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In addition, taverns transformed from rural jack-of-all-trades into more specialized institutions. Where taverns had once dominated, now separate hotels, bars, and restaurants dotted the industrializing landscape of northeastern Ohio. Instead of the local public house serving slow moving horse-drawn carriages, rail tracks sped travelers to major city centers. While Cleveland and Akron boomed with increased patronage to city taverns, the rural institutions so fundamental to daily life earlier in the nineteenth century faded into memory. On the Western Reserve, as in David Conroy’s Boston and Peter Thompson’s Philadelphia, taverns underwent a fundamental transformation. Even travelers recognized these shifts as James Flint astutely noted that “the larger towns having taverns of different qualities, and different rates of charges, a distinction of company is the natural consequence.”45
Lorenzo Carter’s first humble ordinary would have seemed backward and perhaps uncomfortably socially blended to a canal voyager eager to see William Henry Harrison speak from the steps of the American House in 1840.46 More telling are the specific calls for varied patrons at the Railroad Hotel and Commercial House near the end of the 1830s. The Railroad Hotel advertised for railroad employees and passengers while the Commercial House sought out “cattlemen and farmers” rather than an indiscriminate clientele.47
Taverns also chose to relocate or close if they were not near enough a suitable thoroughfare. Small, rural ordinaries were forced to either shut down operation or face massive decreases as, prior to rail travel, “the American stage coach stop[ped] every five miles to water the horses and brandy the gentlemen!”48 The tavern and stage-coach were forever tied; they reached their glory together. Once travel conditions improved, taverns on old stage coach roads suffered.49 Thus, although public drinking remained an important aspect of American culture, it no longer occurred in the same setting studied herein.
The early nineteenth-century tavern provided a situation not regularly seen outside its walls. It enabled men from all social classes to gather in economically and socially diverse company to debate the problems of the day over glasses of whiskey while approaching intoxication. The equitable nature and pro-republican ideology promoted through this shared social interaction gained importance to settlers and travelers alike. There, one could discuss what it mean to be American, drink freely from the cup of liberty, and groggily extol the virtues of republicanism. The tavernocracy created in this unique institution, perhaps more than any other similar establishment, demonstrates the fundamental importance of the tavern to both the Western Reserve and the early Republic of the United States of America.
