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Tavernocracy: Tavern Culture in Ohio's Western Reserve
By: Adam Criblez
“I am sure the Americans can fix nothing without a drink. If you meet, you drink; if you part, you drink; if you make acquaintance, you drink; if you close a bargain, you drink; they quarrel in their drink, and they make it up with a drink. They drink because it is hot; they drink because it is cold. If successful in election, they drink and rejoice; if not, they drink and swear; they begin to drink early in the morning, they leave off late at night; they commence it early in life, and they continue it, until they soon drop into the grave. To use their expression, they way they drink, is ‘quite a caution.’ As for water, what the man said, when asked to belong to the Temperance Society, appears to be the general opinion: “It’s very good for navigation”
-Frederick Marryat1
In 1776, American colonists revolted against perceived inequities unjustly thrust upon them by a tyrannical English monarchy. After defeating the colonial power, Americans faced a new, perhaps more daunting, task; creating a new form of government based on tenants of freedom and a vague ideal known as republicanism. With limited precedent from which to draw, Americans heatedly debated what it meant to be an American citizen, what true virtue and republicanism stood for, and how this fledgling nation should be run. From the very beginning, this public discourse and private conversation poured forth from one of the nation’s most important centers for the dissemination of information; the rural tavern.2
Within the tavern, men carried out the traditions of the revolution. They discussed American politics, drank American beverages, and escaped their defined roles in society through the close, if often forced, intimacy of the early nineteenth century tavern. It was in these walls that settlers discussed what it meant to be American and parlayed words into action.
In 1796, Moses Cleaveland led an intrepid band of surveyors to the shores of Lake Erie as representatives of the Connecticut Land Company. The land under survey was termed New Connecticut by the company, but came to be known more commonly as the Western Reserve. Today this area occupies much of northeastern Ohio and provides an opportunity to view the early nineteenth century tavern in a unique social and cultural setting.
More specifically, this study focuses on Cleveland, later a sprawling metropolis but during the early nineteenth century a small pioneer village, and its surrounding rural area. While the chronological beginning of this study coincides with the arrival of Moses Cleaveland and the first surveying party of the Connecticut Land Company, it concludes with the presidential election of 1840. By 1840 the tavern had slipped from its position as the key information center in communities and Cleveland began its transformation into a leading population center. Faster newspaper coverage and the advent of rail travel forced changes in the tavern which changed the institution from a focal point of antebellum society into a member of the periphery. While still a vital institution up to and through the Civil War, the rural tavern, like stagecoaches and tri-cornered hats, became more history than current event. But between 1796 and 1840, the tavern occupied both the figurative and literal center of life on Connecticut’s Western Reserve.
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