All About Coffee Part 22

Norfolk, Chicago, St. Louis, and New Orleans also had them. Conrad Leonhard's coffee house at 320 Market Street. St. Louis, was famous for its coffee and coffee cake, from 1844 to 1905, when it became a bakery and lunch room, removing in 1919 to Eighth and Pine Streets.

In the pioneer days of the great west, coffee and tea were hard to get; and, instead of them, teas were often made from garden herbs, spicewood, sa.s.safras-roots, and other shrubs, taken from the thickets[89]. In 1839, in the city of Chicago, one of the minor taverns was known as the Lake Street coffee house. It was situated at the corner of Lake and Wells Streets. A number of hotels, which in the English sense might more appropriately be called inns, met a demand for modest accommodation[90].

Two coffee houses were listed in the Chicago directories for 1843 and 1845, the Washington coffee house, 83 Lake Street; and the Exchange coffee house, Clarke Street between La Salle and South Water Streets.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TYPES OF COLONIAL COFFEE ROASTERS

The cylinder at the top of the picture was revolved by hand in the fireplace; the skillets were set in the smouldering ashes]

The old-time coffee houses of New Orleans were situated within the original area of the city, the section bounded by the river, Ca.n.a.l Street, Esplanade Avenue and Rampart Street. In the early days most of the big business of the city was transacted in the coffee houses. The _bruleau_, coffee with orange juice, orange peel, and sugar, with cognac burned and mixed in it, originated in the New Orleans coffee house, and led to its gradual evolution into the saloon.

_How the United States Became a Nation of Coffee Drinkers_

Coffee, tea, and chocolate were introduced into North America almost simultaneously in the latter part of the seventeenth century. In the first half of the eighteenth century, tea had made such progress in England, thanks to the propaganda of the British East India Company, that, being moved to extend its use in the colonies, the directors turned their eyes first in the direction of North America. Here, however, King George spoiled their well-laid plans by his unfortunate stamp act of 1765, which caused the colonists to raise the cry of "no taxation without representation."

Although the act was repealed in 1766, the right to tax was a.s.serted, and in 1767 was again used, duties being laid on paints, oils, lead, gla.s.s, and tea. Once more the colonists resisted; and, by refusing to import any goods of English make, so distressed the English manufacturers that Parliament repealed every tax save that on tea.

Despite the growing fondness for the beverage in America, the colonists preferred to get their tea elsewhere to sacrificing their principles and buying it from England. A brisk trade in smuggling tea from Holland was started.

In a panic at the loss of the most promising of its colonial markets, the British East India Company appealed to Parliament for aid, and was permitted to export tea, a privilege it had never before enjoyed.

Cargoes were sent on consignment to selected commissioners in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. The story of the subsequent happenings properly belongs in a book on tea. It is sufficient here to refer to the climax of the agitation against the fateful tea tax, because it is undoubtedly responsible for our becoming a nation of coffee drinkers instead of one of tea drinkers, like England.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN EARLY FAMILY COFFEE ROASTER

This machine, known in Holland as a "Coffee Burner," was used late in the 18th century in New England. It hung in the fireplace or stood in the embers]

The Boston "tea party" of 1773, when citizens of Boston, disguised as Indians, boarded the English ships lying in Boston harbor and threw their tea cargoes into the bay, cast the die for coffee; for there and then originated a subtle prejudice against "the cup that cheers", which one hundred and fifty years have failed entirely to overcome. Meanwhile, the change wrought in our social customs by this act, and those of like nature following it, in the New York, Pennsylvania, and Charleston colonies, caused coffee to be crowned "king of the American breakfast table", and the sovereign drink of the American people.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HISTORICAL RELICS a.s.sOCIATED WITH THE EARLY DAYS OF COFFEE IN NEW ENGLAND

These exhibits are in the Museum of the Maine Historical Society at Portland. On the left is Kenrick's Patent coffee mill. In the center is a Britannia urn with an iron bar for heating the liquid. The bar was encased in a tin receptacle that hung inside the cover. On the right is a wall type of coffee or spice grinder]

_Coffee in Colonial New England_

The history of coffee in colonial New England is so closely interwoven with the story of the inns and taverns that it is difficult to distinguish the genuine coffee house, as it was known in England, from the public house where lodgings and liquors were to be had. The coffee drink had strong compet.i.tion from the heady wines, the liquors, and imported teas, and consequently it did not attain the vogue among the colonial New Englanders that it did among Londoners of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Although New England had its coffee houses, these were actually taverns where coffee was only one of the beverages served to patrons. "They were", says Robinson, "generally meeting places of those who were conservative in their views regarding church and state, being friends of the ruling administration. Such persons were terms 'Courtiers' by their adversaries, the Dissenters and Republicans."

Most of the coffee houses were established in Boston, the metropolis of the Ma.s.sachusetts Colony, and the social center of New England. While Plymouth, Salem, Chelsea, and Providence had taverns that served coffee, they did not achieve the name and fame of some of the more celebrated coffee houses in Boston.

It is not definitely known when the first coffee was brought in; but it is reasonable to suppose that it came as part of the household supplies of some settler (probably between 1660 and 1670), who had become acquainted with it before leaving England. Or it may have been introduced by some British officer, who in London had made the rounds of the more celebrated coffee houses of the latter half of the seventeenth century.

_The First Coffee License_

According to early town records of Boston, Dorothy Jones was the first to be licensed to sell "coffee and cuchaletto," the latter being the seventeenth-century spelling for chocolate or cocoa. This license is dated 1670, and is said to be the first written reference to coffee in the Ma.s.sachusetts Colony. It is not stated whether Dorothy Jones was a vender of the coffee drink or of "coffee powder," as ground coffee was known in the early days.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MAYFLOWER "COFFEE GRINDER"

Mortar and pestle for "braying" coffee to make coffee powder, brought over in the Mayflower by the parents of Peregrine White]

There is some question as to whether Dorothy Jones was the first to sell coffee as a beverage in Boston. Londoners had known and drunk coffee for eighteen years before Dorothy Jones got her coffee license. British government officials were frequently taking ship from London to the Ma.s.sachusetts Colony, and it is likely that they brought tidings and samples of the coffee the English gentry had lately taken up. No doubt they also told about the new-style coffee houses that were becoming popular in all parts of London. And it may be a.s.sumed that their tales caused the landlords of the inns and taverns of colonial Boston to add coffee to their lists of beverages.

_New England's First Coffee House_

The name coffee house did not come into use in New England until late in the seventeenth century. Early colonial records do not make it clear whether the London coffee house or the Gutteridge coffee house was the first to be opened in Boston with that distinctive t.i.tle. In all likelihood the London is ent.i.tled to the honor, for Samuel Gardner Drake in his _History and Antiquities of the City of Boston_, published in 1854, says that "Benj. Harris sold books there in 1689." Drake seems to be the only historian of early Boston to mention the London coffee house.

Granting that the London coffee house was the first in Boston, then the Gutteridge coffee house was the second. The latter stood on the north side of State Street, between Exchange and Washington Streets, and was named after Robert Gutteridge, who took out an innkeeper's license in 1691. Twenty-seven years later, his widow, Mary Gutteridge, pet.i.tioned the town for a renewal of her late husband's permit to keep a public coffee house.

The British coffee house, which became the American coffee house when the crown officers and all things British became obnoxious to the colonists, also began its career about the time Gutteridge took out his license. It stood on the site that is now 66 State Street, and became one of the most widely known coffee houses in colonial New England.

Of course, there were several inns and taverns in existence in Boston long before coffee and coffee houses came to the New England metropolis.

Some of these taverns took up coffee when it became fashionable in the colony, and served it to those patrons who did not care for the stronger drinks.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CROWN COFFEE HOUSE, BOSTON

One of the first in New England to bear the distinctive name of coffee house; opened in 1711 and burned down in 1780]

The earliest known inn was set up by Samuel Cole in Washington Street, midway between Faneuil Hall and State Street. Cole was licensed as a "comfit maker" in 1634, four years after the founding of Boston; and two years later, his inn was the temporary abiding place of the Indian chief Miantonomoh and his red warriors, who came to visit Governor Vane.

In the following year, the Earl of Marlborough found that Cole's inn was so "exceedingly well governed," and afforded so desirable privacy, that he refused the hospitality of Governor Winthrop at the governor's mansion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COFFEE MAKING AND SERVING DEVICES USED IN THE Ma.s.sACHUSETTS COLONY

These exhibits are in the Museum of the Ess.e.x Inst.i.tute at Salem, Ma.s.s.

Top row, left and right, Britannia serving pots; center, Britannia table urn; bottom row, left end, tin coffee making pot; center, Britannia serving pots; right end, tin French drip pot]

Another popular inn of the day was the Red Lyon, which was opened in 1637 by Nicholas Upshall, the Quaker, who later was hanged for trying to bribe a jailer to pa.s.s some food into the jail to two Quakeresses who were starving within.

Ship tavern, erected in 1650, at the corner of North and Clark Streets, then on the waterfront, was a haunt of British government officials. The father of Governor Hutchinson was the first landlord, to be succeeded in 1663 by John Vyal. Here lived the four commissioners who were sent to these sh.o.r.es by King Charles II to settle the disputes then beginning between the colonies and England.

Another lodging and eating place for the gentlemen of quality in the first days of Boston was the Blue Anchor, in Cornhill, which was conducted in 1664 by Robert Turner. Here gathered members of the government, visiting officials, jurists, and the clergy, summoned into synod by the Ma.s.sachusetts General Court. It is a.s.sumed that the clergy confined their drinking to coffee and other moderate beverages, leaving the wines and liquors to their confreres.

_Some Notable Boston Coffee Houses_

In the last quarter of the seventeenth century quite a number of taverns and inns sprang up. Among the most notable that have obtained recognition in Boston's historical records were the King's Head, at the corner of Fleet and North Streets; the Indian Queen, on a pa.s.sageway leading from Washington Street to Hawley Street; the Sun, in Faneuil Hall Square, and the Green Dragon, which became one of the most celebrated coffee-house taverns.

The King's Head, opened in 1691, early became a rendezvous of crown officers and the citizens in the higher strata of colonial society.

The Indian Queen also became a favorite resort of the crown officers from Province House. Started by Nathaniel Bishop about 1673, it stood for more than 145 years as the Indian Queen, and then was replaced by the Washington coffee house, which became noted throughout New England as the starting place for the Roxbury "hourlies," the stage coaches that ran every hour from Boston to nearby Roxbury.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COFFEE DEVICES THAT FIGURED IN THE PIONEERING OF THE GREAT WEST

Photographed for this work in the Museum of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Left to right, English decorated tin pot; coffee and spice mill from Lexington, Ma.s.s.; Globe roaster built by Rays & Wilc.o.x Co., Berlin, Conn., under Wood's patent; sheet bra.s.s coffee mill from Lexington, Ma.s.s.; John Luther's coffee mill, Warren, R.I.; cast-iron hopper mill]

The Sun tavern lived a longer life than any other Boston inn. Started in 1690 in Faneuil Hall Square, it was still standing in 1902, according to Henry R. Blaney; but has since been razed to make way for a modern skysc.r.a.per.

[Ill.u.s.tration: METAL AND CHINA COFFEE POTS USED IN NEW ENGLAND'S COLONIAL DAYS