Miscellaneous

ORDINARIES IN COLONIAL EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA

BY ALAN D. WATSON^*

[Vol. 45 (1968), 67-83]

Ordinaries in Colonial eastern North Carolina,¹ or taverns, tippling houses, inn, victualing houses, and public houses of entertainment as they were variously called,² aroused ambivalent emotions in travelers throughout the area. The sandy, barren, and often gloomy country, the numerous rains and showers which without warning drenched the traveler, the heat of the summer, and the scarcity of persons on the roads made ordinaries a welcome sight to the weary traveler, while long delays at ferries, sometimes for days, necessitated accommodations for man and horse.

Yet the accommodations along the roads of eastern North Carolina were termed miserable and intolerably bad almost everywhere except in the towns. A traveler of the upper class invariably sought food and lodging at private homes rather than subject himself to the indignities of public houses. The large planters and merchants kept open houses, seeking the conversation and news of knowledgeable men of their social standing.

Regulations controlling the ordinaries were formulated by the Assembly.³ They were put into operation by the county courts with occasional assistance from the General Court. The governor and council also participated in the supervision of ordinaries on rare occasions. Before 1741 ordinary licenses were obtained from the governor⁴ and issued at the precinct or county courts and at the General Court. After this date the county courts were the only ones authorized to issue licenses.

Rejections of petitions for ordinary licenses were rare. Occasionally petitions for renewal of licenses were denied because the petitioners “kept a disorderly house and suffered unlawful gaming and other enormities contrary to law.”⁵

Suspensions of licenses for misbehavior, extortionate prices, and disregard for the law were few. The licenses of two ladies in Wilmington, Mrs. Lettice Blackmore and Mrs. E1izabeth Saunders, were suspended when they violated the law which forbade the harboring of sailors and selling them liquor without the consent of their shipmasters. The court said that this was detrimental to the merchants and masters of vessels trading in the Cape Fear.⁶ The license of Robert McGane in Craven County was suspended when the court found that he kept a “very disorderly and irregular House.”⁷

The ordinary keepers operated outside the law on numerous occasions. Many kept public houses without taking out licenses, a practice prevalent throughout the Colonial period. To discourage this practice the Assembly in 1741 prescribed a penalty of thirty lashes at public whipping for the first offense and thirty-nine lashes plus a month in prison for subsequent offenses unless the convicted person paid a £5 fine or gave security for such within a month of his conviction. The £5 fine was raised to £10 in 1767.⁸

Also in 1767 the ordinary keepers were ordered to erect a sign denoting the nature of their establishments in order that the ordinaries or houses of entertainment could be more easily recognized by travelers. According to Governor William Tryon, it was hoped that this new requirement would remove to some degree the ease with which persons retailed liquors undetected.⁹

The requirement of a sign, Governor Tryon did not fail to note, would be additionally beneficial in that it would allow the governor to receive with more certainty the fees due to him. The fee per license in 1715 was £4 if the license were granted by the General Court and £2 if granted by the precinct courts. Later it decreased to 20 shillings and remained at this figure.¹⁰

There was a definite proclivity to obtain a license without depositing the necessary fees. Counties issued warnings against this practice, while Governors Gabriel Johnston and Arthur Dobbs complained both publicly and privately about such irregularities.¹¹ In an attempt to eliminate these abuses the 1767 law provided that the license prepared by the county clerk showing that the license fees had been paid had to be attested not only by the clerk as hitherto had been the normal procedure but also countersigned by an agent of the governor.¹²

A bond was required from the ordinary keeper at the time a license was issued to insure his compliance with the law. According to law, the bond put up by a petitioner for a license between 1741 and 1767 was £30 proclamation money. Before this time, when there was no uniform figure for a bond, the amount required varied widely. Chowan County set bonds at £100 proclamation money, and Craven County demanded bonds of £250 proclamation money.¹³

During the period from 1741 to 1767, Craven, Chowan, Edgecombe, and Pasquotank abided by the legal prescription by requiring £30 bonds, while Bertie, Hyde, Tyrrell, and Perquimans sometimes asked £50. Onslow required bonds of £40.¹⁴ After 1767, when the county courts were again free to exercise their judgment, bonds tended to be £30 in amount, although the Onslow justices required only £25 and the Edgecombe court asked £50.¹⁵ In addition to the ordinary keeper, the bonds were generally endorsed by two other persons who acted as securities or sureties, although technically one endorser was sufficient.

Many of the ordinary keepers were among the outstanding men of the colony. Sheriffs, merchants, and justices of the peace frequently served as innkeepers, while even schoolmasters and doctors kept public houses.¹⁶ Revolutionary War notables such as Jethro Sumner and Timothy Bloodworth found innkeeping profitable. Sometimes gentlemen, as in the case of Cornelius Harnett who was one of the earliest settlers in the Cape Fear region, were reduced by circumstances to operating ordinaries.¹⁷

In some of the counties, women played no small role as ordinary keepers. In Chowan, New Hanover, and Pasquotank almost 20 percent of the licenses recorded were given to women, while approximately 10 percent of those licensed in Perquimans and Craven were women. Cumberland, Johnston, and Bertie, however, recorded only one woman each. Rejections of licenses requested by women were few, evincing no discriminatory practices against the female sex by the courts. Almost half of the female ordinary keepers took out licenses to continue their deceased husbands’ ordinaries, probably in order to maintain their livelihood.¹⁸

Generally women kept their ordinaries for only one to three years, usually one, before giving up their licenses. They appear to have become quickly disillusioned with the arduous task of providing service to the meanest sort of persons and enduring the roughness of the men calling at the ordinaries. There were a number of instances, however, in which women operated inns from one to two decades.¹⁹ One of the most remarkable of the women ordinary keepers was Mrs. Fielder Powell of Craven County who kept her establishment for twenty years.²⁰

Ordinaries, of necessity, were located where people would be constantly traveling or resting overnight. Ferries and towns were the most popular locations. The principal thoroughfares through the province, embracing the Trent Road, Pamlico Road, and Virginia Road, was especially well liked by ordinary keepers, while the Yadkin Road in Cumberland County and the Wagon Road in Bute County, two well-traveled routes, also had a large number of public houses.

Ordinaries which were kept in the same building for a number of years and became widely known to travelers and the local inhabitants gained a reputation which proved beneficial to the proprietor. Among the better known longtime public houses were the King’s Arms operated by Horniblows in Edenton, the Eagle Tavern in Halifax, Pugh’s Ordinary or Tavern in Bertie County, and Jonathan Ray’s Shop and Young’s Ordinary in Bute County. Many cases are recorded in which ordinaries were kept in the homes of former ordinary keepers who had moved or died, and some took advantage of a good location of an acquaintance by establishing an ordinary at his house.

Mention is also made of ordinaries at small settlements within the counties, including Reubin Town, Middletown, and Port Ridge in Bute, Terrapin Hill in Chowan, Shaffering Town in Cumberland, and New Germany in Craven. Often the courts did not specify locations or listed ordinaries at a person’s “plantation,” “dwelling,” “house,” or “place of abode,” rendering a present-day determination of the location of the ordinaries impossible.

The large towns and county seats provided the greatest opportunities for ordinaries, and Wilmington, New Bern and Edenton had a large number of them during some years. Edenton boasted as many as thirteen in one year, 1765; Wilmington kept a constant number of five or six; and New Bern undoubtedly did even better, although the Craven court left most locations undesignated.²¹

When towns were established or made county seats, enterprising persons immediately sought to establish public houses in them. Isaiah Parvisal took out a license the year after Campbellton was incorporated; William Eaton received a license in Halifax the year it was made a county seat; three licenses were given to residents of Tarboro in 1764 when it became a county seat; and Hertford recorded an ordinary the year of its establishment.²² The Assembly even required the town of Johnston in Onslow County to provide two public houses of entertainment for the benefit of its inhabitants and travelers.²³

Sites as close to the courthouses as possible were obviously the most desirable of any location. Two years after Bertie County was formed, William Daniel presented a petition to the Bertie court showing “the lack of a public house of entertainment as is usual in other places” and asking for permission to build one at the courthouse. He was given one hundred square feet on the southeast corner of the public lands “for himself and his assigns for 99 years,” provided that he built a suitable public house within one year.²⁴ Noah Pridham built an ordinary at the Bertie courthouse in 1741. Unfortunately, the Assembly formed Edgecombe and Northampton counties from Bertie in that year, and the courthouse had to be moved to a more central location within the county. The court for compensation leased Pridham the lot at the former location for forty-one years at a nominal sum, thereby enabling him to continue his ordinary.²⁵

The first recorded petition for an ordinary in Perquimans at the county courthouse was in 1739 by Samuel Palmer. In 1753 the petition of Evan Skinner to build a “sufficient house of entertainment on the lot and a half laid out for public buildings” on Phelps’ Point was granted. He received a license at the next court and renewed it the following year. In the same county Nathan Newby built a dwelling on the courthouse lot in 1757 to enable him “to entertain persons attending the court.” This must have provided competition for Cornelius Mullins, who had been keeping an ordinary at the courthouse since 1755 when he superseded Evan Skinner.²⁶

In some cases only a booth, a temporary structure, was kept at the courthouse for service during public times.²⁷ Ordinaries were also needed to serve the county jails in order to feed the prisoner.²⁸ William Hales in Bertie was ordered to erect his house “at the south end of the gaol with a passage through the said house opposite to the door of the said gaol.”²⁹

Many ferries throughout the Colonial period were served by ordinaries. The major ferries, those across the Albemarle Sound, Pamlico River, the Trent River below New Bern, the New River at Snead’s, and the Cape Fear River at Brunswick were at an early date attended by them, while other ferries gradually acquired these public houses of entertainment.

Still the long delays and the sparsity of people residing along many of the roads led the Assembly to adopt a law in 1767 which instructed all ferrymen who received more than 4 pence for a man and horse to keep ordinaries at their ferries under penalty of a fine of £10 for each offense of refusing either entertainment or lodging.³⁰ Governor Tryon happily noted this regulation in a letter to the Earl of Shelburne, stating that it would benefit both travelers and the general post.³¹

Most of the ferrymen could charge more than 4 pence for a man and horse and so were responsible for maintaining an ordinary. A check of the ordinary licenses granted by the county courts against the existing ferries indicates that no more than 50 percent can be shown definitely to have been accompanied by ordinaries. After 1767 few ferrymen asked for an ordinary license when requesting permission to operate a ferry. It is apparent that compliance with the 1767 law was far from complete.

Ordinary keepers tended greatly to overcharge their customers, and the Colonial Assembly continuously sought to rectify this situation. In 1715 it required all ordinary keepers to sell strong drink in English sealed measures, pints, quarts, pottles, and gallons. All ordinary keepers were ordered to obtain these measures within six months after ratification of the act under penalty of £5.³²

At the same time the Assembly set a maximum price of 12 pence for a meal, 1s. 6d. per gallon of home-brewed beer or unboiled cider, and a 100 percent profit on imported liquors. It was perfectly legal for a man to sell liquors produced on his own plantation without an ordinary license so long as the liquor was not drunk at his plantation.³³

The profits allowed by the 1715 law encouraged extravagant prices, and five years later another law was passed allowing the precinct courts to determine the price of liquors, diets, lodging, and pasturage for ordinaries. Upon penalty of £5 the clerk of the precinct court supplied the ordinary keepers with a list of the prices within ten days of the termination of the court, and the table of rates was required to be displayed openly in the ordinary. A fine of £5 attended the neglect of posting the list of prices or charging exorbitant rates. The clerk received 10 shillings for copying each table.³⁴

By 1741 continuing abuses obliged the Assembly to pass another law regulating ordinaries. The county courts continued to set the prices to be charged by the ordinary keepers. The responsibility for obtaining the table of rates, however, was shifted to the ordinary keepers. This was to be done within a month after the court session under penalty of £5 for neglecting to display the table, but only 10 shillings for charging excessive prices. Merchants or any persons were allowed to retail brandy, wine, and rum in quantities of not less than a quart, and ale, beer, and cider in quantities of not less than a gallon, provided that they were not drunk where they were sold.³⁵ These provisions were continued without alteration throughout the remainder of the Colonial period.

The county courts could set the prices and change them during the year by law. The general pattern was to revise the rates every three to five years. Bute County, however, made this an annual practice. The rates were usually given in terms of proclamation money, although many times they were left unspecified. They were changed during interim periods upon representation to the courts that the prices were too low with regard to such circumstances as existing import duties.³⁶

Chowan County was the most explicit in its directions, always ordering the ordinary keepers to take a copy of the rates and abide by them according to law. In addition, the Chowan court stated the method by which violations of the law could be prosecuted, a practice not found in the other counties.

Dinner was the principal meal of the day in North Carolina ordinaries, flanked by breakfast and supper, all of which could be served in numerous ways. Dinner might consist of hot or cold meat, usually two dishes, with or without a combination of wheat bread and small beer or cider. The meat, salted or fresh, could be beef, mutton, pork, venison, or fish.

Supper was sometimes designated in the same terms as dinner, but more often was equated with breakfast, both being approximately 6 pence less in price than dinner which cost between 1 and 2 shillings. Breakfast sometimes included a meat dish,³⁷ but usually consisted of tea and wheat bread or hoe cakes.³⁸

Often along the road travelers had the good fortune to eat with private persons. A French traveler dined with a farmer with whom he had fat bacon, greens, Indian bread, and good cider,³⁹ while J. F. D. Smyth, after being lost on the road, found a Mr. Tyers who treated him with fat roasted turkeys, geese, ducks, boiled fowls, large hams, hung beef, and barbecued pig.⁴⁰ Of course, such fare was not always provided travelers. Some stopped at private homes which had nothing but potatoes to offer. Others were forced to go into the woods and shoot wild animals in order to have meat to eat.⁴¹

The ordinaries could be as bad and frequently were. The one at Lockwood’s Folly in 1734 had no rum, sugar, or lime juice for a drink,⁴² and at another, William Logan complained that the chickens which he had for dinner had been “broiled in a nasty manner.”⁴³ The accommodations in the better public houses of the period, the taverns, could be quite different however. For example, Logan stated that in Wilmington he received the best entertainment since he had left Philadelphia, both for man and for horse.⁴⁴

The liquors served in the province were numerous. Rum and cider were priced by the gallon, quart, pint, gill, and half-gill. The most common measure for all liquors was the quart. Rum was of the West Indian or New England variety,⁴⁵ although Bute County listed this drink from Norfolk, Baltimore, New Bern, and the Cape Fear. Cider could be “common Carolina cider” (Crab), royal cider, and Northern (Northward) or New England cider.⁴⁶

Varieties of beer included those from Europe, generally from Bristol and Liverpool in England,⁴⁷ New York, or Philadelphia (Northward beer), and from the country (local beer).⁴⁸ Imported ale came almost exclusively from England⁴⁹ and imported brandy from France.⁵⁰ Madeira was the most frequently listed wine in the colony,⁵¹ accompanied by claret, Vidonia, port, and “Teneriffe.”⁵²

Punch of New England or West Indian rum and loaf or brown sugar was quite common throughout the counties.⁵³ Toddy and brandy were only a little less so. Grog and Sangaree were less prominent. Chocolate and coffee were common drinks in the colony, but these were found only five times in ordinary rates, all in conjunction with breakfast.⁵⁴

In addition to ordinaries there was at least one coffee house in the province. This was located in Wilmington. A petition from its owner to sell liquors brought a negative response from the court which thought “tho’ at ye same time ye Cot. think such Coffee house would be of public advantage.”⁵⁵

All the ordinaries provided some means of stabling and pasturing a horse, either for the night, the day, or for a full twenty-four hours. Indian corn and oats were the principal foods, being listed by quarts and generally priced at 2 pence per quart. Fodder and hay were sometimes provided for the horses and were rated by the pound.⁵⁶ Travelers found that accommodations for their horses varied widely in quality. Sometimes the traveler’s horse received good oats and provender, but more often only corn blades or marsh hay of a weeds and grass composition were provided which the “horse would have been a fool to eat.”⁵⁷

Accommodations for men were generally poor even in private homes. Waightstill Avery was forced to spend a night without closing his eyes, since the one-room house at which he stopped was filled with drunken men who cursed, fought, and made much noise throughout the night.⁵⁸ Smyth was unable to sleep when he sought shelter a few miles north of the North Carolina line “in a shell of a house, wherein the overseer lived, and five or six negroes besides.” He was disturbed by constant snores and the flies and mosquitoes.⁵⁹

Many of the ordinaries were little better. William Logan complained of staying in a “stinking ordinary bed, on an earthen floor, with the house full of air holes,” and considered himself fortunate to escape without catching a cold.⁶⁰ A typical ordinary consisted of a one-room house, log or frame, and was furnished only with a bed, table, some benches, and a chest. When the traveler ate a meal, a dog might gaze wistfully into his face, cats claw at his elbows, and children of the proprietor scream for their share. If he spent the night, he was not allowed to sleep in the only bed but lay on the floor in front of the fire, or, if the weather permitted, out of doors on the ground.⁶¹

The taverns of the later Colonial period were much more commodious than the simple ordinary and provided better lodging. An advertisement for the sale of two lots adjoining the courthouse in Halifax stated that the houses on the lots were well situated for taverns. One house was forty-four by twenty feet, the other eighteen by twenty-eight feet. The former had three lodging rooms upstairs, four closets, a piazza running the length of the house, a large barroom, and a cellar. The latter had two large lodging rooms and a good billiard table.⁶² Other newspaper advertisements of the sale of lots would also stress the desirability of such for taverns.⁶³

Billiards, hazard, all-fours, backgammon, chess, draughts, whist, piquet, and quadrille were frequent gaming pursuits enjoyed in the ordinaries and taverns. These places also served as centers of political discussions, were used by shipmasters for the leaving of mail, employed as locations for the sale of slaves,⁶⁴ and used for vestry meetings.⁶⁵ The proprietors of these public houses had to exercise care in the sale of liquors, being assured that their customers’ credit was reliable,⁶⁶ while also being on guard for thieves.⁶⁷

In summary, ordinaries were probably more prevalent in Colonial North Carolina than has been generally believed. Although they were concentrated in the towns, there were numerous public houses scattered throughout the counties. With the exception of the larger towns, accommodations were usually undesirable. Rates of travel and expenses were not greatly different from those in the northern provinces.⁶⁸

Ordinary keepers seemed loath to comply with the law, disregarding admonitions to take out licenses and to refrain from overcharging their customers. They continually had to be reminded not to sell liquors to anyone during church hours and not to anyone to become intoxicated on the Sabbath day,⁶⁹ Valentine Wade, a justice of the peace at Portsmouth in Carteret County, was removed from his office because “he Permits, Suffers, and Encourages Disorderly persons to dance & play at Cards & Dice in his house upon the Lords Day.”⁷⁰

Although the Assembly passed a number of laws regulating the ordinaries and prescribing in detail penalties for disobeying these laws, they were ineffective, principally because the local units of government refused to comply with and enforce the statutes. Fines were rare. Many cases were dismissed for lack of evidence.⁷¹ Most violations were never called to the attention of the courts.

Apparently it was thought that keeping an ordinary was a profitable business. Although some proprietors relinquished their licenses after a year’s operation, others continued for at least twenty years. Some persons even kept two ordinaries, one at their house and the other at the courthouse of the county in which they resided.⁷² Sometimes two persons operated an establishment jointly, either husband and wife or two men.⁷³

Despite the disregard for legal prescriptions, poor facilities, and other shortcomings, ordinaries were an indispensable part of Colonial North Carolina society. Life in the towns revolved around these public houses, and as a result, many of the ordinaries evolved into establishments of high quality and good repute. Their necessity is indicated by the actions of the Assembly which thought that ordinaries were vital to the promotion of settlement in newly organized towns in the province. The Assembly therefore tried to encourage the establishment of public houses by exempting prospective ordinary keepers from the payment of license fees for as long as ten years.⁷⁴ Throughout the countryside the ordinaries provided a common meeting site where one’s desire for drink, recreation, and companionship could be satisfied. In addition to their social usefulness, the ordinaries supplemented the private hospitality reserved for persons of the upper class as well as implemented such commercial functions as the general post.

Footnotes