of August, 1825. This portion of the road has been, in pursuance of contracts made last fall and spring, covered with the third stratum of metal of three inches in thickness, and similarly reduced. On parts of this distance, say about five miles made up of detached pieces, the travel was admitted at the commencement of the last winter and has continued on to this time to render it compact and solid; it is very firm, elastic and smooth. The effect has been to dissipate the prejudices which existed very generally, in the minds of the citizens, against the McAdam system, and to establish full confidence over the former plan of constructing roads.

“On the first day of July, the travel was admitted upon the fourth and fifth divisions, and upon the second, third, fourth, and fifth sections of the sixth division of the road, in its graduated state. This part of the line was put under contract on the eleventh day of September, 1826, terminating at a point three miles west of Cambridge, and embraces a distance of twenty-three and a half miles. On the twenty-first of July the balance of the line to Zanesville, comprising a distance of a little over twenty-one miles, was let.”

[34] Laws of Pennsylvania (pamphlet), p. 419.

[35] Laws of Ohio, XXVI, p. 41; Laws of Pennsylvania (pamphlet), p. 102.

[36] Id., XXVI, p. 41.

[37] Tolls for 1845 were based on number of horses, each additional horse being taxed about .20. Tolls for 1900 (in Franklin County) were practically identical with tolls of 1845.

[38] Laws of Ohio, XXX, p. 321.

[39] Id., XXX, p. 8.

[40] Id., XXXIV, p. 111.

[41] Id., XLIII, p. 89.

[42] Laws of Pennsylvania (pamphlet), pp. 534, 164, 430-431.

[43] Laws of Ohio, XXXV, p. 7.

[44] Laws of Pennsylvania (pamphlet), p. 353.

[45] Laws of Ohio, XXX, p. 8.

[46] Id., XXIX, p. 76.

[47] Id., XXX, p. 8.

[48] Id., XXX, p. 7.

[49] Id., XXXII, p. 265; XXX, p. 7.

[50] Searight’s The Old Pike, p. 298.

[51] Id., pp. 362-366.

[52] Id., pp. 367-370.

[53] Laws of Ohio, LII, p. 126.

[54] Id., LVI, p. 159.

[55] Id., LXX, p. 194.

[56] Id., LXXIII, p. 105.

[57] Laws of Ohio, LXXIV, p. 62.

[58] Report of the Superintendent of the National Road, with Abstract of Tolls for the fiscal year (1837).

[59] Laws of Ohio, XXX, p. 8.

[60] Thackeray’s The Newcomes, vol. i, ch. x.

[61] In one instance a struggle between two stagecoach lines in Indiana resulted in carrying passengers from Richmond to Cincinnati for fifty cents. The regular price was five dollars.

[62] An old Ohio National Stage driver, Mr. Samuel B. Baker of Kirkersville, Ohio, is authority for the statement that the Ohio National Stage Company put a line of stages on the Wooster-Wheeling mail and freight route and “ran out” the line which had been doing all the business previously, after an eight months’ bitter contest.

[63] The following appeared in the Ohio State Journal of August 12, 1837: “A Splendid Coach—We have looked at a Coach now finishing off in the shop of Messrs. Evans & Pinney of this city, for the Ohio Stage Company, and intended we believe for the inspection of the Post-Master General, who sometime since offered premiums for models of the most approved construction, which is certainly one of the most perfect and splendid specimens of workmanship in this line that we have ever beheld, and would be a credit to any Coach Manufactory in the United States. It is aimed, in its construction, to secure the mail in the safest manner possible, under lock and key, and to accommodate three outside passengers under a comfortable and complete protection from the weather. It is worth going to see.”

[64] Before the era of the Cumberland Road the price for hauling the goods of emigrants over Braddock’s Road was very high. One emigrant paid $5.33 per hundred for hauling “women and goods” from Alexandria, Virginia, to the Monongahela. Six dollars per hundredweight was charged one emigrant from Hagerstown, Maryland, to Terre Haute, Indiana.

[65] Ohio State Journal, February 9, 1838. “The land mail between this and Detroit crawls with snails pace.”—Cleveland Gazette, August 31, 1837. Cf. Historic Highways of America, vol. i., p. 29.

[66] The northern and southern Ohio mails connected with the Great Eastern and Great Western mails at Columbus. They were operated as follows:

Northern Mail: Left Sandusky City 4 A. M., reached Delaware 8 P. M. Left Delaware next day 3 A. M., reached Columbus 8 A. M. Left Columbus 8:30 A. M., reached Chillicothe 4 P. M. Left Chillicothe next day 4 A. M., reached Portsmouth 3 P. M.

Southern Mail: Left Portsmouth 9 A. M., Chillicothe 5 P. M., Columbus 1 P. M., day following. Delaware 7 P. M., Sandusky City 7 P. M. day following. A Cleveland mail left Cleveland daily for Columbus via Wooster and Mt. Vernon at 3 A. M. and reached Columbus on the day following at 5 P. M., returning the mail left Columbus at 4 A. M. and reached Cleveland at 5 P. M. on the ensuing day.

[67] “The extreme irregularity which has attended the transmission of newspapers from one place to another for several months past has been a subject of general complaint with the editors of all parties. It was to have been expected that, after the adjournment of Congress, the evil would have ceased to exist. Such, however, is not the case. Although the roads are now pretty good, and the mails arrive in due season, our eastern exchange papers seem to reach us only by chance. On Tuesday last, for instance, we received, among others, the following, viz., The New York Courier and Enquirer of March 1, 5 and 19; the Philadelphia Times and Saturday Evening Post of March 2; the United States Gazette of March 6; and the New Jersey Journal of March 5 and 19. The cause of this irregularity, we have reason to believe, does not originate in this state.”—Ohio State Journal, March 30, 1833.

[68] Ohio State Journal, August 9, 1837

[69] It may be found upon investigation that the portions of our country most noted for hospitality are those where taverns gained the least hold as a social institution. Cf. Allen’s The Blue Grass Region of Kentucky, p. 38.

[70] The Virginian House of Burgesses met in the old Raleigh Tavern at Williamsburg, in 1773. (Woodrow Wilson’s George Washington, p. 146.)

[71] For advertisement of sale of a Cumberland Road tavern see Appendix D.

[72] Mr. Edward P. Pressey in New England Magazine, vol. xxii, no. 6 (August, 1900).

[73] Grahame’s The Golden Age, p. 155.

[74] “The proper limits of the road are hereby defined to be a space of eighty feet in width—forty feet on each side of the center of the graded road-bed.”—Law passed April 18, 1870, Laws of Ohio, LVIII, p. 140.

[75] Everett’s Speeches and Orations, vol. i, p. 202.