Francis Witt’s Blazing Star Tavern ad noted “Hay and Liquors of the First Quality”. Today we think of taverns as places for social congregation where food and alcoholic beverages are served. In 18th century Trenton, taverns primarily provided the necessary meals and lodging for the many,mostly male, travelers, and their horses, coming into town for business or passing through on a journey. Trenton was on a main road between New York and Philadelphia, so there was a lot of traffic. In addition,taverns were centers of social life and communication for local people by providing space for a variety of meetings that brought people into town.
While travelers might include both men and women, meetings were generally for men only. Women seen at a tavern were mostly employees, many enslaved, or in a few cases the tavern owner and operator. At that time, women could not own property, except in rare instances, such as when a widow inherited her husband’s property. At least two Trenton taverns were owned and operated by widows.
When entering Trenton from the north in 1776 the Fox Chase tavern was the first one encountered.Taverns generally had a painted wooden sign to make them obvious to travelers. While local people knew the owners, taverns relied on the distinctive sign to attract travelers. Owners sometimes sold or relocated their businesses and adding to the confusion, tavern names were often changed during the Revolution,primarily to eliminate references to royalty.
When John Adams left Philadelphia to go home on leave from Congress on December 10, 1775, he crossed the Delaware River on the ferry at Trenton and rested his horse while he breakfasted there at Rensselaer Williams’s Royal Oak tavern before riding on to Princeton, dealing as always with “very miry and dirty” roads. Williams soon afterward discontinued renting the ferry landing tavern and on April 1,1776, began operating a tavern he purchased on the northeast corner of today’s Broad and Third streets.This tavern was a large, two and half story brick house with four rooms on the ground floor, lodging rooms above, and a brick kitchen adjoining it. At first, he again named it the Royal Oak but at some point early in the Revolution changed it to the Green Tree. In 1780, the Marquis de Rochambeau described this sign noting, “It represents a beaver at work, with his little teeth, to bring down a large tree, and underneath is written perseverance.” This image clearly supported the Revolution’s goals. The Frenchmen with Rochambeau found the dinner excellent and noted “there was wine on the table, a very rare and dear article in America.”
Throughout the town, buildings of different sizes supported taverns. While Joseph Clunn owned several taverns at different times, he located his Sign of the Ship Lamp; Castle tavern in a small, one-and-a-half story,stone building located on King Street. Like Williams’s, other taverns were larger, such as Rachel Stille’s located on the northwest corner of the intersection of Broad and Second Streets. The brick house was thirty-five-feet square with four rooms on the lower floor and a spacious entry through it. The second floor has three rooms, including a well-appointed assembly room with a door opening on a balcony fronting Broad Street. The third story contained lodging rooms. Close by was a large two-story brick kitchen, also containing a washing house. The lot had a large yard, a garden with an excellent water well, and large horse stables on today’s State Street in addition to cow houses, hen houses, and pigeon houses.
A short distance down the hill into town was Charity Britton’s Indian King Tavern. Charity was the widow of Joseph Britton who pursued his shoemaking business while she operated the tavern. After Joseph’s 1755 death, Charity continued to operate the tavern. Her 1772 tavern license application stated that she had been in business for many years “for the entertainment of strangers, travelers and others, and keeps good entertainment for men and horse, and keeps good orders in her house.” Her tavern was a large, two-story frame house with four rooms on each floor and an entry through the first floor. A large kitchen adjoined it, and the property also had a house and shed for firewood, a two-story stable accommodating upwards of forty horses, and a more than 50 tree orchard bearing grafted fruit.
A unique and early use of Trenton taverns was to house British army officers, and their families, captured in Canada in 1775. On May 13,1776 the Continental Congress authorized reimbursement to Rachel Stille for boarding prisoners and for providing waggonage. Not long before, in early April 1776 passengers on a stage-coach trip from Elizabethtown to Trenton got into a heated discussion resulting incharges against one of them for promoting the enemy cause and disparaging the American forces. A passenger had complained that the British prisoners at Trenton had run up £150 in expenses in just one week and spoke disrespectfully of them for being so extravagant. In return, a Mr. Peter Dubois verbally attacked the complainer and went on to criticize several aspects of the American cause so severely that his conversation became “intolerable.” The stage stopped at Rachel Stille’s tavern, and at dinner Mr.Dubois declared he had visited some British gentlemen who were prisoners there. He turned down their invitation to dine with them and chose to dine with the stage passengers. Dubois’ comments made him unpopular, a seeming Loyalist, but later he claimed that he was only making comparative comments, not disloyal ones. Conversations on stagecoaches and in taverns could become dangerous when aspects of the Revolution were discussed.
More formally, even though the town was not one of the two capitals of the new state, the new government of New Jersey often used Trenton taverns for its work. For example, the Assembly and Council held a Joint Meeting at Rachel Stille’s tavern at 3:00 pm on November 1, 1777, and elected William Livingston a second term as governor and John Hart as Speaker of the Assembly.
In early November 1778, several Joint Meetings at Britton’s tavern discussed New Jersey’s position on approving the Articles of Confederation. The committee recommended approving them even though there were some concerns. This recommendation passed by a very close vote on November 20. About October 1, 1777. Rensselaer Williams served as presiding justice when the court found a number of charges against local Loyalists to be true. Afterwards, confiscated Loyalist property, including books and household furniture, was sold at public auction at Williams’s tavern on December 9. In other actions held at taverns throughout the war, Patriots who had supplied items needed by the troops found reimbursement.
The taverns helped whenever troops passed through town. At the time of the Pennsylvania Line mutiny, during January 1781, Trentonians found themselves interacting with newly discharged soldiers as individual cases were settled. While the mutineers were in and about Trenton, several residents provided services for the government negotiators and the soldiers. For example, the Continental Congress reimbursed Rensselaer Williams $5,545 for expenses incurred at his tavern.
Several months later, the American troops returning north from Yorktown came back in several groups. One lieutenant recorded, “after getting our men into quarters, I walked with Capt. Bradford to Mr. Cape’s tavern, where we spent the evening and supped; but the lodgings being all taken up before we arrived, walked to a private house and lodged with several other officers of the army.” The next day they drew rations and at about 10:00 am began their march to Princeton.
The fifth anniversary of declaring independence was celebrated in Trenton on Thursday, July 4,1782. Governor Livingston and the principal men of Trenton and vicinity met for “an elegant dinner” at Rensselaer Williams’s tavern, where an American flag was displayed. Thirteen toasts were made, including, to the “glorious 4th of July 1776,” the United States of America, the Congress, the French King, Queen and family, General Washington and the American army. Note that even for joyous celebrations, only men attended them at a tavern while their horses rested and consumed large amounts of hay.