The End of Stagecoach Mail & A Local History of the Stage

The following was submitted to the Meadville Republican by John Reynolds Sr.

John Reynolds Sr.

On the 30th of June, 1869, the mail by the Mercer turnpike was carried for the last time. Our venerable friend, John Reynolds, Esq., hands us the following interesting communication on the subject:

Editor Republican: Yesterday closed an era of about fifty years, during which the mail has been carried in [stage] coaches over the Mercer and Meadville Turnpike Road, to be so carried no more, the Postmaster informs me.

Well do I remember the first transit of stage-coach from Pittsburgh. Henry Baldwin and wife were passengers. Arthur McGill, Sr., was the enterprising pioneer of staging in Northwestern Pennsylvania. Once per week between Pittsburgh and Erie, with a two horse coach, was the first year’s experiment. Soon four-horse coaches, tri-weekly, were required by the increase of travel and population. John Bennet and David leech were the worthy successors of Mr. McGill, and a dally line of stages was soon established.

Well do the inhabitants remember with what zest the several improvements were hailed! Hoe the stage horn was listened for when friends were expected! How a cluster of citizens were wont to gather in front of the stage-house to see who and how many were in the coach.

Progress is the order of the age. The Indian path pioneered the first settler. He widened to the bridle path, which supplied the wants of the pack horse era. A few years formed neighborhoods; the wagon was introduced, and the bridle path widened into a road. Wagoners receipted in Philadelphia to deliver goods in Meadville, within forty days, at twelve cents per pound, and small stores supplied the first settlers with the necessaries of life. Keel boats were an institution of the times of early settlers. Captains Patch, Work, Staley and Huling, were the well known boatmen of that age, whose crews poled the well stowed boats from Pittsburgh to Meadville.

The music of the horn, as the boat neared the “Patterson Warehouse”, brought a large proportion of the male population of our village to the “Point” to witness the unloading of bales, boxes and barrels.

Ah! who, then, casting his eye to the opposite shore of French Creek, saw in the vision of future years, the railroad, with its long trains, its thousands of passengers, its millions of freight, drawn by iron horses, at a speed inconceivable at that day, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, bringing the two great oceans of our globe within seven days of each other, and over thousands of miles then unknown but as desert tracts, inhabited by Native American communities.