Dorchester Stage Coaches
No. 19928 Stage coach ticket Boston and Dorchester
No. 2514 Omnibus, Mattapan
The Dorchester Beacon, March 4, 1893
I must go back fully sixty years for my first remembrance of the stage coaches, which made hourly trips fro mthe Lower Mills to the city proper. There were then two coaches daily, one starting in the early morning, the other at noon. The drivers were the brothers Charles and Archibald Dunmore, excellent whips both of them, and it is long since they have gone off “the stage.”
On their return trips, they would leave Wilde’s Tavern on Elm Street at stated hours, and if their slate required them to go to any part of the city to call for passengers (we had no Back Bay then), they could be relied upon to answer the summons, but in obeying these orders, it often protracted the time beyond the customary one hour. The fare was thirty-seven and one half cents for each passage, and as we had silver coins then of six and one-quarter and twelve and one-half cents, and as half-cent coppers were in plentiful circulation, the Dunmores had no difficulty in getting the entire fare to a nicety.
There was one daily coach from Randolph and another from New Bedford passing over the road, but as the citizens were loyal to local interest, it was only occasionally that the other lines were patronized. Somewhere in 1830, an opposition was started from near the site of the present railroad station on Washington near Norfolk Street, and the fare reduced to, I think, twenty-five cents, but the route not being so long, it did not interfere much with the Dunmores and was short-lived. One Mr. Goodspeed, a very nice man by the way, for a man holding the ribbons, started a coach from Eaton’s store on Meeting House Hill, carrying his passengers to and from Boston for a nine-pence (twelve and one-half cents) each. Utter ruin was predicted as the result of such a fool-hardy enterprise, although the distance was but a little over three miles.
In 1834, Mr. William Hollis his brother, Joseph, started the last line of omnibuses from the Easton Store Station, and if I remember right, the fare was twenty-five cents to Centre Street, but by tickets considerably reduced. These omnibuses made their headquarters in front of the Washington Coffee House on Washington near Milk Street. Sometime later, Mr. William Hendry placed upon the same route some small omnibuses patterned after the Knickerbocker and Bleeker Street ‘buses in New York. They ran more frequently than their predecessors, leaving Franklin near Washington Street every half hour, and their route was via Grove Hll. Followed by the omnibuses were the horse cars and then the electrics. Now we ride from the Tremont House paying a fare of five cents.
Would I rather go back to those old stage coach times with the high fare or risk the remnant in the electrics? Wthout hesitation, emphatically I say to the former – yes!
W. C.C.