Lyddie, Chapter 3: What a Country Tavern Was in the 1840s

A "Voices from the Field" essay for chapter 3 of Katherine Paterson's novel Lyddie*, from Lowell National Historical Park's Books to Parks series, by Dr. Marla Miller, Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.*

Today a tavern is mostly a place where adults go to socialise in the evening. In the early nineteenth century, Miller explains, a rural tavern like the one in Lyddie was the centre of community life.

Much more than a bar

A country tavern could be:

• an inn, where travellers found a meal or a bed for the night;
• a news hub, where people collected their mail, read the newspaper and learned about public events from each other and from travellers;
• a place of entertainment, hosting travelling musicians and theatre companies, circuses, art exhibitions and other amusements;
• part of local manufacturing — in some New England towns an employer might leave the materials for men's shirts at the tavern, for local women to collect, sew and bring back for pay;
• a place of business and government: before courthouses and town halls were built, the biggest room might host court proceedings, town meetings and auctions, and the militia might drill on the grounds.

All this meant tavern workers were often the first in town to hear news from far away.

Taverns for different customers

As taverns multiplied in the nineteenth century, they began to specialise. Some served working men, such as those floating logs downriver or driving animals to market; others catered to wealthier travellers and neighbours; some were stagecoach stops. Buildings designed as taverns — rather than homes where residents opened one — often had ballrooms, or big rooms with movable walls. They hosted balls, dancing schools and other events where better-off residents could show off their polish and refinement.

Women's work

Running a tavern meant hard and varied work for women, day after day and season after season.

• Food: gathering eggs, meat, cheese, cider, bread, potatoes, carrots and more — some produced by the household, some, like New England and West Indian rum, bought from neighbours or businesses — and cooking constantly.
• Bedding: making or buying sheets and blankets, and an endless stream of laundry.
• Cleaning: sweeping floors, washing and putting away pots and dishes, scrubbing candlesticks and airing mattresses.

The work fell to wives and daughters, hired servants, and sometimes the servants' children.

How historians know

Miller credits other historians' research on tavern entertainment and on the laws governing the sale of alcohol, as well as studies of tavern buildings, often by people working to preserve them. Primary sources include tavern account books, which show what owners bought and whom they hired, and also who the customers were, where they came from and what they bought. Newspapers and paintings reveal much more about tavern life.

Sources

• Marla Miller, "Lyddie: Voices from the Field - Chapter 03 Taverns in the 1840s", Lowell National Historical Park, National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/lyddie-voices-taverns.htm — Miller is also the author of Entangled Lives: Labor, Livelihood, and Landscapes of Change in Rural Massachusetts.
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• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.