![]() Taverns served multiple functions on the Southern colonial frontier. When politics was in season or the county court was meeting, political talk filled the taverns. At upscale taverns, the gentry had private rooms or even organized a club. Horse races often began and ended at taverns, as did militia-training exercises. Taverns absorbed leisure hours, and games were provided. For most rural Americans, the tavern was the chief link to the greater world and played a role much like the city marketplace of medieval Europe. Taverns were essential for colonial Americans, especially in the rural, South where colonists learned current crop prices, engaged in trade, and heard newspapers read aloud. One Sunday in 1789, President George Washington, who was touring Connecticut, discovered that the locals discouraged travel on the Sabbath and so he spent the day at Perkins Tavern, "which by the way is not a good one." Locals Even on main highways such as the Boston Post Road, travelers routinely reported the taverns had bad food, hard beds, scanty blankets, inadequate heat, and poor service. In the backwoods, the taverns were wretched hovels, dirty with vermin for company even so, they were safer and more pleasant for the stranger than camping by the roadside. The best houses had a separate parlor for ladies because the other part was unclean, as well as an affable landlord, good cooking, soft, roomy beds, fires in all rooms in cold weather, and warming pans used on the beds at night. Upscale taverns had a lounge with a huge fireplace, a bar at one side, plenty of benches and chairs, and several dining tables. ![]() Larger taverns provided rooms for travelers, especially in county seats that housed the county court. The ground floor culd be used by the public, and the upperfloor had the bedrooms and was somewhat removed from the public. The original structure of these taverns were log cabins, typically a storey and a half high with two rooms on each floor. With those profits came progress, which improved the new homelands with the use of taverns as well as breweries. ![]() They were supervised by county officials, who recognized the need for taverns and the need to maintain order, to minimize drunkenness and avoid it on Sundays if possible,and to establish the responsibilities of tavern keepers. ![]() The multiple functions of public houses were especially important in frontier communities in which other institutions were often weak, which was certainly true on the southern colonial frontier. The ones in the South that are closer to the frontier were used as inns and trading post from those who were headed into the unknown lands to settle. The taverns in the North and the South were different in their uses as well unlike the central ideal tavern in England. Taverns here though served many purposes such as courtrooms, religious meetings, trading posts, inns, post offices, and convenience stores. These institutions were influential in the development of new settlements, serving as gathering spaces for the community. Taverns, along with inns, at first were mostly known as ordinaries, which were constructed throughout most of New England. Taverns in the colonies closely followed the ordinaries of the mother country. In 1900, the city of Boston, with about 200,000 adult men, counted 227,000 daily saloon customers. Probably half of the American men avoided saloons and so the average consumption for actual patrons was about half-a- gallon of beer per day, six days a week. They served mostly beer bottles were available, but most drinkers went to the taverns. Twice the density could be found in working class neighborhoods. By 1900, the 26 million American men over age 18 patronized 215,000 licensed taverns and probably 50,000 unlicensed (illegal) ones, or one per 100 men. The sheer volume of hard liquor consumption fell off, but the brewing of beer increased, and men developed customs and traditions based on how to behave at the tavern. Benjamin Franklin printed a " Drinker's Dictionary" in his Pennsylvania Gazette in 1737, listing some 228 slang terms used for drunkenness in Philadelphia. That total does not include the beer or hard cider, which colonists routinely drank in addition to rum, the most consumed distilled beverage available in British America. In 1770, per capita consumption was 3.7 gallons of distilled spirits per year, rising to 5.2 gallons in 1830 or approximately 1.8 one-ounce shots a day for every adult white man. As the supply of distilled spirits, especially rum, increased, and their price dropped, they became the drink of choice throughout the colonies. Colonial Americans drank a variety of distilled spirits. Taverns in North America date back to colonial America. The Vera Cruz Tavern in Vera Cruz, Pennsylvania
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