Stagecoach and Tavern Tales of the Old Northwest (Shawnee Classics (Reprinted))

By Harry Ellsworth Cole

Book Overview

One journalist curious about life in the taverns along the stagecoach lines in Wisconsin and northern Illinois from the early 1800s until the 1880s was Harry Ellsworth Cole. While he could not sample strong ales at all of the taverns he wrote about, Cole did study newspaper accounts, wrote hundreds of letters to families of tavern owners, read widely in regional history, and traveled extensively throughout the territory. The result, according to Brunet, is a "nostalgic, sometimes romantic, well-written, and easily digested social history."

At Cole's death, historian Louise Phelps Kellogg edited his manuscript, which in this case involved turning his notes and illustrations into a book and publishing it with the Arthur H. Clark Company in 1930.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0809321254
• ISBN13: 9780809321254
• Release Date: June 1997
• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.22 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

History-lite, I loved it!

This book was originally published in 1930, and is the work of Harry Ellsworth Cole (1861-1928), one of Wisconsin's foremost local historians. Mr. Cole was interested in everything having to do with Wisconsin, and in this book, he traces first the development of the roads and how they helped develop the state, and then he gives a social history of the taverns that lined those roads.For the most part this book reads like a social history, rather than an academic history. It's not a collection of names and dates, famous people and famous events. And there are no recipes here, either. Instead, it is a collection of stories, often quite funny, that give you a read feel for the roads and taverns of yester-year Wisconsin. I found this to be a fun and interesting read; not heavy history, but history-lite. I loved it!