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From Escoheag to Boston Market

 

This article was written by J. Earl Clauson and published on Friday, October 11, 1935, in the Evening Bulletin newspaper of Providence, Rhode Island, under the heading “These Plantations.” The piece is untitled but tells how Exeter farmers would get their produce to the city market in Boston.

 

 

If you had happened to be a farmer in the Escoheag section of Exeter, say, around a century ago, November would have been the month you looked forward to. (Incidentally you would have pronounced the queer name Escoheag as other natives do and did.)

 

            Because November was the month of your annual visit to Boston. It was a custom not copyrighted or even individual to Escoheag; all over the state farmers at this season were anticipating the trip and in Connecticut and far places in Massachusetts and to the northward. It was then that the produce of the farm was loaded on and taken to market and par of the resultant cash invested in store goods, the sort of stuff that couldn’t be raised on the farm.

 

            We were reminded of this the other day while making a not very prudent voyage over the strip of the Ten Rod Road from Millville to Beach Pond now under construction.

 

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            But that’s merely an interruption now. Charles A. Pratt, former president of the Exeter Town Council told us about the Boston trips, passing along what he had gleaned from his grandfather.

 

            Those were the days when farmers and their employees worked from sun to sun. Mr. Pratt’s grandfather was an employee inn his earlier years. For turning out of bed at sun-up and putting in good hard licks until it was too late to see he received three shillings a day. That was regular rate, and it was paid mostly in produce of the farm, which he carried to his home on his own shoulders.

 

            Three shillings was half a dollar. The New England shilling was worth 16 ²/₃ cents. In western New England at that time it was in competition with the York shilling, which was only 12 ½ cents, and you had to be careful to understand which kind was being talked about when you bargained.

 

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            In time, by industry and luck, Mr. Pratt’s grandfather got his own farm and rated with the other industrial men of the neighborhood his annual trip to Boston. He made it with a pair of oxen, which means if you never have paced those interesting animals, about two and on-half miles an hour. But that was all right because while he may not have had a lot of money, even Rowland Hazard, the manufacturer over at Peace Dale, had no more time than he had.

 

            Turkeys and hens were killed and dressed for the city market with a prayer that the weather would stay cold. A hog had been butchered and such parts as would stand the journey, like sausage, head cheese and salted pork; were loaded on. With corn, fruit, perhaps a few barrels of cider and the rest it was possible to provide the oxen with a load.

 

            The women of the family took their own modest fliers in the shape of knit goods and homespun and made out careful lists of what was needed from the big stores, and one day before it was yet light grandfather set out, marching along side his cattle.

 

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            The route over the Ten Rod Road and then either along New London Turnpike if there was cash enough on hand to meet tollgate charges, or straight through to Wickford and up the Boston Post Road. If the latter route were chosen, as generally it was, dark would overtake grandfather north of Wickford. Mr. Pratt said the old gentleman – only he wasn’t so old in those days – had told of carrying loads of hoop poles to Wickford by oxcart and meeting sunrise on Exeter Hill, which meant that he left home around 2 o’clock in the morning.

 

            Whichever way they went other farmers and their oxen would have joined grandfather and his before they got far, so that by nightfall there was a comfortable company. The goal of all was the pre-Thanksgiving city market, with its demand for all sorts of things to eat.

 

            Mother had put enough food on the load to last until grandfather got home again so he wouldn’t be frittering his money away on non-essentials. There would be ample store of fried apples, pies, doughnuts, mince pies because they rode best and could be eaten out of the hand, brown bread, a big jar of cold baked beans – the mashed up and pressed down kind, not individual beans that you have to chase all over the place, cheese, fruit, cakes – plenty you may be sure.

 

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            The noon hour might be made at one of the roadside taverns or a grocery story. All stores sold liquor, two cents for a drink of rum or gin and pour your own, six cents for a pint, and hard cider for next to nothing. Here the oxen were fed and watered and while they ate the men likewise refreshed themselves, probably exchanging samples of their supplies and boasting about their wives’ cooking.

 

            At night it might be necessary to spend a quarter for a shakedown near the fireplace. The cattle could be staked outside. One of the party of neighbors would keep watch over the stock of all. Then before daybreak they would set out again.

 

            It would take two or three days at Boston to dispose of stock and do the store buying. There were regular farmers’ taverns which at this season filled to bursting with rough, noisy, good-natured fellows from all quarters. Charges were low, patrons didn’t need soft beds, and there was enough news passing to make up for any discomforts.

 

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            The Escoheag-Boston trip consumed ten days going and coming. It brought to the farm about the only cash money seen there during the year.

 

            Sometimes the pilgrims ran into an unseasonably warm spell which raised hob with their load of dressed poultry and cut into profits. Mr. Pratt’s grandfather told of one such time when a fellow voyager was forced to sort out a lot of turkeys which were getting high and throw them away behind a stone wall.

 

            It happened that year that he made a second trip just before Christmas, not having got enough money together on his first. As he come to the place where he had thrown the turkeys he remembered and stopped to look. There they were just where he had put them, but frozen stiff and not smelling at all, so he loaded them on his wagon and took them along to market.

 

            It was a great time in a hard-working farmer’s life, this annual trip. The custom passed when the railroad came in, but nothing ever was invented to take its place.

Original story by J. Earl Clauson, originally published in the Providence Evening Bulletin under the heading "These Plantations". Later collected into a book of the same name that was printed in 1937 by The Roger Williams Press (E. A. Johnson Company).