Coaching Roads
of Old New England

Their Inns and Taverns and Their Stories

by George Francis Marlowe

Dust Jacket - front:

This is a lovely old book. The book was published in 1946 (third printing) by The Macmillan Company, New York. The book measures 5 5/8 inches by 8 Ľ inches and contains xvi, 200 pages. The dust jacket is a bit “tattered” around the edges but mainly to the top. There is a small, “L” shaped tear along the spine edge of the dust jacket which you should be able to see in the scanned image. The beige cloth pictorial cover shows no signs of wear to speak of. The spine is tight and the hinges are strong. The pages show no signs of rips. Exceptions noted, the overall condition of this wonderful old book itself is very good.

Front Cover/Spine

Contents:

The Old Boston Post Road
The Old Boston Post Road (continued)
The Middle Road
The Lower Post Road
The Lower Post Road (continued)
The Groton, Keene, and Hanover Road
The Newburyport and Portsmouth Road

Title Page

Title Page - Verso

Excerpt – Dust Jacket:
In no way, perhaps, can one know New England better than by traveling some of her old coaching roads. In this book, following five of the principal routes of earlier days, the writer recalls much of the romance of these ancient highways over which our ancestors jogged on horseback with saddlebags, in jolting stage-wagons, or in the later Concord coach. To them, these journeys were not devoid of hardship and sometimes actual danger. To us they would have seemed all but impossible.

Confining himself to no particular period, Mr. Marlowe carries us back over the history, giving us glimpses of the life of the towns and villages through which we pass, of the old houses, and of many odd and not a few famous characters. He recalls anecdotes of Revolutionary days of British spies and Washington’s journeys, of historic taverns and the dramas which were played out in them, of smugglers and patriots and mail carriers. He takes us into a cozy bar where, on a winter evening around the fire of logs, many a joke was cracked and many an unrecorded story told with spicy comment on the “politicks” of the time- at home and abroad.

To follow the Groton road through the old towns of Middlesex to Jaffrey and northward is to travel some of the most charming farming country of Massachusetts into the mountain region of lower New Hampshire and the upper Connecticut valley. The Newburyport and Portsmouth road will take us by way of historic Salem through the low country near the sea to old Ipswich and Newbury. The Upper Post Road takes us via Springfield, while the lower goes by way of Newport through Old Lyme and the historic towns along the shore of Long Island Sound.
End excerpt