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��Fro7n the White Horse to Little RJiody.
��[April,
��But it must not be supposed that public stage-coach travel on the route here indicated began with the opening of the Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike. The first conveyance of the kind started on its devious way over the poor county roads from Boston to Providence in 1767; and the quaint Jedediah Morse records that twelve years later the " in- tercourse of the country barely required two stages and twelve horses on this hne " ; but the same authority states that in 1797 twenty stages and one hundred horses were employed, and that the number of different stages leaving Boston during the week was twenty.
The first stage-coach that passed over this new turnpike was driven by Will- iam Hodges, familiarly called " Bill," a famous Jehu, whose exploits with rein and whip, being really of a high order of merit, were graphically set forth to any passenger who shared the box with him, after Bill's spirits had been raised and his tongue limbered with the requisite number of " nip- pers " ; and the increased comfort and rapidity of the journey were so clearly apparent, that the line was soon after extended to connect the capitals of the Bay State and Little Rhody.
In those days there was but one way to drive out of Boston, and that a nar- row one known as the " Neck," beyond which was Roxbury. Across this isthmus all northward, westward, and southward-bound vehicles must pass, in leaving or entering the city. The narrowest place was at the present intersection of Dover Street with Wash- ington, or, as it was then called. Orange, Street. In ante-bellum times this was the southern limit of the city, and here a gate stood, which opened on to a cause- way that crossed the " salt, marish,"
��which at high tide was covered by the water. To this gateway, then, the turn- pike was extended from Dedham court- house ; and when the work was finished a coach, starting from the White Horse Tavern in Boston, which stood near the site of the Adams House, just opened by Messrs. Hall and Whipple, bowled along " a smooth and easy highway " to the bank of the Providence River, making the long journey within the in- credibly short space of six consecutive hours, when the wheeling was good.
This great work, which was talked about years before it was undertaken, and then required years to finish, was a triumph of road-building, in which both owners and contractors took a pardonable pride ; and to those famil- iar with the region through which it passed, the course will be sufficiently indicated by noting here and there a way-mark. On leaving Boston Neck it followed the already well-graded road through the Highlands, to a point near the present station of the Boston and Providence Railroad corporation in Roxbury, thence through West Roxbury to Dedham, and on through Norwood to East Walpole ; it left the central village of Walpole a mile or so to the west, keeping near the Sharon line, struck into the westerly edge of Fox- borough to a point called the Four Corners, then through Shepardville in Wrentham to North Attleborough, Attle- borough " City," Pawtucket, and Provi- dence. A large portion of the road is still kept in repair, so that one might take a carriage and trace the route through its entire length.
To support such an expensive turn- pike it was necessary to levy a tax on those who made use of it, and to that end several toll-gates were established, at which passengers were compelled to
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