Video
Virtual Tour: Travelers and Workers Along the National Road
Transcript
Hello. My name's Jane Clark and I'm a park ranger here at Fort Necessity National Battlefield and today we're going to go on a tour of the Mount Washington Tavern, and learn about the people who a long time ago traveled on the National Road. What we're going to find is that people have stayed the same. Technologies change and society has changed, but people have stayed the same. So, let's go on in and start our tour.
Well, here we are in the Mount Washington Tavern hallway. So, this Mount Washington Tavern is really quite old. It was probably built in the 1830s, and that was a long-long time ago. Way before there were cars and trucks, before there were airplanes, before there were people even riding bicycles, people were traveling on the National Road.
Many of the people who stopped here at the Mount Washington Tavern were traveling on the stage coach. So, you can see in our picture of the stage coach that the stage coach was pulled by four horses, and that those horses were galloping. As a matter of fact, that's part of the reason why it was called a stage coach: because the horses had to gallop for two hours. So, can you imagine after two hours? *Whew* those horses were really tired. But we were in luck! Because after traveling that amount of time they would have got to a stage coach stop where they could get a new team of horses, and a new team of horses were put on. And guess how long they had to travel? Yep. You're right. They had to go for two hours. And then, they got to another stage coach stop, where they were taken off and could go to the barn; and a new set of horses were put on, who had to travel to the next stage coach stop. So, you can see how it just went in these stages, but because the horses were always galloping, the stage coach went fast.
Now today we wouldn't think it was fast, but in the olden days, it was the fastest way you could travel over land. As a matter of fact, today we wouldn't like the stage coach really at all. It was quite bumpy, and the people got bounced around a lot, often going over rough roads. It was hot in the summertime. It was cold in the winter time. It was dusty. So, we wouldn't really like it too much today. But back then, because the stage coach was so fast, people paid a lot of money to go on it. Now we do know that the Mount Washington Tavern was a place where they would come and change the horses, but it was also a place for the people traveling on the stage coach. They could get food and drink here. They could go to the bathroom here. And this was a place where they could sleep overnight.
Today we're really lucky, because we're going to meet some characters from the past. These pretend characters are going to tell us about what it was like to be in the Mount Washington Tavern in the olden days. So, let's go ahead and start and take our tour of the bar room. Here we go!
3:42 Hello. Welcome to the Mount Washington Tavern. I'm the owner of this stage coach stop, and I'm always glad to welcome travelers to my tavern. All you gentlemen are welcome to make yourselves at home here in the barroom. We have whiskey and brandy to drink. You may enjoy a game of cards or checkers, and the local newspapers are always available. Now you women and children may not want to remain. You know that the gentleman smoke and gamble and discuss politics in here. It would not be proper for you to stay. The parlor is much more appropriate. Before you board the coach again, rest here and enjoy yourselves. Your meal will be ready soon.
Wow, that was so cool. We learned so much from our character from the past. Thank you very much. And now, you know what? He taught us so much. It's time to see if you can remember some of the things he said.
So, my first question is, "What did he do?" He told us who he was and what he did here at the Mount Washington Tavern. Do any of you guys remember? That's right! He said that he was the owner, which meant he was that tavern keeper for this whole building. He took care of the whole thing. Boy, I bet that was a lot of work.
And, you know what? This was a special room he was telling us about, the barroom. Remember who was in the barroom here? I bet a lot of you get right. It was the gentleman who are here in the barroom. Anybody, can you think? Where did the women and children go where they could relax and enjoy themselves? It's a different room in the Mount Washington Tavern. Yeah, I think a lot of you said the parlor. That's where the ladies went because remember back in the olden days at that time, it wasn't right for ladies to be in here where people were drinking and gambling and talking about politics. They weren't supposed to participate in that. So that's how come they'd go to the parlor.
You know what? The parlor's right across the hall. So, let's continue our tour. We'll go over there and take a look at that room.
Well, here we are in the parlor.
6:37 I'm so glad to be off that stage coach. They go so fast. We must have been going ten miles-an-hour! They're so bumpy and uncomfortable, I can hardly stand it. I'm so hungry, I can't wait to eat.
*bell ringing*
There's the bell! We may enter the dining room. My, look at that table. One long table full of food, and I'm allowed to eat as much as I want. I can't wait to serve myself. Good heavens! Only a few minutes until the stage coach leaves. I need to stop talking and start eating. If we are favorable, we'll make sixty miles or more today.
7:21 So, I'd like to really thank our character from the past who told us about the parlor and the dining room here. But now it's time for you students to put on your thinking cap and think about what she said, because she told us so much good information.
So, what did she say she was doing that day? (What was she doing that day?) Did you guys get it? She was traveling on the stage coach. That's right. Also, why did she say she was happy to be off the stage coach? Remember? Remember what she said? Right! She said that the stage coach was bumpy and uncomfortable. And we know that it was like that.
Also, she told us how fast she was going. Anybody remember that? Yeah, if you said that she was going ten miles an hour, that's what she said. She also said that it would take her all day to go sixty miles. Now today, we would not think ten miles-an-hour was fast. As a matter of fact, today in our cars we could go sixty miles in one hour, instead of spending the whole day to do that. You know what? I bet a lot of you know how to ride your bicycle, and when you're riding a bicycle real fast, I'm sure you're going ten miles an hour. So, you can see that the stage coach was not fast compared to our cars, and our buses, and our trucks that we use today.
But let's take a look at this dining room. She was so excited to come in here and eat because she was so hungry. Now when you take a close look, I'm sure that you can tell that today we are using fake food. And there's a good reason for that, because real food would go bad, and we'd have to change it all the time. So, we are using fake food today, but it helps up represent the meal that they would have had here.
So, let's take a look at this meal and try and figure out what meal it was. So, let's see. I see sausage, and pancakes, and bacon. I see waffles, and toast, and eggs. So, what meal do you think that is? I think you guys all got it, that this was breakfast, and there's a good reason why we display breakfast here. Because we know in this very room where I'm standing today, there were seventy-two people who had breakfast here. Well hmmm. Look at that table. Seventy-two people couldn't fit at that table. So, what we think is that the travelers came in. They ate. They got up and left, and more people came in ate, and left, and more and more people, until they served seventy-two people for breakfast. That was a lot of breakfast that they had to feed.
But we do know another thing about the people who are traveling on the stage coach. When they ate, they would eat all together. They'd take their food off their platters, and they'd eat very quickly. The Europeans said that they would eat so quickly, just gobbling all that food into their mouth, that they didn't even talk. And then they'd get up and they go out and they'd start traveling on the stage coach again.
So we have learned about some of the things that the travelers did when they were here at the Mount Washington Tavern, and some of the rooms that they used, but now we're going continue our tour and we're going to go into a room that the travelers didn't go into, and that's the kitchen where all this food was prepared. So, come on, let's continue our tour.
11:25 Well, look at this, visitors to my kitchen! I'm sorry that it's not as clean as it could be, but as you know, we've been busy today. We were up before dawn starting the fire and preparing the food for breakfast, and now that dinners over we only need to clean-up and do some baking to get ready for tomorrow. Did you know, we once served seventy-two people for breakfast? *Whew* That was a day! It takes a lot of good help to run a tavern. The owner's wife decides what to cook and gives the orders to all the staff in the kitchen and the maids. The tavern keeper supervises all the money, the bar, the stables, and the blacksmith shop; and the children are assigned to any work they're old enough to handle. Goodness! I need water and wood. Where those children to help me?
12:17 Well, thank you to our character from the past. She really told us a lot about the work she did here at the Mount Washington Tavern. How many of you remember what she did? Yeah, you guys got it right. She was the cook. Busy, busy, busy! Cooking for all those travelers who were eating in the dining room. She sure had a lot of work, and it was so much harder than us cooking today.
So, now I want you to look around the room and tell me what big appliances or machines that you have in your kitchen today you do not see here. Which ones are missing from here? I bet a lot of you thought that the stove is missing from this kitchen here. Also, maybe some of you thought about a microwave. Yeah, cooking was so much harder back then. She had to use wood in our big fireplace here in order to do the cooking. Stews and things that boiled would cook over the open flames, but a lot of the cooking was done with red-hot coals. Imagine that wood just burning down until we had a pile of red-hot coals. The cook could come over here with her shovel, and she'd shovel those red-hot coals out, and put them here on the stone. Then - let's look at her pots. Can you see this pot? Look at that! It has legs. Those legs are so it would sit right on top of the red-hot coals, and, she could cook that way. Another way she could cook is by using those red-hot coals to bake. We would shovel those red-hot coals out. Put them in a pile. We're going to put our Dutch oven right on top of it, and then we're going to shovel more hot coals onto the top, and we're going to let it bake. So inside there I have my rolls, and they're going to be baking. Let's see what happens when they're all done. Take off those hot coals. I would've had a nice hot oven mitt, but don't have that today. Look at that. Rolls for our travelers to eat. Wow!
But baking and cooking were so much harder, so we are lucky we have those machines today. What's another machine that's missing. Some of you might have said a sink or dishwasher. That's right. This tavern had no running water so the children would have buckets and they go to this spring across the street. They'd carry the water in bucket. We can use this for cooking, or we could use it for doing the dishes. We pour it into this little wooden pail. This is our sink, believe or not, and then we could wash all the dirty dishes. Once these dishes were all washed, hmm, we got another problem. What do we do with all that dirty water? You know what? They didn't know very much about germs, and what I think the cook did, is she opened the window, and *pssht* threw that right out the window, because we're missing a sink. Another thing that we're missing is no refrigerator. And because of that, they ate different kinds of foods than we eat today.
Wow! After all that work and all that traveling, people were going to be tired. So let's continue our tour, and we'll go to the second floor and find out what it was like to sleep at the Mount Washington Tavern. So, here we go.
16:08 So, here we are on the second floor of the Mount Washington Tavern where the travelers would sleep overnight. So, let's take a look at the different bedrooms and see if we can learn about the second floor of the Mount Washington Tavern.
*Whew* I'm ready for bed. The stage coach I was on left before dawn and all that shaking tires a person out. I'm lucky. The room's empty. None of the beds are full at this time, so I get my pick. But that could change. The Innkeeper said he likes to put two people to a bed. Just in case I have company, I'm only going to take off my hat, my coat, and my shoes. I'm going to keep my valuables on me. I have to get up early tomorrow, so, good night.
17:08 Well, thank you to our traveler from the past. but we should be quiet, he's trying to sleep. So, let's go down the hall and look at some other bedrooms. Come on.
Well, here we are, in another one of the travelers' bedrooms. Hey, our character from the past gave us so much good information. So, let's put on our thinking caps and talk a little bit about what he said. Does anybody remember what he was doing all day that made him so tired? I bet a lot of you got it. Yeah, he was traveling on the stage coach. And that's how come he was ready to sleep overnight. Wow! That room had a lot of beds. Was he going to get that whole room to self? I think a lot of you remember that he was going to have other people in that room, and maybe even someone else in the bed with him.
See this big bed. I could take two adults, and it was pretty typical that two adults, even if they didn't know each other, were going to sleep in the same bed. Back then the rooms were separated by gender. That meant that men and boys would be in one room, and women and girls would be in another room, and they didn't even get the bed to themselves. They had to share it sometimes.
One more thing, was he going to get in his pajamas at night? I think you're right. I think a lot of you remember that he said he was only going to take off his shoes and his coat, and he wasn't going to get changed. As a matter of fact, he was going to keep his clothes and his money on him, again, because a stranger might be sleeping next to him in the night-time.
So, we got to look at two good tavern rooms and we're going to look at two more. One of them is a typical tavern room for overnight sleepers and the other one is where the tavern keeper and his wife and their whole family lived. And we're going to see if you can tell the difference. Maybe there's some furniture and other clues that could tell you which one is which. So, let's keep on going on our tour, and look at our next two rooms.
19:26 So, here we are. This is the first room we're going to compare. Take a good look!
So, here we go across the hallway. We're going to take a look at our second room. Remember we're looking for anything that would indicate that one of these two rooms was different. So take a look.
Okay, so we had time to look at both of these rooms and compare them and try and figure out which one was the travelers' room, and which one was the tavern keeper's room. So, over here we have a piece of furniture called a cradle. It was actually a rocking baby bed. So that's where little, tiny baby would go. And over here, we can see a doll. So, these are pretty good indications that children were in this room. And you were right, this was the tavern keeper's room.
I have one more question for you guys as we talk about the second floor of the Mount Washington Tavern. Put on your thinking caps one more time because I want you to try and figure out which room was missing. Now, when we're at home there's a room we use all the time, and it's usually pretty close to where our bedrooms are, and we did not see that room here on the second floor of the tavern.
So, did you guys guess? I bet a lot of you got it. That it's the bathroom! Back then they didn't have running water, so they couldn't have sinks and showers and tubs and toilets like we do today. During the day you would go outside to a building called the outhouse, which was pretty much like today's Porta Johns. But then at night you couldn't really light a candle and go downstairs and go outside. It was too much. So, at night, if you needed to go to the bathroom, you'd use this pot, which was under the bed. This is a chamber pot, and you would poop and pee in here. *mmhp* It wouldn't smell so good, huh. We'll put the lid back on. And then in the morning, the children would come and empty this to the outhouse.
Remember, at night you probably didn't take a bath. That was too hard. But you’d use your pitcher over here, filled with water, and pour it into the bowl, and then you just wash your hands and face and that's all you do to clean yourself.
So. today we've learned a lot about the Mount Washington Tavern and let's go downstairs and finish our tour down there.
22:34
So, here we are back in the hall, and let's talk about what we learned today on our tour. So, let's talk about the people. You know what I think. People have stayed the same. You know what -- they need to stop to go the bathroom, to eat and drink, and rest and stay overnight -- but society has changed.
When we talked about the barroom, there were several things women weren't allowed to do. And today, pretty much, women are allowed to do the same thing that men are allowed to do. So, that's a nice change in our society.
And *whew* boy, has technology changed. Out on the road today we have cars and trucks and buses. In our kitchen, we have all these appliances that help us when we do our cooking and cleaning. And then upstairs we have bathrooms with running water. And boy, is that a nice change in our modern society here. So, we can see that technology has really changed.
As a matter of fact, it was technology that put the Mount Washington Tavern out of business. There was a new form of transportation. This was a machine that went on these metal rails. I bet a lot of you guessed that it was the railroad. In 1852 the railroad had made it across these mountains. The railroad was cheaper, and faster, and more comfortable than riding on a stage coach. So, you can see that people would really rather take the railroad. So, that put the stage coach lines out of business. And when the stage coach went out of business, then stage coach taverns went out of business.
This tavern was sold in 1856 to become a private house. The people who lived here farmed this area, and they did that until the 1930s, when this was bought to be part of Fort Necessity and became a museum. So, today that's what it is, a museum where people can come and learn about the olden days, like we did on our tour today.
Well, thanks for coming on the tour with me. Bye now.
Description
This virtual tour of the Mount Washington Tavern is geared for second and third grade students. The park ranger leads students from room to room through the tavern. Along the way they meet pretend characters from the past that talk about what life was like along the National Road in the 1840s. After each encounter with a character from the past the park ranger asks the student to remember key facts the character told the audience.
Duration
25 minutes, 7 seconds
Credit
NPS/Tom Markwardt
Date Created
09/19/2020
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