Taverns & Schools

Early roads in Massachusetts were really not more than an Indian trail and therefore travel was difficult. Taverns, or ordinarys, as they were originally called allowed the townspeople to be hospitable. In 1656 by the General Court of Massachusetts ruled that each town should maintain a well-managed tavern, or be subject to a fine. This gave the state some control over the selling of alcoholic drinks which were common. The General Court continued to make more laws to ensure that the tavern owner acted responsibility, even defining “excessive drinking” as, drinking more than half a pint of wine or once cup was allowed at one time to one person. Taverns were not just for drinking, they also served as information centers since travelers stopped by and mail was distributed there. Besides providing beverages, taverns acted as social halls, courtrooms,  meeting places for patriots, refuge from Indian attacks and during the Revolutionary war as barracks, prisons or hospitals.

Captain Aaron Cook established Westfield's first tavern in 1688 in the Little River District. Daniel Fowler's tavern on Main St. was the first tavern one encountered on a ride in from Springfield. It was/is located at the corner of Main and Noble Street and was turned into apartments. The door, pictured below, was sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY City. Washington Tavern was located on the north side of Court St. and the Holcomb House was located on the south side. Mr. Goodenough opened the first tavern on the Green on the corner of the old Boston and Albany Post Road. As one traveled to Blandford or New York, Sacket's Tavern was the last tavern in Westfield on Albany Post Road. This collection shows the exterior of four early taverns and account books from two taverns. The Fowler Tavern account book is not presented completely.

For more information on taverns see:

Fit Men: New England Tavern Keepers 1620-1720 Master’s Thesis by Zachary Andrew Carmichael Miami University 2009 http://utexas.academia.edu/ZachCarmichael/Papers/335034/Fit_Men_New_England_Tavern_Keepers_1620-1720

A Glimpse Of The Past by Dana Brown gives a very complete picture of early taverns http://files.usgwarchives.net/ky/breckinridge/history/other/taverns179gms.txt

Howe Tavern has an interesting article on types of early tavern drinks by Alice Earle http://www.howetavern.com/?page_id=143

Lauues and Libertyes of Massachusetts (1648) has an interesting description of public drunkenness: http://www.commonlaw.com/Mass.html#HL

Although the "ye olde deluder Satan" Act of 1647, required every town having more than 50 families to establish a grammar school (a Latin school to prepare students for college), the first mention of the town hiring a regular teacher is in 1678 when a master was employed and granted a home lot; perhaps he like ministers after him, taught in his own house. He was paid in peas, rye and Indian corn and each person who sent a child had to provide a load of wood as payment. Widow Noble kept the first Dame School in Westfield and the first school house was built around 1700; it was 18 feet square and stood near the meeting house (now First Congregational Church)

Westfield Academy was founded in 1793 by an act of legislature. In 1797, a self-perpetuating board of fifteen trustees held its first meeting, and the school building was built in 1798 and the Academy was opened on January 1, 1800.

The Academy admitted both men and women equally, making the Academy one of the first educational institutions to open its doors to women. Students had rigorous subjects: Astronomy, Chemistry, Calculus, Latin, Natural History, and the Gospels in Greek.  In these files, you will find a list of the early teachers and students along with some later photographs of the building and students.

For more information on schools or the Westfield Academy see the Westfield Athenaeum archives:

MA school laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_School_Laws

Schooling, Education and Literacy in Colonial America http://faculty.mdc.edu/jmcnair/Joe28pages/Schooling,%20Education,%20and%20Literacy%20in%20Colonial%20America.htm

Other Athenaeum Resources: A Tale of Two Taverns: capt. Clap's & Landlord Fowlers' by Harold N. Jones (1979) (F844z W52jhn)

Coaching Roads of Old New England Their Inns & Taverns & Their Stories by George F. Marlow 1945 (974 MAR)