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Trails, Taverns, and The Road to War
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Taverns
In a
sparsely settled land, the 18th century "ordinary" (or
tavern) offered food and
shelter, both for travelers and their horses. It
served as a gathering place for
political meetings, elections, gaming and entertainment
(except on Sundays when such pastimes were forbidden).
Given the importance of taverns, it is no wonder that
people often used the names of inns for the settlements
that grew up around them.
In the 1750s, Lawrence Owen
operated an ordinary near the intersection of the
Great Road and Monocacy-Bladensburg Road. This would
place it somewhere in the center of modern-day
Rockville in the vicinity of Courthouse Square. Very
little is known about this tavern, but it was likely typical for the time: one and one-half stories high
and built of logs covered by wooden boards. It may
have had a porch and was about twice the size of a
house, between 24 and 54 feet in length.
At the start
of the French and Indian War in 1755, Braddock's troops
camped at Owen's Ordinary, the settlement that had grown
up around Lawrence Owen’s tavern.
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Colonial taverns were generally 15 to 20 miles
apart, a convenient distance. On the Great Road,
a traveler leaving George Town could stop here at
Owen’s Ordinary (or later at Hungerford’s) before
heading north to Dowden’s Ordinary in modern-day
Clarksburg. By the 1790s, more inns opened on the
Great Road as population grew and passenger and
mail coaches began making regular trips.
Dowden's Ordinary,
Montgomery County Historical Society
(Click on
image to enlarge.) |
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The
Maryland Assembly regulated early taverns, specifying
the kinds of food, drink, and accommodations that were
to be offered and at what prices. The 1780 Act
Regulating Taverns, for example, stated that an
ordinary in a county seat must have “six good
featherbeds, with sufficient covering for the same,
and stabling for ten horses at least.” A person had
to post a bond as security for honest dealing and
maintaining good conduct before receiving a license to
operate an inn.
Colonial
tavern food included
Sally Lunn bread
and syllabub.
Click here for recipes.
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Ordinary:
An Odd Name for A Tavern?
A
modern traveler is unlikely to look for an “ordinary”
when it’s time to find a place to eat and spend the
night. But in the 17th and 18th centuries, “ordinary”
was used to refer to a tavern meal regularly offered
to the public at a fixed price. By extension, the
term was also applied to the inn or tavern itself.
The term was used less frequently by the early 1800s,
and American travelers began using the French word
“hotel” when asking for the nearest place to get a bed
for the night.
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